Word comes from Kent Nagano that on top of the George Lucas "Star Wars"
production of the Wagner "Ring," another Los Angeles plan is to have Woody
Allen write the libretto for a new John Adams opera.  It's just an idea,
he said, but Nagano is rarely given to mentioning ideas just for the heck
of it.  Consider the Adams-Allen opera right on top of the flag pole, and
let's see who salutes it.  (My preference for a librettist is Garrison
Keillor for a Lutheran version of "I Looked at the Ceiling and Saw El Nino
of Liquid Days," but then nobody asked *me*.)

After that bit of intriguing news, Nagano answered a question about future
trends in music.

   "The more our workaday lives gnaw away at us, the more we have to
   protect our soul.  Commercialization and routine consume us, destroy
   social contacts.  Music must be seen for what it is:  necessary
   sustenance.  People find inner peace in music.  The present generation
   may be a lost generation.  We have to turn our attention to the next.

   "This is something for which we are responsible.  I am certain that
   after noise, restlessness and hectic confusion, the pendulum is once
   more swinging in the right direction.  A great yearning for peace
   and concentration will make itself felt in society."

Is that with or after Peter Sellars, one wonders.

[If there is something vaguely Teutonic-Californian about Nagano's
statement, small wonder - it's a translation from an interview in
German with the new music director of Berlin's German Symphony Orchestra,
principal conductor of the Los Angeles Opera, *and* music director of the
Berkeley Symphony.]

Janos Gereben/SF, CA
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