Four Days in Maine

For the last few years, Daniel and I have been traveling to distant destinations—from Spain to Mexico to the western United States. This summer, we opted for something closer to home: Maine. Specifically, Southport, on the coast near Boothbay Harbor. I lived in Massachusetts for nine years but made it to Maine only a few times for day trips. Daniel has been fond of New England since our first trip to Provincetown in 2007. An additional advantage of this trip was being able to stay with my sister and her husband at a cottage owned by his family.  The cottage is a rustic but comfortable affair, blessedly lacking Wi-Fi but equipped with such decidedly off-grid amenities as a wind-up Victrola and a selection of 78 rpm records. The cottage sits directly on the shore, with a dock extending into the water.

View from the back porch

My sister with Daniel

Southport is a very small community with little in the way of shops or restaurants. An abundant selection of both can be found in adjoining Boothbay Harbor, which boasts an astonishing variety of amenities considering its off-season population of just over 2,000: numerous restaurants, art galleries, stores, and even an opera house. Of course, like any location where “summer” is a verb, the population balloons during the warmer months.

Two views of Boothbay Harbor

When one thinks of the culinary delights of coastal New England, one’s taste buds naturally gravitate toward lobster, oysters, and other sea-borne delights. I satisfied my craving for those at Boothbay Lobster Wharf. We also made several visits to Downeast Ice Cream Factory, which has at least two locations. The selection is generous, and I found the Coconut Almond Chocolate Chip and Caramel Apple particularly appealing. While the prices were high, as one would expect in a tourist town, the servings were equally generous—a single scoop was really closer to three scoops in volume.

About to enjoy lobster

Shellfish doesn't agree with Daniel, so the hat sufficed.

Shopping in downtown Boothbay Harbor is mostly devoted to tourist-oriented stores selling T-shirts and locally branded merchandise—the kind of items that remind one, or prove to others, that one was here. However, one store also had a selection of old LPs, and I bought three, including one featuring Dolly Parton, who had passed away the day before. There are also a number of art galleries, but our walls are fully occupied, so we didn’t even enter them. Leaving downtown and its expensive retail rents behind, we found several thrift and antique stores. One was next to the nearby Railway Village Museum, where I found some very nice dessert dishware.

As noted above, the year-round population of Boothbay Harbor is small, and many residents are retirees or otherwise affluent. Consequently, many of those working in restaurants and other businesses during the summer are not native Mainers. We encountered a good many Romanian university students filling seasonal jobs with the help of J-1 visas. I hope the Trump administration doesn’t get wind of this, because ending the program could cripple small summer towns in New England and elsewhere. Then again, Trump is fond of Eastern Europeans so long as they’re female and easy.

As our trip was brief, we left the Southport/Boothbay area only once, to visit Pemaquid Point Lighthouse Park. The lighthouse itself is the one featured on Maine’s 2003 State Quarter. It is owned by the U.S. Coast Guard and open to visitors. The rest of the park is owned by the Town of Bristol and includes a fishermen’s museum, art gallery, and gift shop. We visited all of these, and climbing to the top of the lighthouse tower was one of the highlights of our trip. Having worked up an appetite, we afterward made our way to Moody’s Diner in Waldoboro.

We made the journey to Maine and back by car, mostly on Interstates 90, 95, and 495 until we passed Portland. From there, it was good old Route 1 most of the way to the swing-bridge that leads into Southport.

By the time Daniel and I arrived home, we had already resolved to return to Maine one day. Given how dog-friendly the state—and particularly Boothbay Harbor—is, we'll most likely bring Brownie along next time.

 

FDR and his Admirals

 

Franklin Roosevelt was fond of using the quote above, not from false modesty but because his ego was secure enough that he could acknowledge his own blind spots. He actively sought out people who could illuminate them, despising "yes men" who would later write "kiss ass and tell" memoirs.

This stands in marked contrast to the Trump administration. Donald Trump's ego is similarly outsized but underneath lies deep insecurity. Could anyone imagine FDR, if such technology existed in the 1940s, having 3am social media meltdowns?

