Nature:Equity: a mathematician shares her solution

 BOOK REVIEW 

 27 JULY 2020

Look beyond gender — if research thrives on collaboration, a book asks, why do we reward individualism?

Jory C. Lerback

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When she teaches mathematics, Eugenia Cheng rewards curiosity and open-mindedness. Credit: School of the Art Institute of Chicago

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x+y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender Eugenia Cheng Profile (2020)

Much has been written about the female premiers of Germany, Finland, New Zealand and Taiwan, and their remarkable success at dealing with COVID-19. But, as many pundits have noted, to focus on their gender is to miss much more important issues: the personal characteristics that define how these leaders operate, and the social climate that rewards communitarian behaviour.

These issues — relational abilities and enabling contexts — are central to mathematician Eugenia Cheng’s constructive argument in x+y. Whether one plus one is two, she shows, depends on how you define your variables and their relationship. One violinist and one pianist (Cheng plays the piano) might make two musicians, cacophony or sweet music, depending on how they interact. Considering such scenarios is the beauty of category theory, Cheng’s branch of pure mathematics.

She applies category theory to the under-representation of women and people from gender minorities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM). Programmes to recruit, train and support women in these fields rely on the equation [women] + [STEMM training] = [more women in STEMM]. But given that many qualified women leave, clearly there are other variables at play.

Three extraordinary women run the gauntlet of science — a documentary

Some of the reasons relate directly to gender, such as explicit bias (including sexual harassment) and historical legal and social barriers. Cheng does not dispute the value of policy interventions to address these, but warns that they merely patch up symptoms of a deeper problem with how STEMM values people. Her experience in mathematics — for example, of being bullied and belittled because of sexism, racism and ageism — led her to seek out a more creative environment. She is currently at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois, where she can teach maths as a community-oriented and curiosity-driven subject, rather than a series of tests.

In x+y, she focuses on manifestations of inequality that relate only superficially to gender. Take the 2019 finding that grant applications that include ‘broader’ language, more often used by men, tend to score higher than those with more specific language, more commonly used by women (see Nature http://doi.org/gfz7jk; 2019). Men, for instance, might write ‘control’ and ‘detection’ where women tend to reach for topic-specific words such as ‘community’ or ‘health’. Such studies demonstrate differences in average measured outcomes that correlate with gender.

Cheng argues that expecting individuals to conform with gendered averages has a high chance of being incorrect, and paves the way for undue criticism of outliers. “If a female mathematician is considered an anomaly,” she quips, “does that tell us something about women, about mathematicians, or about our preconceived expectations?”

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern emphasizes the power of collaboration, thanking New Zealand’s “team of five million” for working together to beat COVID-19.Credit: Mark Coote/Bloomberg via Getty

Cheng suggests that we focus on styles of behaviour instead. Drawing on category theory, she classifies people as ‘congressive’ — collaborative, emphasizing community and interdependence — or ‘ingressive’: more competitive, prioritizing individualism and independence. Avoiding another binary, she sees these traits as a complex spectrum, and modifiable through experience and training.

I find this terminology compelling. It sidesteps debates on the origins (nature versus nurture) of notional gender differences. Importantly, it offers a way to address other intersecting aspects of diversity — ethnicity, sexuality, disability, education and more — as Cheng does throughout the book.

She argues that STEMM benefits from congressive behaviour, with team projects increasingly the norm. Researchers must think about existing knowledge from various perspectives and share fresh insight in clear and compelling ways. Yet STEMM institutions foster ingressive behaviours. Awards go to individuals; reviewers describe grant applications as ‘competitive’ rather than ‘interesting’ or ‘well thought out’. Offering insights for my own research into inequity in publishing, Cheng shows how ingressive — sometimes even aggressive — structures of peer review slide easily from constructive criticism to gatekeeping.

Stirring biopic of the first woman to win top maths prize

Clearly, we should stop trying solely to recruit women into hostile STEMM environments; instead, we should train researchers to be inclusive. Cheng leads by example in her teaching of “often maths-phobic” art students. She writes: “I nurture, encourage and reward congressive behaviour such as curiosity, open-mindedness and collaboration, not ingressive behaviour such as showing off, posturing or belittling others.”

The upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity for more just, equitable and congressive change. STEMM disciplines are rethinking how to share knowledge and support open collaboration. Let’s hope leaders can ensure that this shift in values is represented in new organizational structures.

Cheng enjoins us to consider our place on the congressive–ingressive spectrum, to take time to ensure that our language, actions and priorities reflect non-gendered values. I would add that this reflection should also extend to anti-racist values.

Cheng explores the broader implications of her categories for society — in politics and voting systems, for example. She highlights the congressive Finnish education system and identifies possible alternatives to ingressive practices in the classroom. For instance, of a study of teenagers’ willingness to claim mathematical expertise, she points out: “in Europe only the boys have learnt to bullshit as much as the Americans”.

x+y provides useful new tools for change, for those — like me — involved in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. For those who are not yet involved, she sets out reasons to become so. And I’m a new fan of pure mathematics. Dr Cheng, can we be friends?

Nature 583, 681-682 (2020)

doi: 10.1038/d41586-020-02205-8

Times Higher Education : Finding the right formula for feminism

 

Eugenia Cheng defies convention with her approach to teaching. The Chicago-based British mathematician tells Matthew Reisz why similar out-of-the-box thinking is required to improve gender equality
July 23, 2020

Matthew Reisz

Twitter: @MatthewReiszTHE

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Source: Getty/iStock montage

“Pure maths is a place of dreams,” writes Eugenia Cheng in her new book, x + y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender. “It’s about dreaming up new concepts and new structures.”

Such dreams, as her subtitle suggests, are not just intellectual games but can help us address complex and intractable real-world issues. And she draws on the story of her own career to illustrate how.

Scientist-in-residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2013, Cheng was previously senior lecturer in pure mathematics at the University of Sheffield. Her first two books – How to Bake Pi: Easy Recipes for Understanding Complex Maths and Beyond Infinity: An Expedition to the Outer Limits of Mathematics – provided wonderfully accessible introductions to some pretty challenging ideas.

The first, which includes recipes for custard, chocolate brownies and fruit crumble, was strongly influenced by her teaching experience. “When I was in Sheffield,” Cheng tells Times Higher Education, “the thing which perked my students up the most was talking about food. And so I used it more and more.”

When she moved to Chicago, however, many of her art students had “either failed previous levels of maths or ran away from it because they hated it”. She knew she would have to adjust her teaching style but made the remarkable decision to bring into her classes her own research field of higher-dimension category theory, normally taught only to maths specialists at postgraduate level.

“I’m now teaching more advanced maths in a slightly less rigorous way,” she says, “whereas at Sheffield I was teaching less advanced maths slightly more rigorously…[The art students] are not so interested in that level of rigour but the thought processes and the ideas behind it.”

Such an approach challenges the conventional idea that maths is basically “cumulative” and consists of “increasingly high hurdles, where you are tested to see if you can pass this hurdle and then are allowed to progress to the next”. Unfortunately, this only serves to “keep people out”. As someone committed to overcoming “maths phobia”, she is always looking to break down such barriers.

What Cheng has also discovered at the Art Institute is that discussions of food “didn’t make [students there] perk up in the same way”. Instead, “it was questions of social justice and political issues which really motivated them…I had been very wary of talking about politics out loud up until then because, like most mathematicians, I had thought maths was supposed to be very neutral – and then [with the 2016 US presidential election] it became too important…If I ask my students to stop thinking about politics when they walk into the classroom, they are not going to be interested in anything I’m saying.”

Cheng’s third book, The Art of Logic: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn’t, published in 2018, already drew on her new, more politically engaged style of teaching, illustrating logical points with examples about white privilege, sexual harassment and fat shaming. She has now taken this several steps further. x + y is a book very much designed to change the world.

So where does gender come in?

In parallel with her teaching, research and public engagement work, Cheng – as a prominent female mathematician – is often asked to take part in discussions about getting more women into maths and science. Yet she often finds herself at odds with the consensus view.

