home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq

Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers! Hillary Clinton's Fatal Vices Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair dissect HRC in her White House years and conclude their series on the woman who may be the next president. PLUS Eva Liddell on the man who really set the course of the Bush presidency PLUS Andy Worthington on the battle for the rights of the Guantanamo detainees PLUS Debbie Nathan on what the border crackdown has done to the women crossing the Rio Grande. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! Today's Stories September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti K.G. Godel Response to Letter to Michael Vick's Dog Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z   August 31, 2007 Jeff Gibbs Why I Am Not Going to the Protest Paul Craig Roberts The War Criminal in the Living Room Ray McGovern Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran? Robert Weissman The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing Matt Vidal Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages Robin Mittenthal The Biofuels Trap Chris Kutalik Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis Richard Forno Watching Freedom's Watch Binoy Kampmark Dianified Dave Zirin Kenneth Foster Lives Website of the Day Free the Jena 6   August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat John Ross Dead Forest Defenders Anthony DiMaggio Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy Jordan Flaherty Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans Michael Donnelly The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir) Russell Mokhiber Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond Global Financial Apartheid William S. Lind The Truth Tellers Martha Rosenberg They Call Him Dr. Cruel Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project Website of the Day Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song" August 29, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala Winslow T. Wheeler The Costs of the Afghanistan War David Rosen The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet Dave Zirin Confronting Katrina Paul Craig Roberts More Shame, More Sorrow Diane Farsetta Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel Ben Davis Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One Alan Farago The Housing Crisis and the Environment Jenna Orkin Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero Don Monkerud The Vanishing American Vacation Richard Nasser Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR Website of the Day Don't Sleep on the Struggle   August 28, 2007 Uri Avnery The Language of Force Bill Quigley Katrina, Two Years Later Joshua Frank The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains China Hand "I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy Firmin DeBrabander Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore Charles Peña Nuclear Fear Factor Andy Worthington Good Riddance, Gonzales Ramzy Baroud Abbas and the Abyss Anthony Papa Roger Stone's New Patsy Ashley Smith Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport Website of the Day B is for Bomb August 27, 2007 Jorge Mariscal The General Reports Bill Christison Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars Manuel Garcia, Jr. 911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole Anthony DiMaggio Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press Bruce A. Roth India and the New Nuclear Era John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2 Dave Lindorff Gonzo's Gone Ron Jacobs Taking It to the Streets Binoy Kampmark Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty Russell D. Hoffman My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry Website of the Day George W. Told the Nation             Subscribe Online