I won’t review Trump’s first term, from the corruption to his mishandling of the emerging COVID pandemic. His tampering with the military during his second term has led to disastrous results throughout the services. Under the “leadership” of Secretary of Defense/War “Whiskey” Pete Hegseth, Judge Advocates General have been dismissed. An active-duty service member tells me many enlisted find this alarming—JAGs interpret the law and advise on whether questionable orders may be illegal. Hegseth gutted upper ranks, whining they were "DEI," replacing competent officers with toadies or leaving posts vacant.

There is a direct line between that and the disaster unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz, particularly aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln: troops unfed, ships falling out of repair, care packages undelivered. More on that shortly. First, some history.

Roosevelt's Team

FDR assembled an unusually strong—and occasionally combustible—group of admirals during World War II. What made them remarkable wasn't uniformity of thought, but competence and shared purpose. That makes the quote above rather apt.

Ernest King became Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet after Pearl Harbor, then Chief of Naval Operations in March 1942. Brilliant, aggressive, and notoriously difficult—there was a wartime joke, attributed to his daughter, that he was "the most even-tempered person in the Navy: he is always in a rage."

Strategically, King ensured the Pacific didn't become a secondary theater. He accepted Roosevelt’s "Germany First" directive but constantly fought for resources to attack Japan simultaneously. Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands campaign owed much to his determination.

His relationship with Roosevelt was fascinating. FDR understood naval affairs unusually well for a president—he had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson—and consequently interacted with senior naval officers with considerable confidence. King was one of the relatively few people formidable enough to push back.

Then there was William D. Leahy, probably the admiral closest personally to Roosevelt.

Leahy had already been Chief of Naval Operations before the war and later became Roosevelt's Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief. Leahy's personality was almost the inverse of King's. He was restrained, politically sophisticated and trusted deeply by Roosevelt. As Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief, he functioned like today's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, sitting beside FDR at wartime conferences, mediating between the president and military chiefs. While King ran the Navy, Leahy helped Roosevelt manage the entire war effort.

The great operational commander in the Pacific was, of course, Chester W. Nimitz.

After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt selected Nimitz to command the Pacific Fleet on the recommendation of Navy Secretary Frank Knox. It was one of the most consequential personnel decisions of the war. Nimitz possessed what King lacked: exceptional skill at managing talented people with incompatible personalities.

Within six months, Nimitz presided over Midway. More importantly, he created an environment where commanders could recover from mistakes—crucial in a war where decisions were made with incomplete intelligence thousands of miles from Washington.

Two of Nimitz's most important subordinates illustrate this.

Admirals Halsey and Spruance.

The Commanders

William Halsey Jr. was the aggressive fighter. "Bull" Halsey became enormously popular with sailors and the public—the commander you wanted when audacity mattered. But his aggressiveness sometimes outran his judgment. His decisions during Leyte Gulf remain controversial, particularly chasing the Japanese carrier force north while leaving Leyte's approaches exposed.

His counterpart was Raymond A. Spruance.

Spruance was cerebral, quiet, and methodical. He commanded the carrier force at Midway despite not being an aviator, making extraordinarily disciplined decisions under pressure. Later he led the Fifth Fleet during major Central Pacific operations, including the Marianas.

One of the Navy's cleverest organizational arrangements was that Halsey's Third Fleet and Spruance's Fifth Fleet were essentially the same fleet.

When Halsey commanded, it was Third Fleet; when Spruance took over, it became Fifth Fleet. Their staffs rotated, allowing one team to plan while the other executed. The system exploited their different strengths: Halsey supplied aggression and morale; Spruance supplied analytical precision.

Richmond K. Turner, less famous than Nimitz or Halsey, was indispensable—one of America's foremost amphibious-warfare commanders, perfecting the extraordinarily complex business of moving tens of thousands of troops, landing craft, naval gunfire, and aircraft onto hostile islands on precise timetables.

Thomas C. Kinkaid's Seventh Fleet operated closely with Douglas MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific, requiring considerable diplomatic skill given the tensions between MacArthur's headquarters and the Navy.