“The other women on those panels”, she reports, “typically exhort everyone: ‘You have to step out of your comfort zone! You have to take risks! You have to be OK with failure!’ But I know there are many young women, and men as well, who don’t feel they want to do those things, and so they will be put off and decide they are just not cut out for [certain disciplines].” A more productive approach, she suggests, relies on “building safety nets, having a network of supporters around you and defining failure out of existence by saying everything is a learning process. It is just a shift in psychology.”

Similarly, x + y cites a study from the 1990s into why men did better than women in Oxbridge exams. In subjects such as history, it turned out, one important factor was that “men tended to write essays that took a strong position and argued it fiercely, and that this was highly valued. A balanced position argued from all points of view was valued less.”

One possible response, of course, is to “train women to make more one-sided arguments”. But this is an example of what x + y describes as “pseudo-feminism…in which women are exhorted to become more like men in order to be successful”.

A central problem, Cheng writes, is that debates about gender often turn into “an argument about what we should be arguing about”. It is easy to get lost in endless, dizzying disputes about whether a particular piece of research really demonstrates that men are statistically “better at systematising than empathising” and, if so, whether this is innate and whether it is a reliable proxy for “better at maths”.

What this fails to address is that certain characteristics – such as taking a strong but perhaps simplistic position in an essay – may be associated with men (for whatever reason) and favoured by society, which then leads to men being more successful. Yet we also need to ask whether such attributes are actually desirable. In the case of the Oxbridge exams, as Cheng points out, we might consider the impact on our political culture: should “politicians be judged by how well they make a speech” or “how well they listen to other people’s concerns and respond to them”?

If we decide such characteristics are not desirable and we therefore work to promote other values, that will not only benefit society in itself but also help alter the gender balance of power without the need for quotas, “leaning in”, assertiveness training for women or many other familiar forms of intervention.

It is here that Cheng adopts the mathematician’s privilege of inventing “a new dimension” and terminology. She uses the word “congressive” to refer to forms of education, research, discussion and behaviour that “focus on society and community over self”, “tak[e] others into account more than impos[e] on them” and “emphasis[e] interdependence and interconnectedness”. “Ingressiveness”, by contrast, means “focusing on oneself over society and community”, and, among other things, involves a “tendency towards selective or single-track thought processes”.

Having this bold new conceptual framework, in Cheng’s view, has helped her analyse everything from teaching methods to voting systems without bringing in the baggage (and gendered assumptions) of words such as “competitive” and “cooperative”. In teaching maths the way she now does in Chicago, we read, she has been able to “develop a little utopia of a congressive society in my classroom”. And to create a wider climate of gender equality, while we certainly need to address overt sexism and discrimination, the real key is to make the world more congressive, she says, rather than seeking to alter women or making special allowances for them, via a process of “‘reverse sexism’, in which women are deliberately favoured to make up for past oppression”.

Although ranging widely across many aspects of our lives, the book also slaughters a number of specifically academic sacred cows, including journal publishing and peer review. Cheng believes she has experienced “being held to a different standard than my male peers in refereed reports”. And while she “just quietly lament[s] in a corner” when she feels her work should have been cited in a paper, she often receives communications from male mathematicians who are “angry because I didn’t cite them. It’s quite unpleasant, so I think about who might get angry [when deciding who to cite], which means I’m skewing my own citations.”

Further distortions arise from the fact that “people who are principled decline to read papers written by their friends, whereas unprincipled people are willing to review their friends”. It was also depressing when famous authors seemed to have little difficulty in getting substandard work published, “exactly like what happens in the pop music world, which shouldn’t happen in academia because we are supposed to be rational”.

But despite the biases they can introduce, don’t editors and reviewers also perform an important function in excluding really bad papers?

“The usefulness of gatekeepers could be preserved while removing the problems,” Cheng replies, “by making it less of a gate and more of a slope. The all-or-nothing aspect makes it really problematic: the idea that keeping people out makes things better. It’s a bit like false positives and false negatives. We may be keeping something out that was worth letting in – and I think that’s much more problematic than the other way round, the fear of letting something in that wasn’t worth it.

“I don’t object to experts evaluating other people’s papers, but peer review is based on something completely anachronistic…The cut-offs are based on how much space there is in a journal, even though now everyone reads everything digitally.”

