October '25 Digital Week II

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

F1—the Movie 

(Warner Bros)

Brad Pitt’s laconic charm is on display throughout this overlong commercial for Formula 1 racing: for two and a half hours, director Joseph Kosinski takes us on a relentlessly formulaic journey through several races, each of which writer Ehren Kruger tries his damnedest to make singular rather than repetitive. Kosinski and Kruger fail, for the most part, while the off-track scenes of Pitt as retired daredevil driver Sonny (who comes out of retirement), Damson Idris as young hotshot driver Joshua, Javier Bardem as team owner Ruben (who talks Sonny into returning) and Kerry Condon as Kate, the brains of the outfit (who—of course—falls for Sonny against her better judgment) are pretty ordinary. It’s shot and paced efficiently and slickly, and if you’re a fan of cars flying around a track at 200 miles an hour, then your—um—mileage may vary. The film has a sharply detailed 4K transfer; extras comprise several making-of featurettes.

Message in a Bottle 

(Mercury Studios)

Set to 27 Police and solo songs by Sting, this story of the global refugee crisis is told through the mesmerizing movement of Kate Prince’s dance company, ZooNation—and, as jukebox shows go, it’s closer to Twyla Tharp’s take on Billy Joel’s catalog, Movin’ Out, than to the Abba megahit, Mamma Mia. Prince and dramaturg Lolita Chakrabarti have fashioned a narrative of sorts from which to hang Sting’s words and music, which have mostly been extensively rearranged and rerecorded. Whatever one thinks of how Prince and music supervisor and arranger Alex Lacamoire manipulate Sting’s tunes to fit the contrived narrative—sometimes a disservice to the songs, other times a disservice to the story—the dancing of Prince’s company, which specializes in effortlessly combining contemporary and hip-hop styles, is breathtaking. The UHD video and surround-sound audio are tremendous; also included is a Blu-ray of the performance. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street—7-Film Collection 

(Warner Bros)

Wes Craven’s 1983 horror entry has gained stature over the past four decades despite being simply a crudely effective horror film about a teenage girl’s nightmares getting intruded on by the now-legendary Freddy Krueger, who enters the real world and starts a killing spree. No one expected six sequels and spinoffs over the next 11 years, but that is what we got—most are even more forgettable, but each has its moments of dream-like lunacy, whether it’s the cleverly bizarre murders or the sixth installment’s desperate use of 3-D for the finale (yes, 3-D glasses are included in this set). All seven films have an impressive hi-def look; the many extras include commentaries, interviews, featurettes, music videos and alternate endings.

In-Theater Release of the Week

Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 

(Icarus Films/Film Forum)

From the director of 2011’s The Black Power Mixtape, Sweden’s Göran Hugo Olsson, comes another imposingly thorough archival collage that, if nothing else, becomes a valuable historical document of the Israel-Palestine conflict through the unique lens of Swedish journalists in the region. Olsson has assembled footage, shown in this 3-1/2 hour film in mostly chronological order, from Sweden’s state television network SVT’s wide-ranging coverage of the always charged relationship between Israelis and Palestinians that display both the misunderstandings and missteps that have trailed that region and its people for so long. Whether Olsson agrees with what is being presented and how is not the focus; there is no editorializing (which some might perceive as a copout). Instead, it’s an absorbing chronicle of what viewers in Sweden saw on their TV sets over a period of three decades from a network whose stated mission was impartiality in news coverage. It’s a long way from “We report. You decide.”

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

The Bad Guys 2 

(Universal)

This intermittently amusing sequel to the hit 2022 animated adventure again follows a squad of reformed crooks (Wolf, Shark, Piranha, Tarantula and Snake) who have further misadventures. Director Pierre Perifel hits on some colorful visual inventiveness that mirrors the first film while Yoni Brenner and Etan Cohen’s script has ricocheting one-liners that at times hit their intended targets. What propels it all is the exuberant voice cast: Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Anthony Ramos, Craig Robinson and Awkwafina as the bad guys and Zazie Beetz, Danielle Brooks, Natasha Lyonne and Maria Bakalova as the bad girls. There’s a bright Blu-ray image; extras include a new short, Little Lies and Alibis; deleted scenes; making-of featurettes and interviews.

Peter Gabriel—Taking the Pulse 

(Mercury Studios)

In 2010, Peter Gabriel released an album, Scratch My Back, his cover versions of favorite songs with orchestral accompaniment—on the ensuing tour (which I saw at Radio City Music Hall), Gabriel played those covers as well as his own songs performed with the New Blood Orchestra. This concert from that tour, filmed in Verona, Italy, at the venerable outdoor amphitheater Arena di Verona, comprises only Gabriel’s songs and is all the better for it. Hearing classics “San Jacinto,” “Red Rain” and “Darkness” backed by the power of a full orchestra (led by conductor Ben Foster) is a rare privilege. The highlights are “Blood of Eden” and “Don’t Give Up,” duets with vocalist Ane Brun, who impressively takes the Sinead O’Connor and Kate Bush parts. The hi-def video looks fine, and the surround-sound audio is fantastic.