The Synthesis

The remarkable thing about Roosevelt's senior naval leadership, then, is how complementary it became:

• Roosevelt chose people and arbitrated strategy.
• Leahy coordinated military leadership around the president.
• King drove naval strategy and demanded resources.
• Nimitz managed the Pacific war and its commanders.
• Spruance provided calculated operational judgment.
• Halsey supplied aggressive offensive leadership.
• Turner mastered amphibious warfare.
• Kinkaid made naval power work inside MacArthur's command structure.

They weren't a harmonious family. King could be spectacularly abrasive; MacArthur and the Navy had serious strategic disagreements; senior commanders occasionally thought counterparts were making dreadful decisions.

But Roosevelt didn't need harmony. He needed competence.

Which brings us back to that FDR quote. He wasn't claiming to be the smartest man in the room. One of his genuine talents was arranging matters so that extremely smart—and very different—people were in the room with him.

Logistics Then and Now

Then there is the question of Naval logistics – the most important of which is feeding sailors. Wars are not fought on empty stomachs. That was true in 1942 and it’s true in 2026.  

Logistical failure is what is impacting ships in the Strait of Hormuz today.

What passes for a meal on the USS Abraham Lincoln

The situation on the USS Abraham Lincoln is the most visible example—a massive aircraft carrier with 5,000 crew. But this is theater-wide, not a carrier problem.

Iranian attacks damaged U.S. Gulf logistics nodes, most importantly Navy facilities in Bahrain. Bahrain had been the regional hub for food, spare parts, personnel, mail, and supplies. The Navy has shifted much support to Diego Garcia—roughly 2,200 miles from the Gulf of Oman.

This creates cascading problems. A warship doesn't simply "get supplies from America." Fuel, ammunition, food, parts, and consumables move through ports, warehouses, airfields, and replenishment ships. If nearby hubs are damaged, supply ships must travel farther to load and return. That means fewer replenishment cycles, longer delays, more fuel consumed moving supplies, and greater strain on finite logistics ships. Damage to other Gulf facilities compounds this.

Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz remains dangerous; commercial traffic has fallen sharply—hence high gas prices at home. Moving matériel through what should be one of the world's busiest maritime corridors grows harder.

So the problem can be summarized:

The U.S. still has enormously capable warships in the region, but Iran has attacked the infrastructure sustaining them. The farther the Navy must reach for supplies, the fewer it can deliver. The Lincoln's shortages are one symptom of a larger problem affecting destroyers, support ships, and other forces throughout the theater.

Of course, none of this would be an issue had not Trump decided to attack Iran, which has neither resolved the nuclear issue nor brought about more reasonable leadership in that country.  

WWII Logistics: The Ice Cream Barge

Combat power isn't merely ships and aircraft—it's the ability to keep feeding, fueling, arming, repairing, and crewing them indefinitely. Iran has attacked precisely that connective tissue.

Roosevelt's Navy understood logistics included morale. In the Pacific, sailors spent weeks in oppressive heat, thousands of miles from home, doing exhausting, dangerous work. Something as mundane as cold ice cream carried disproportionate psychological value.

The Navy installed ice-cream-making equipment aboard larger ships. In 1945 it commissioned a refrigerated concrete barge—popularly the "ice cream barge"—capable of producing substantial quantities for distribution to smaller ships and shore installations.

A correction to the mythology: accounts sometimes suggest an armada of dedicated ice-cream ships. The famous vessel was essentially a refrigerated storage/production barge, part of a much larger mobile logistics system. But yes, the United States devoted shipping capacity, machinery, refrigeration, and scarce ingredients to getting ice cream to Pacific sailors. This tidbit of information is one of many reasons why I’m infuriated by armchair warriors on social media complaining that today’s military is going "soft."

The Americans gradually created what amounted to a movable industrial civilization at sea. Fleet oilers brought fuel. Ammunition ships brought shells and bombs. Repair ships and floating dry docks performed substantial repairs without sending vessels back to Pearl Harbor or the mainland. Hospital ships provided medical care. Refrigerated ships brought fresh food. Tenders supported submarines and destroyers. Replacement aircraft, engines, crews, and spare parts flowed westward continuously.