These are not easy times to be optimistic, particularly for those seeking more congressive forms of politics. Yet Cheng finds a sliver of hope in the way that “people have had to start really thinking about what is happening with exams and entry into universities”. For instance, in the US, the SAT college admission test did not run this year; for Cheng, the halting of standardised testing requirements for university applications “is an amazing result. There are people who have been saying they should do that for years. It’s a pity it took a global pandemic to drop them, but maybe [admissions tutors] will realise that there are ways they can decide who should go to university without [making applicants sit] through epic multiple-choice, completely pointless tests.”

Looking further forward, does Cheng foresee a utopian world dominated by congressive behaviour and institutions – or will congressive and ingressive forces always have to battle it out against each other?

“I personally don’t feel any need to be ingressive any more,” she reflects. “I can’t think of any reasons why ingressive behaviour is important. It’s inevitable that there will always be some, just as there will always be morons. But we can try to get people to be less moronic and more congressive.”

Eugenia Cheng’s x + y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender has just been published by Profile Books.

 

Guardian: x + y by Eugenia Cheng review – an end to the gender wars?

A bold and optimistic theory of gender and cooperation, based on the insights of maths

Katy Guest

Wed 22 Jul 2020 12.00 BSTLast modified on Sat 25 Jul 2020 05.29 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/22/x-y-by-eugenia-cheng-review-an-end-to-the-gender-wars

 

 ‘It only takes one person to step forward to ruin it for everyone’. Photograph: Konstantin Yolshin/Alamy Stock Photo

Eugenia Cheng is on a mission to change the world for the better, using maths. Her first book, How to Bake Pi, used recipes to teach readers how to think mathematically. The Art of Logic, published in 2018, was about using the principles of mathematical logic to have more productive arguments. x + y is an even more ambitious project, the aim of which is to end the gender wars and create equality by building “a whole new theory of people”.

Cheng begins by addressing why it is unhelpful to associate characteristics with gender, and explains why “leaning in” and “positive discrimination” both fail to fix inequality. She proposes a solution based on her specialist subject of category theory, which is more interested “in describing things by the role they play in a context, rather than by their intrinsic characteristics”. Mathematically, she says, “if we have two things that are not equal, we could make them equal by making the lesser one greater or by making the greater one less ... However, there is a completely different way we could do it, which is by evaluating the two things on a new dimension entirely.” Cheng insists that proper maths, the fun kind, is not about being right, but is a way of thinking differently, and that includes exploring ideas that are impossible according to existing rules. It’s a way of seeing this exhausting debate from a completely new angle.

What she asks us to do is forget ideas of masculine or feminine characteristics, and instead think about types of behaviour that are either “ingressive” or “congressive”. Ingressive behaviours are competitive, adversarial and focused on the self over the community; congressive behaviours are collaborative, cooperative and focus on society over the self. It is a frustrating fact, she argues, “that although congressive behaviour is better for society, our society is set up to reward ingressive behaviour”. This book is a manifesto for switching that setup, beginning on a personal level and working all the way up to large-scale, structural change.

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Cheng makes reference to writers and thinkers who have explored similar subjects before, such as Angela Saini in Inferior, and Cordelia Fine in Testosterone Rex. Though she doesn’t mention his work, her coinage of “ingressive” and “congressive” is reminiscent of Simon Baron-Cohen’s “systematising” and “empathising” brains. Unlike him, she does not associate “ingressive” behaviour intrinsically with maleness, or “congressive” with femaleness, and gives several examples of congressive men and ingressive women. (One such is John Baez, “a physicist and prolific blogger who started sharing his understanding of physics way back in 1993 when the internet was barely known”.) She does acknowledge, however, that congressive behaviours are currently more common among women, and that society encourages men to be more ingressive. And, though she carefully explains the ways in which anyone can exercise congressive power and influence, a cynical reader is likely to wonder why, even in this egalitarian system, it still seems likely that ingressive people (mostly men) are going to go on making tonnes of money, while congressive people (mostly women) will be putting others first.

