Goys and dolls
Sir: So my old friend Claus (no Santa he) von }Mow, whose company I have so often enjoyed on both sides of the North Sea, Channel and Atlantic since long before his fairy-tale marriage to a now unwakeable American Beauty, went along to the Colise- um to hear the admirable Humperdinck's marvellously orchestrated KOnigskinder per- fectly conducted by Mark Elder and beauti- fully played by ENO's excellent orchestra (Letters, 22 February). This pleasure was best experienced with eyes tightly shut against the impardonable vulgarity and total tastelessness of David Pountney's ghastly production. But never mind about the late Bruno Bettelheim, is it not time your correspondent got back to some living shrink's couch? As the father of a half-Dan- ish son of my own, nobody understands bet- ter than I do Claus's adoption of the great Holsteiner name of his maternal grandfa- ther (a former Danish Chief Justice) in place of that of his disgraced father, wartime collaborator of 'heartless' Hitleri- an 'persecutors'. Yet if Leder constitutes a uniform of shame, as in the black SS it surely did, why did Claus, not so long ago, choose to be exhibitionistically pho- tographed clad from head to foot in it?
As for his animadversions on the Vienna Christmas version of Humperdinck's adorable masterpiece Hansel and Gretel it was surely rather bad taste to write of 'little Austrian blondies. . . from Waldheim land' without reminding your readers that it was at just such hands that Claus had to endure his protracted and repeated ordeals in a televised Rhode Island courtroom. My own illustrated edition of Grimm shows the
Witch's nose to be something between the Iron Duke's and that of a Longhi Venetian carnival mask, the general effect being that of some member of the Saudi royal family. Perhaps the Vienna Volksoper producer really did 'know his Christmas audience' because the Grimm brothers called the can- nibal crone a 'Gottlose Hexe', that is a god- less witch, and therefore by definition nei- ther Jew, Christian nor Muslim. And the tale ends with the liberated Hansel and the liberating Gretel finding pearls and pre- cious stones galore in the Witch's house to take back to their overjoyed father, by now himself liberated, by another death, of his ill-chosen second wife, the wicked step- mother who was another godless but undoubtedly Goy witch. Still, it's nice to think of Claus being able, on drying his Coliseum tears, to cover at least some of the planet's millions of sick and starving children with a charitable blanket of green- backs or at least a magnificent cheque made out to the Princess Royal and the fund for which she does such splendid work.
Alastair Forbes
Chateau-d'Oex, Switzerland
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