By 1944–45, the Fast Carrier Task Force could remain at sea extraordinarily long periods because logistics vessels came to it, rather than forcing the combat fleet to return to port.

This was an enormous asymmetry between the United States and Japan. Japan built superb ships and aircraft, produced extraordinarily capable sailors and aviators. What it increasingly could not do was maintain the logistical machine required for sustained operations thousands of miles from home.

The United States could.

And it could do it on an almost absurd scale: Here are your bombs. Here are your 16-inch shells. Here's several million gallons of fuel. Here are replacement aircraft and engines. Here's mail from home.

Oh—and we brought ice cream.

That's not frivolous logistics. That's mastery of logistics.

The Right Person

But on a higher level, it goes back to FDR’s ability to put the right person in the right job.  It wasn’t limited to his beloved Navy. 

Consider the first White House conference that a little-known Colonel named George Marshall attended in November, 1938. 

Roosevelt was advocating an enormous aircraft-production program. The other senior officials were generally agreeable. Roosevelt eventually turned to the relatively junior Marshall and asked, “Don’t you think so, George?”

Marshall replied: “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I don’t agree with you at all” and provided a cogent explanation as to why FDR’s idea was not practical.

The room went cold. Marshall later recalled that other participants essentially said goodbye afterward, assuming he had wrecked his Washington career. He hadn't.

A few months later, Roosevelt selected Marshall as Army Chief of Staff, passing over dozens of more senior officers. When Roosevelt told him, Marshall warned: "I have the habit of saying exactly what I think, and that can be unpleasing. Is that all right?"

Roosevelt said yes. Marshall pressed him—essentially saying, You say that now, but I really am going to tell you things you don't want to hear. Roosevelt replied, “I know.”

That's a revealing bit of both sides of leadership. Marshall understood his responsibility wasn't telling the commander in chief what he wanted to hear. Roosevelt understood that an adviser who occasionally irritated him was considerably more valuable than one who reliably agreed.

As for Roosevelt's aircraft production idea: FDR was correct, but premature. After Pearl Harbor, he revived it in his 1942 State of the Union address, calling for quotas so high most thought them unreachable. (After a rough start, the goals were exceeded.) Air power, which Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt had dismissed during World War I, was now crucial to victory—Roosevelt understood that aviation advances had radically changed the situation.

Not that FDR always picked right. His 1938 appointment of Joseph P. Kennedy as Ambassador to the United Kingdom stands as one of history's worst presidential appointments—until Donald Trump took office and appointed the likes of "Whiskey" Pete. 

Virtual Civic Duty in the Age of Social Media

Social media is a conundrum of the early-21^st century, just as AI is becoming the conundrum for the mid-21^st century.

Some use social media to reveal themselves; others use it to conceal themselves.

When it comes to social media, I miss good old Myspace.  It seemed so benevolent and harmless.  Facebook effectively reduced Myspace to virtual irrelevance and devolved from a way to share vacation photos and recipes to arguing about everything from politics to conspiracies to the plotlines of various Star Trek incarnations.  The second leg of the Meta tripod, Instagram, is more photo oriented and increasingly littered with thirst-traps.  That platform has been subject to substantial and well-documented issues with child exploitation.  Then there is Meta’s newest leg, Threads.  Threads was supposed to be Instagram, but with text – but its engagement algorithms often seem to reward outrage.  Unless one manages one’s feed very carefully, Meta is a cesspool of clickbait, misinformation, and general toxicity.

Moderation on Meta is almost nil, and the little that exists is often faulty.  I once posted a Facebook livesteam of myself playing piano works by Eric Satie and was dinged for copyright against another person’s recording – even though the performances were radically different and my upright piano was noticeably out of tune.