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Early in the book she gives the example of a luggage carousel at an airport. When everyone crowds forward, nobody can see their luggage; but when everyone steps back, they all benefit. But it only takes one person to step forward to ruin it for everyone: even in a congressive utopia, won’t there be an exponential stampede back to ingression? Cheng is optimistic that change is possible, and stresses that her theory, like maths, is “a ‘way of thinking’ rather than … an exercise in getting the right answer”, and that therefore “the only way to fail is not to try”.

She gives concrete examples of how to neutralise ingressive energy in your own life based on anecdotes from hers, and case studies including that of Stephanie Shirley, who built her own computer programming company, staffed entirely by women, and became a phenomenal success. Among many diagrams is a sketch of Cheng’s “dream train design”, which employs two platforms, to encourage passengers to move down the carriage and let other people on and off. It clearly would be wonderful if we could start from scratch, with clever, congressive designers for everything.

The book starts and ends with last-minute addenda about the coronavirus crisis, and asks whether this experience might make us all finally realise the value of individuals acting for the benefit of the group. It’s another bold and optimistic thought. Still, if we were ever going to imagine a whole new theory of people, now is as good a time as any to start.

• x + y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender is published by Profile (£16.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Metopera: Tannhauser

DVD: 1982 Met Tannhäuser

Tannhäuser. Metropolitan Opera 1982. Production: Otto Schenk. Cast: Richard Cassilly (Tannhäuser), Tatiana Troyanos (Venus), Eva Marton (Elisabeth), Bernd Weikl (Wolfram), John Macurdy (Hermann). Conductor: James Levine. Further information here.

This Metropolitan opera 1982 production of Tannhäuser is, for once, rather easily described: It is quite simply traditional from A to Z, aiming at realistically and meticulously depicting the story of Tannhäuser exactly as stated in the libretto. The team of Otto Schenk and Gunther Schneider-Siemssen, responsible for staging virtually all of Wagner operas at the Metropolitan Opera do what they are reknowned of doing: A Tannhäuser I would not have been surprised to see 100 years previously in Bayreuth.

Detractors will call this an opera museum, admirers will call it a staging faithfully to the intentions of the composers. Your choice. However, regardless of tastes, I suspect most will agree that the setting of the third act is simply stunning.

Of the singers Tatiana Troyanos lush Venus (she looks great as well) and Bernd Weikls beautifully sung Wolfram stand out.
Eva Marton is heard in her rather short prime as an Elisabeth with refreshingly punch, though she has always been a stand-up-and-sing performer. Richard Cassilly is disappointing as a stiff and vocally strained Tannhäuser, though as most will know it is a virtually impossible part to sing.

Engaged and brisk performance from James Levine and the orchestra.

Wagner does not get more traditional than this.

Arrival of the guests in Wartburg:

The bottom line:

Richard Casilly: 2
Tatiana Troyanos: 4-5
Eva Marton: 4
Bernd Weikl: 4-5
John Macurdy: 4

Schenks production: 3

James Levine: 4-5

Overall impression: 3
Posted by 18gianni79 on YouTube

Posted by mostly opera... at 17:45  

A misguided 'Macbeth'; a superb 'Tannhauser'; The Met as it shouldn't be -- and as it shouldDecember 8, 1982

By Thor Eckert Jr.

NEW YORK

Anew production at the Metropolitan Opera is at the very least a costly undertaking. Last season, two of those undertakings paid off memorably in artistic terms - Otto Schenk's superb staging of Offenbach's ''Les Contes d'Hoffmann'' (designed by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen) and director-designer Franco Zeffirelli's breathtakingly beautiful presentation of Puccini's ''La Boheme.''

This year, the first new production of the season was Mozart's ''Idomeneo,'' staged and designed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and received with justifiable acclaim. Now, however, the house has allowed on its stage a production of Verdi's ''Macbeth'' that should never have gotten past the talking and preliminary design stage. (On Dec. 18 it will be aired nationally on the radio - check local listings.)

Sir Peter Hall, the noted stage director, was in charge of the action, and John Bury was in charge of the designs. Together they put Peter Shaffer's ''Amadeus'' on stage to well-nigh universal critical celebration. But neither seems to have a notion of what opera staging requires. Mr. Bury's sets are a series of hung drops poorly detailed and essentially unlit by Gil Wechsler. They are ugly and ill-proportioned for the singers on stage. Sir Peter's direction seems to lack common sense, and in several scenes theatrical instincts seem lacking.

