Vladimir Nabokov
John Harbison
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Last month, the New York Times didn't see the letter below as being fit to print. Donaldfagen.com and Lewis Fairlawn see it as being in prime condition, in fact, damn near buff when it comes to print-readiness. It's now in a slightly different, but no less robust, form.
Re: an article in the New York Times of March 24, 2005:
Wrestling With a 'Lolita' Opera and Losing
by DANIEL J. WAKIN
To the Editor:
Composer John Harbison had a perfectly good idea: to base an opera on Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's comic novel about a middle-aged academic's pathetic, selfish love for a 12 year-old girl. By now the book is acknowledged as a classic by just about anyone who loves great writing. It was made into a successful film way back in the early sixties by Stanley Kubrick and, in its own way, that's a classic too.
And yet, Harbison abandoned his project, apparently because of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. It seems Mr. Harbison lives in Cambridge, Mass. and he was "widely counseled to drop the project"... "I suppose the subject matter never has been more socially unacceptable than it is now in the United States," Mr. Harbison said. "Obviously I began to think more about that"..."It's just difficult to detach it, particularly living in Boston, from one of the central news events of recent times."
W-W-What? Has the New Theocracy progressed this far? Do artists tremble before municipal boards and committees of church elders as they do in Iran and Saudi Arabia? Are works now banned in Boston before they're even completed? Or is "Boston" really a secret code-word for the out-of-control old-time cartoon locomotive that is the superego of John Harbison?
Last Monday night, I happened to see the performance at Carnegie Hall of Darkbloom (after Vivian Darkbloom, a character in the novel and an anagram of "Vladimir Nabokov"), a piece excerpted from the abandoned opera. It was lovely. But nowhere in the program notes could the words "Lolita" or "Nabokov" be found. Instead, the composer refers to a "famous and infamous" novel. Shame on Maestro Harbison! Has he never read Nabokov's advice to the artist, to be "bold and fearless"? Harbison has great skill as a composer. All he needs now is a set of cajones.
Donald Fagen
NYC
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