In 2011, a different kind of social app emerged in the United States, Nextdoor.  Unlike Facebook, Nextdoor is geographically based.  Accounts are grouped into neighborhoods, which gives account holders a focused way to follow localized alerts (like missing pets), ask for references on things like home repair, or raise concerns about various issues.  In some cases, Nextdoor has been quite helpful.  I found my landscaper via Nextdoor.  We adopted our dog Brownie from a Nextdoor member who needed to rehome him. 

The moderation works differently as well.  Active, guideline abiding members are invited to become part of the review team, who can vote to Keep, Maybe remove, or Remove posts/comments that have been reported as violating Nextdoor guidelines.  In due time I was invited to join the review team.  I’ve never met or even exchanged messages with any of my fellow review team members (although I’ve received a few angry messages from people who didn’t like how I voted).

There are several reasons a post or comment may be reported.  The reporting may be done automatically, triggered by certain words or phrases – indeed, there are words and phrases so egregious offensive the post/comment will be automatically rejected.  But most reporting is done by individual account holders.  My impression is that a relatively small group of members submit the majority of reports.  Among those are members who selectively cherry pick political comments that disagree with their own – citing them as “national politics or religion,” which are not supposed to be discussed outside of dedicated groups.  There is even a member with multiple “sockpuppets” who zealously reports everything he sees as the slightest infraction.  Here is the conundrum: What if the post is from a news source, such as Cleveland.com or a local news channel, and concerns a national or international issue?  These posts are sponsored and taking them down is next to impossible.  Why would we censor comments about a national/international story when the story itself invites comments about that story?  This is an example where the guidelines are open to interpretation.

Interpretation also comes into play when it comes to posts or comments reported as Spam or possible fraud.  There is a particular member, a slight acquaintance of mine, who over-posts – whining about every aspect of modern life she seems ill-equipped to deal with.  This may be annoying, but it does not meet Next Door’s definition of Spam, so I generally vote to keep her posts and comments.

Selfies are not spam.  Thirst traps are against guidelines and I vote to remove them.  Someone who is verifiably local and offering a legitimate service does not constitute spam.  But an account which repeatedly drops the same information with a non-local phone number for a panoply of services, from plumbing to electric, is likely a referral service from out of state - and that’s spam.

Then there are those account holders who live to air their prejudices.  These rear their heads most often when a controversial issue makes the news.  Their posts are often promptly removed via automation – meaning the review team doesn’t even vote on them.  As often as not, the account holder reposts the same content complaining about the “liberal crybabies” who removed the offending post.

This all begs the question: “Hank, why do you perform a job for which you aren’t paid and almost never thanked?”  The only answers I can find for that point to two ingrained aspects of my character: my Advocate personality and my deep ties to the local community – I’ve lived in this area for 47 of my 59 years.  Either that or I’m a glutton for punishment.

Haydn, Rota, and Saint-Saëns with Yamada and Wendel at Severance

The weather and air quality cooperated as The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2026 Summers at Severance concert series continued last night.  The smoke from the Canadian wildfires – which two weeks ago caused pre-concert festivities to be moved indoors – had cleared – and with the temperatures agreeable, patrons gathered on Severance Hall’s front portico for drinks and snacks.

Last night’s program featured music from the 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th centuries led by guest conductor Kazuki Yamada, assisted by Principal Trombonist Brian Wendel – appointed to that post in 2022.  I don’t usually comment on a performer’s attire, but instead of the customary black, Yamada wore navy-blue tails and trousers. 

The concert opened with Franz Josef Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 in D major, often called “The London Symphony” and the composer’s last work in the genre.  Yamada took the introduction at a slightly more spacious tempo than is customary before launching into a boldly articulated opening movement.  The following Andante was a portrait of restrained, elegant poetry.  The Menuet’s trio was especially memorable, with rests ever so slightly prolonged in a manner that would surely have delighted Haydn himself.  The finale beautifully balanced the rustic character of its principal theme, based on a Croatian ballad, with elegance and refinement.  One can only imagine what Haydn, who was impressed with the quality of London’s orchestras, would have thought of The Cleveland Orchestra’s flawless yet warm performance.   