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The production evidently attempted to give a modern audience the feeling of the Paris premiere of Verdi's 1864 ''Macbeth,'' in a version tailored for that city. Paris always insisted on a ballet, among other conventions. The reports of the Metropolitan's own opening night of this production suggest it was one of the most uproarious in recent Met history. Throughout the evening, the sets, the direction, and even the singing were greeted with derisive laughter and booing. When Mr. Bury and Sir Peter emerged with James Levine at show's end, they were booed.

By the fourth performance, many of the reported sillier things had been changed. But one was still always aware of trapdoors, wires for the flying (yes, flying) witches, and all the other mechanisms employed for the so-called effects.

Fewer jobs at City Hall - one way Flynn can begin to arrest the deficit

How does such an evening come to pass? Why did no one at the Met say, ''This will not do''? New York's two other major opera houses have general managers willing to go out on a limb and say just that. It is the least that should be expected, considering the hundreds of thousands of dollars involved and the fact that the house must use the production for years to come.

The ''Boheme,'' ''Hoffmann,'' and ''Idomeneo'' meet this requirement. The directors involved are brilliant stagers of opera. Mr. Hall's record, however, is primarily theatrical, as is John Dexter's - he used to be director of production at the Met and is responsible for several dour Met stagings of Verdi operas. It is clear that good theatrical values do not work in opera without some concessions to the nature of the art form, which have not been made here.

The music contains the kernels from which the dramatic action must be unfolded. Sir Peter and Mr. Dexter fight that music all the time. Singing into a 3,800-seat theater demands entirely different body language than acting in an 800- to 1,200-seat house, but the myth today is that contemporary theatrical techniques can be applied wholesale to the opera stage. It does not work.

We have great singing actors around, but their style is inextricably related to the process of singing. They are not Royal Shakespeare or Stanislavsky thespians. Many more of our finest singers are not very good as actors. Sherrill Milnes, who sings the title role in this production, falls in the latter category. Sir Peter did very little to try to make his lurching and staggering convey much. On the other hand, his work with Renata Scotto as Lady Macbeth was scaled to a tiny theater: Seen through opera glasses, her facial expressions were varied, interesting, but unspontaneous.

Mr. Milnes is in excess of six feet tall. Miss Scotto measures in at not much over five feet. Side by side, they were quite a mismatch. John Bury's sets featured doors and archways nearly as high as the proscenium and furniture that seemed to come up to Miss Scotto's chin, dwarfing her presence.

Vocally, the performance I attended - the fourth in a run of 11 - was spotty. The dramatic soprano role of Lady Macbeth was never anything Miss Scotto, a lyric sorpano best suited to lighter singing, should have undertaken, and the Met is wrong to have encouraged her. Even her lyric soprano performance falls far short of its former brilliance. Based on the 1973 revival, a recording, and this performance, I feel Mr. Milnes appears not to offer a great Macbeth, despite his justified stature as one of the leading Verdians of the day. Giuseppe Giacomini was vocally out of sorts as Macduff; Ruggero Raimondi was a solid Banquo.

The decision to include the mediocre ballet music was perhaps the first desperate flaw. Stuart Hopps's lurching, hopping, cavorting choreography was a consistent cause for laughter, even at the fourth performance. In the pit, Mr. Levine led a superb performance that turned this score into something major, and monumental. But as music director, he should have used his authority to see to it that such productions never get on this stage. Tannhauser

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Happily, TV audiences will see the Met the way it should be, in one of its finest productions of a Wagner opera, ''Tannhauser.'' The performance of Dec. 20 will be taped for airing March 23, 1983, on PBS - check local listings.

The production, directed and designed by that superb team of Mr. Schenk and Mr. Schneider-Siemssen, has been discussed numerous times in these pages. The current cast is a fine one, though it features neither of the singers who made the first night so fine - James McCracken in the title role, or Leonie Rysanek, the definitive Elisabeth of the day. The only holdover, Bernd Weikl, is the finest Wolfram imaginable. Tatiana Troyanos is the voluptuous Venus, and Met newcomer Fritz Hubner offers an imposing if rather uneven Hermann.