September 11, 2007 The People's Tenor The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti By GARY LEUPP I have in my CD collection a recording of a performance of Puccini’s La Bohème staged in the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia on April 29, 1961. The mono album which I acquired secondhand preserves for history a mixed, generally unremarkable presentation of the opera. But it also preserves the voice of Luciano Pavarotti at the age of 25, making his debut as Rodolfo. Once an aspiring professional soccer player, he had worked as an insurance salesman and elementary school teacher, then won a local vocal competition, aided by a voice instructor who, given Pavarotti’s relative poverty, had waived instructor’s fees His father was a baker, and mother a cigar-factory worker. On the stage of the Teatro Municipale in this city of textile workers, a center of Communist Party organizing where opera was not elite culture but part of working-class cultural experience, Pavarotti played the role of the impoverished poet smitten with love for the even more impoverished (and doomed) seamstress Mimi. Towards the end of the aria Che gelida manina (“little frozen hand”), Rodolfo holding Mimi’s hand declares that her beautiful eyes have stolen everything he’s ever possessed. But: Ma il furto non m’accora, Poiché, poiché vi ha preso stanza la speranza! (The theft doesn’t anger me, For their place has been Taken by hope!) When Pavaratti hits and holds the F-sharp on speranza (I think it’s an F-sharp, but I’m musically as illiterate as most Pavarotti fans) there’s this very distinct background stir on the recording. It’s not applause as such---it wouldn’t have been the proper moment for that, since the aria wasn’t over and opera fans adhere to a specific sort of restrained etiquette. It’s more of a collective “Wow!”---an undercurrent of murmuring, as though hundreds of people were spontaneously turning to one another in astonishment and saying, “What did he just do? I can’t believe he did that!” Twenty seconds later, at the end of the aria, the audience explodes in adulation. That’s the beginning of the Pavarotti phenomenon. I hadn’t played this CD, which I’ve had for years, for quite a while. But that initial subtly audible audience reaction had impressed me. In the last few days, I’ve replayed the recording repeatedly, enjoying that nervous whispering moment, wondering what the young soccer aficionado might have thought as he drew those gasps of astonishment that day on that stage. Pavarotti of course went on to become the best-known tenor of the late twentieth century. The high-Cs rolled off his tongue as his sparkling eyes and smile seemed to say, with childlike simplicity: “This is so easy, I’m having such a good time, and I’m so glad you like what I’m doing!” He reputedly suffered from nervousness, and this may have occasioned some of his numerous, infamous last-minute cancellations. But once on stage the joy and confidence took over. He reached his height in the 1970s, thereafter meeting with criticism about his acting ability, interpretations of roles, limited ability to read music, and diminishing vocal range. Placido Domingo (who has just declared, “They threw away the mold when they made Luciano--he will always be remembered as a truly unique performer in the annals of classical music”) was pronounced more “intellectual” and technically competent. Maybe the criticisms were valid, and Pavarotti for his part showed remarkable humility. Booed at La Scala in Milan for failing to hit the high notes, he said he agreed with the critics---because they cared about the art. That’s what it was all about for him: promoting opera. And that’s what I want to celebrate. Pavarotti more than anyone brought this form of “high art” to the people, including tens of millions of Americans who might otherwise have known it only as the object of parody (in the 1960s the aria Vesti la Giubba, from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, was used in a Rice Krispies commercial) or dismissed it as the pompous product of bygone eras dripping with exaggerated emotionalism and composed in inaccessible languages. Fat ladies wearing horned helmets, shrieking notes so high they shatter glass. Not an art form that could move ordinary folks. Pavarotti helped change such perceptions. In 1990 the BBC chose Pavarotti’s performance of Nessun Dorma (from Puccini’s Turandot, and Pavarotti’s signature aria) as the theme song of its World Cup coverage. Since then it has become the unofficial anthem of Italian soccer players. In the same year the Hollywood film Pretty Woman, starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, features a scene in which the former streetwalker Vivian (Roberts) attends an opera for the first time and is awed by the experience. The opera---Verdi’s La Traviata, about a prostitute who falls in love with a rich man---actually inspired the film itself. Would it have ever been produced, I wonder, if not for Pavarotti? He cultivated friendships with “popular music” performers while making his own art popular. He performed or recorded with James Brown, U2, Queen, Barry White, Lou Reed . . . .while of course organizing the monumentally successful, nakedly commercial “Three Tenors” concerts with Domingo and José Carreras. When accused of commercialism, he retorted, “We’ve reached 1.5 billion people with opera. If you want to use the word commercial, or something more derogatory, we don’t care. Use whatever you want.” One can see this as a capitulation to capitalist crassness, and this view is apparently widely held in Italy where opera was popular among the masses long before Pavarotti came along. Or it can be seen, at the global level, as a missionary effort on behalf of classical music itself. I think historians of music will be kind to the maestro and emphasize the latter. Who among those who saw it can forget that moment in 1998, when Pavarotti at the last minute withdrew from a commitment to perform Nessun Dorma  at the Grammy Awards ceremony, and Aretha Franklin stepped in to take his place? Viewers (25 million in the U.S. alone) were electrified, and the audience in the hall rose in a standing ovation as opera met soul. Pavarotti wasn’t there but his achievement hovered over the event. I don’t know where Pavarotti stood politically. He raised money to aid Bosnian war refugees and associated himself with non-controversial humanitarian causes. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on the day of his funeral that Pavarotti “made music an instrument for life and against war” and like most Italians and other human beings he opposed the U.S. attack on Iraq. From what I’ve read, he was a warm, affable, sensitive, generous man, a fan of soccer and rock ‘n roll, unapologetically vulnerable to the temptations of the flesh (food in particular), about as unassuming as someone in his demigod position might be. “I will win! I will win!” concludes Nessun Dorma, which Pavarotti last sang at last year’s opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Turin. Pavarotti’s life was a victory for opera, as a vibrant, relevant tradition, over stuffy cultural elitism. If he was not the greatest tenor of his time, he was the soccer players’ tenor, the rock ‘n roll fans’ tenor, the people’s tenor. Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu Your Ad Here

New From CounterPunch Books The Secret Language of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy Click Here to Buy! Cassidy on Tour Click Here for Dates & Venues "The Case Against Israel" Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Click Here to Buy! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal Click Here to Order!   Grand Theft Pentagon How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism         The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont   CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed     Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh   The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"