Following a very quick stage adjustment, Yamada returned with Wendel for Nino Rota’s Trombone Concerto in C, composed in 1966 – less than a decade before Rota’s best known tune – the theme from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather – became an international earworm.  This is Wendel’s first concerto appearance here, but he showed no sign of nervousness whatsoever.  Rota’s concerto opens with an angular first movement, which sounds distinctly mid-20^th century while remaining firmly tonal and immediately accessible.  The soloist played with impeccable intonation with nary a blemish to be heard.  The second movement which begins in a somber, almost desolate manner before becoming increasingly agitated, featured sensitive phrasing and a liquid tone that belied the trombone’s identity as a brass instrument.  The witty rondo, with its rapid-fire changes of intonation, from repeated notes to staccato to long legato lines – all while the orchestra motors along – brought down the house.  Wendel was brought out for three curtain calls.     

 

Wendel following the concerto.

Following intermission Yamada returned to conduct a repertoire spectacular, Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, the so-called "Organ Symphony.”  Yet in this case, the work was treated more as a symphonic structure than an excuse for excess volume.  Yamada, whose conducting technique is outwardly economical, revealed the work’s contrapuntal detail – particularly in the mini-fugue episode of the work’s final movement.  Instrumental lines often submerged in recordings emerged with striking clarity, while the organ, brass, and percussion remained integrated into the orchestral fabric instead of overwhelming it.  Yet, the work was no less spectacular.

The only blemish of the night came not from the orchestra, but from the row behind me.  Someone’s mobile phone rang during the second movement of the Saint-Saëns, providing an unwelcome obbligato.  Worse, it was one of those loud rings made to sound like an old-school landline.  Worst of all, the patron seemed to be uncertain of how to turn the phone off.  I suddenly remembered that I didn’t hear the usual recorded announcement asking patrons to silence their electronic devices before the concert.  The announcement should be reinstated at the concert’s opening and repeated at the end of intermission.

Smetana, Rachmaninoff, and Dvořák with Bychkov and Ohlsson

The Summers at Severance 2026 season commenced with the welcome return of guest conductor Semyon Bychkov and pianist Garrick Ohlsson in a program of Smetana, Rachmaninoff, and Dvořák.  Owing to smoke from the Canadian wildfires, the customary pre-concert drinks and snacks with light music were moved indoors to the safety and comfort of one of America’s first air-conditioned halls.  As is common for summer concerts, the program was focused on easily digestible standard repertoire. 

Bychkov opened the program with The Moldau from Smetana’s Má vlast.  The performance highlighted the orchestra’s beautiful, burnished tone – far suaver than that caught on most recordings.  But some parts seemed overly smooth as the conductor deemphasized dynamic contrasts like the subito pianos during the wedding dance sequence.  Still, this was a performance of rare technical polish.

Following a quick stage change, Ohlsson, no stranger to Cleveland, joined conductor and orchestra for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1.  It would be tempting to call Rachmaninoff’s work one of the most arresting first opuses in history, but in truth it bears little resemblance to what the composer played when the work’s opening movement was premiered in 1892.  Instead, it was heavily patterned after Grieg’s Piano Concerto.  Rachmaninoff’s 1917 changes to the work – too drastic to be considered a revision, more of a rewrite, resulted in a more concise, dramatic piece.  Ohlsson, who I’ve twice heard conquer Busoni’s massive, 70+ minute long Piano Concerto, definitely has the chops to play this piece.  But what really impressed with his performance were the musicality and sense of structure – something too often lost by soloists who pursue gushing melodies or pianistic pyrotechnics.  Bychkov and the orchestra furnished an accompaniment which was rich without descending in Hollywood-esque schmaltz.  The audience began applauding before the last chord finished echoing off the hall’s back wall.

During the first curtain call, someone in the first row gave Ohlsson a large bouquet of flowers and he continued to carry them with him, including when he returned to the piano to play an encore.  The pianist humorously introduced it by saying “There’s no need to announce this piece because everyone will know it,” before beginning a poetic rendition of Debussy’s Clair de lune, featuring plasticity of phrasing and lovely pianissimos.