Eva Marton sets the entire evening on a superb level with her electrifying Elisabeth, proving yet again that she is a splendid addition to the Met roster. Richard Cassilly is slated to sing Dec. 20 but was indisposed the night I attended. His alternate, Edward Sooter, revealed an ample voice in his first house try at the title role. He also showed some genuine style and tremendous promise.

This score has always brought out the very best in Mr. Levine. He makes ''Tannhauser'' a thing of visceral excitement and tremendous emotional intensity. His work is the icing on the cake of a grandiose Met-style show - the way the Met should be, rather than the ''Macbeth,'' which is the way it should never be.

Milan: Lohengrin

Lohengrin – review

La Scala, Milan

In a class of his own … Jonas Kaufmann in Lohengrin at La Scala, Milan. Photograph: Monika Rittershaus/AP

Martin Kettle

@martinkettle

Published onSun 9 Dec 2012 12.57 EST

0

5

La Scala's decision to stage Wagner's Lohengrin rather than an opera by Verdi for the gala opening of a season marking the bicentenaries of both composers caused a predictable local ballyhoo. But the glittering social rituals that always mark the Milan season opener went ahead undeterred. Italy's government may be tottering, but prime minister Mario Monti came to La Scala with several ministers. Imagine David Cameron taking time out from a political crisis to go to the opera with his cabinet. Italy has different priorities.
The perceived insult to Verdi has distracted attention from the significance of Milan's choice of Lohengrin rather than any other Wagner work. Once Wagner's most popular opera, including in Italy, Lohengrin then became his most widely despised. Now there is a fresh and overdue attempt to understand Lohengrin taking place, and Daniel Barenboim's championing of it at the Scala is a significant milestone in that reevaluation of a work that stands on the cusp between grand opera and Wagnerian progressivism.

Claus Guth's strikingly staged production is set in an enclosed 19th century courtyard. It starts as though it might succeed in unlocking the story of the mysterious swan-knight who rescues Elsa of Brabant when she is accused of murdering her brother, before abandoning her when she insists on knowing his identity. In Guth's conception, Elsa is always the pivotal character of the opera, a disturbed visionary who clings to memory (her murdered brother is often on the stage), music (represented by an on-stage piano) and the earth (embodied by trees, reeds and water) as protection against the bourgeois political order imposed by the usurper Duke Telramund and his wife Ortrud, who literally wears the trousers in this marriage.

But Guth's conception loses direction as the opera evolves. That's partly because Wagner made Ortrud an outsider while Guth makes her an insider, a self-harming maiden in uniform, But the main reason is that Guth cannot explain why Lohengrin behaves as he does. Having arrived as a figment of Elsa's delirium - she almost literally gives birth to him - his rejection of Elsa is made to seem callously meaningless. It's a very fascinating try, but in the end Guth's ideas run out of steam.

Given Elsa's centrality to this staging, it was bad luck that flu removed both the much anticipated Anja Harteros and her replacement Ann Petersen from proceedings. In the circumstances, Bayreuth's current Elsa, Annette Dasch, coped heroically with a production that she joined with less than 24 hours' notice, though her soprano lacked the body and projection that the Scala's big stage demands.

In the title role, Jonas Kaufmann was in a class of his own, totally involved and giving a masterclass of daringly varied, sometimes mannered, vocal technique. Evelyn Herlitzius was a tireless but not a classic Ortrud, Tómas Tómasson a very credible Telramund and René Pape a luxury though occasionally strained King Heinrich. Barenboim's grip over the score was not always consistent, especially towards the end of act two, but when it was good it was very good indeed and the La Scala orchestra and chorus played and sang fabulously well for him.

Kaufmann Lohengrin La Scala Barenboim

Gala nights at Teatro alla Scala Milan are big occasions. There's often a political dimension becaue Italians take opera seriously. In 2010, there were demonstrations and Daniel Bareboim made a passionate speech from the podium .This year the fact that Wagner was chosen instead of Verdi was an issue, and some politicians didn't attend. This year, the performance wasn't screened live in cinemas outside Italy. Perhaps they wanted to preserve the exclusive cachet.  But seat sales aren't the way the market works anymore. Thwarted of the usual cinemas screenings, audiences outside Italy watched the broadcast via arte.tv.