 

Ohlsson before the bouquet was handed to him.

Following intermission Bychkov returned to lead the evening’s concluding work, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88.  This is probably the composer’s most joyous symphony.  Though I was able to perceive the work’s overall character, a nagging headache prevented me from concentrating enough on the performance itself to impart its details.  

Beethoven’s Fidelio at Severance

Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra are wrapping up the 2025-2026 Season this month, and this weekend featured the orchestra’s annual opera production: Beethoven’s only work in the genre, Fidelio.

Let’s put the obvious up front, as an opera, Fidelio has strengths and glaring weaknesses.  It went through two failed productions in 1805 and 1806 before it was heavily revised and successfully mounted in 1814.  Beethoven was never a great writer for the voice, and this opera puts that limitation front and center. The libretto, which was based on two previous operas, centers around a woman who disguises herself as a man to get a job as a prison guard and free her husband from captivity.  Beethoven’s pacing is uneven and things don’t really get moving until the second act.  Yet what matters most is not the details of the plot, but the thematic context: the durability of love and freedom from oppression.

This was my first time seeing Fidelio.  Though it was presented without staging, several things came through that aren’t that apparent on recordings: the humor when Marzelline snarkily resists Jaquino’s advances in the first act; or the absurdity when Rocco notes of Leonore/Fidelio “this woman was about to become my son-in-law!”

As usual, the orchestra played spotlessly and with superb balance, so the singers were never overpowered.  Welser-Möst’s pacing was masterful.  Tony F. Sias presented the narrative sections in English which helped clarify the plot.  The singers were consistently on a high level; but special mention must be made of David Butt Philip’s performance as Florestan, whose opening “GOTT!” was simply astonishing.

In today’s era, particularly in the United States, when LGBTQ people find their rights being threatened, and when trans and non-binary people are subject to increasing hostility, the Cleveland Orchestra’s production of Fidelio can be legitimately seen as having more than musical context.  The past few years have demonstrated that this valued and venerable Cleveland institution is unafraid to make statements that go beyond pure music. 

Prokofiev, Neuwirth, and Wagner with Welser-Möst and Widmann

With the Cleveland Orchestra’s 2025-2026 season approaching its close, music director Franz Welser-Möst returned to the podium to lead a program that seemed tailor made for the ensemble: a popular early-20^th Century Symphony, the US premiere of a new work, capped off by roof-shaking opera excepts from the 19^th Century.

The concert opened in with a perfectly proportioned rendition of Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 in C major, the so-called “Classical” symphony.  Welser-Möst adopted a slightly more relaxed tempo than usual for the opening movement, almost an Allegro moderato instead of Allegro. This contrasted nicely with a somewhat brisker than usual second movement, before moving onto a Gavotte which featured some beautifully timed rubati when the winds entered with the main theme.  The Finale, which featured the repeat, was especially buoyant.

Clarinet soloist Jörg Widmann (a composer himself) joined Welser-Möst and the orchestra for Zones of Blue, a new work by Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth.  This is one of those works which takes the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to orchestration.  I won’t waste your time or my mental energy going over the details of a work which was a curious mix of half-hearted riffs from Gershwin (including the opening salvo of Rhapsody in Blue) and Miles Davis, mixed with orchestral noise. I have never particularly cared for the sound of the clarinet, and this work only served to aggravate my tinnitus.

The second half of the concert was devoted to a well-selected grouping of from Götterdämmerung, the final opera in Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung tetralogy.  Welser-Möst’s approach to Wagner somewhat reminds me of Karl Böhm’s.  He keeps the tempos moving yet flexible, without allowing the orchestra to sound overly bombastic – as doing so in an actual operatic performance would overwhelm the singers.  This made for an effective, cohesive presentation of what are usually derisively referred to as “bleeding chunks” from Wagner’s epic.

A relic from an earlier era at Severance

The previous day, Daniel and I attended a performance The Outsiders musical at Connor Palace theatre in Playhouse Square.  The performers should be lauded, but the musical numbers themselves were weak.  The whole did not pack the emotional punch of the 1983 film.