The cast list was stellar: Jonas Kaufmann as Lohengrin, René Pape, Annette Dasch, Evelyn Herlitzius, Tómas Tómasson. Even the Heerfufer (Herald) was tops :Zeljko Lucic. Since Barenboim has been associated with Wagner most of his adult life, the performance was never in any danger of being a disappointment. Surprisingly, though, some of the singing wasn't quite as good as might have been expected. Tómasson's Telramund suffered vocal roughness, particularly in the first act, though he picked up later. Even Kaufmann wasn't quite his usual, luminous, lyrical self.  But it was plenty good enough, we can't expect extreme perfection all the time.

Annette Dasch pretty much stole the show. She sang Elsa at Bayreuth in the Hans Neuenfels production (more here). She was so good that I for one wasn't heartbroken when Anja Harteros pulled out at the last moment. Dasch doesn't fit the cliché of Elsa as passive victim waiting for a handsome prince : she's too strong a personality, and too vivid. A voice with that luscious richness couldn't sound wan. Besides, Elsa is a Wagner heroine. Like Brünnhilde, Isolde and Senta, she finds solutions. Brabant is in chaos because Elsa's brother Gottfried, the rightful heir, has disappeared. Telramund accuses Elsa. If she's eliminated, Ortrud can rule and restore her ancient gods. This isn't merely a struggle for succession but a struggle between cosmic forces

If Ortrud can use magic, Elsa can call on supernatural forces. The libretto refers to her as in ruhiger Verklärung vor sich hinblickend (quietly transfixed, staring ahead of her, as if unaware of the crowds around her). Elsa may not even know it, but she can call on some deep subconscious force to help her survive. The Grail community isn't real, and indeed, goes against Christian theology. Is Lohengrin a kind of instinctive wish fulfillment?

Claus Guth's staging addresses Lohengrin on a psychological level. This Brabant isn't historic. When the real Heinrich der Vogler lived, Ortrud's gods had long been replaced by Christianity. In Wagner's time, though, Germany existed as a collection of small states. If Guth sets this Brabant firmly in the mid 19th century, he's closer to the deeper spirit of the opera than the kitsch pageantry of Moshinksy, where decor replaces drama. The darkness in Guth's production throws focus on the characters.  Telramund and Elsa are buttoned-up power figures. Gottfried is seen with a "young" version of Elsa, reminding us how strongly Elsa and Gottfried were bonded.

In the libretto, Wagner makes a point of referring to Lohengrin's horn, a detail often overlooked by stagings which emphasize the mein lieber Schwan image.  Guth shows that this detail is no accident. What other Wagner hero carries a horn? Siegfried, who saves Brünnhilde from her prison.  Later, when Kaufmann's Lohengrin contemplates the dilemma Elsa puts him in, he cradles it like a child seeks help from a comfort object. In the First Act, there's a piano on stage as Ortrud and Teltramund accuse Elsa. At the end, when Lohengrin departs, the piano appears again among the reeds by the lake. Is it Elsa's equivalent of a horn? Music has the power to lift us out of dilemmas. Imagination is a positive form of magic, with which Ortrud's repressive spells cannot compete.

Heinrich and Telramund are officers, but the Brabanters are decamisados. Lohengrin doesn't need a shining swan suit: he's a Romantic hero, in an open collar shirt, like a poet. When  Kaufmann first materializes, he's curled in a foetal position, twitching like a bird breaking out of its shell.  Later, as he's about to return to Monsalvat, he's barefoot again, splashing in the water around him.  Elsa remains in her finery, albeit dishevelled. She and Lohengrin inhabit different worlds. Essentially, he's a creature of Nature, and she the type he needs to frame him with a name. Lohengrin teeters on a narrow pier above the lake, torn dangerously between earth and water. Later, when Gottfried reappears, he stands on the pier. Elsa reaches out but falls.

Musically, this La Scala Lohengrin is satisying though not quite as great as it could be. Guth's staging may not please the glam and glitter crowd but it's a whole lot more perceptive.