When Fall Is Coming 

(Music Box Films)

Prolific French director François Ozon’s latest follows the travails of retired grandmother Michelle, who’s been banned from seeing her grandson Lucas after he has an accident while visiting her rural home—but when her daughter Valérie is suddenly gone from the picture, she must deal with that unexpected absence from their lives. There’s a welcome matter-of-factness to Ozon’s storytelling, but it’s too one-note when a fateful twist upends everyone and everything. On the positive side, Ozon gets uncluttered performances from his cast, led by Hélène Vincent (Michelle), Ludivine Seignier (Valérie) and Josiane Balasko (Michelle’s friend and neighbor Marie-Claude).

DVD Release of the Week

Peanuts—Ultimate TV Specials Collection 

(Warner Bros)

What better way to celebrate the immortal Charlie Brown and his pals and commemorate their creator Charles Schulz’s genius than with this comprehensive collection of 40 Peanuts television specials, from A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)—still the greatest animated TV special of them all—to the most recent, Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown (2011). If you have other favorites, they’re probably here, like It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973); along with all 40 specials on five discs, there’s also a collectible 28-page booklet.

CD Release of the Week 

Walton/Britten/Tippett—Works for Piano and Orchestra 

(BIS)

Vibrant works for piano and orchestra by three prominent 20th-century British composers make up this luminous-sounding disc with the exceptional pianist Clare Hammond as soloist. First is William Walton’s Sinfonia Concertante, a sprightly 1927 work that Walton revised in 1943; Hammond beautifully performs the revision, which makes clear this is less a concerto than a symphonic work with a prominent piano part. Benjamin Britten’s 1940 Diversions was originally written for piano left-hand for Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in World War I. Hammond and the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by George Bass get the tricky balance between the soloist and the orchestral players exactly right. Finally, there’s Michael Tippett’s 1953 concerto, one of the composer’s most exuberant works: again Hammond and the orchestra perform with passion, alternating between power and finesse throughout.

Dance Theater Review—“Message in a Bottle” to Songs by Sting

Message in a Bottle

Songs by Sting; directed and choreographed by Kate Prince

With Zoo Nation—The Kate Prince Company

Performances through May 12, 2024

New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street, NYC

nycitycenter.org

The cast of Message in a Bottle (photo: Christopher Duggan)

Set to 27 songs by Sting—with the Police and from his solo career—Message in a Bottle is a story of the global refugee crisis told through the mesmerizing movement of choreographer Kate Prince’s brilliant dance company, ZooNation. Although it does get cheesy entwining the music and the dancers, as jukebox shows go, it’s much closer to Twyla Tharp’s take on the Billy Joel catalog, Movin’ Out, than to something like the Abba megahit, Mamma Mia.

In an unnamed desert country (hence the unsurprising opener, “Desert Rose,” with its North African feel), a family of five—father, mother, two sons and a daughter—becomes separated when a civil war throws the entire region into turmoil. Happy events like the marriage of one son are soon overtaken by awful 21st-century realities: abuse, trafficking, displacement, death. Prince and dramaturg Lolita Chakrabarti have fashioned a narrative of sorts from which to hang Sting’s words and music, which, with a few exceptions, have been extensively rearranged and rerecorded (with Sting’s and others’ solo and ensemble voices).

As the songs and the tale unfold, musical motifs from “Fields of Gold” and “Brand New Day” hover over the proceedings, hinting at the happy ending to come. There are times when the relationship of Sting’s lyrics to what’s happening onstage is tenuous—several men sexually abuse a young woman to “Don’t Stand so Close to Me,” which narrates a completely different kind of inappropriate relationship—or, conversely, too on the nose—the second act opens in jail as a chorus intones “Free, free, set them free” and, later on, the married son discovers his bride, forcibly separated from him, works in a brothel, so on comes “Roxanne.” (When she rejects him, we get “So Lonely,” of course.)

But the marriage of music and movement is spot on in several spots, notably in the show’s most affecting number, a tender pas de deux between the younger son (Deavion Brown) and the man (Harrison Dowzell) he’s fallen in love with, set to one of Sting’s loveliest songs, “Shape of My Heart.”

Whatever one thinks of the way Prince and her excellent music supervisor and arranger Alex Lacamoire have manipulated Sting’s tunes to fit into the contrived narrative—sometimes it’s a disservice to the songs and at others it’s a disservice to the story—the breathtaking dancing of Prince’s company, which specializes in effortlessly combining contemporary and hip-hop styles, is beyond reproach. Although the entire ZooNation is magnificent in its athleticism—the leaps, the flips, the freestyling, even the break dancing—the main dancers (as the children) are particularly dazzling.

Brown, Natasha Gooden and Lukas McFarlane convey as much with simple gestures as they do in the more athletic movements (too often, the stage is filled with busyness just for its sake). At those moments, the music and the stunning visuals—Anna Fleischle’s costumes, Ben Stones’ sets, Natasha Chivers’ lighting and Andrezjh Goulding’s projections—take over. 

But however bumpy the journey, when the final healing strains of “They Dance Alone” arrive, Message in a Bottle delivers its message.

December '20 Digital Week III

4K Release of the Week 

Tenet 

(Warner Bros)

Christopher Nolan’s latest bloated super-spectacular attempts to one-up his earlier convoluted films with a constantly time-shifting (and aspect-ratio changing) plot that’s mainly an excuse for alternately exciting (opening concert hall invasion, backwards-car chase) and pointless (final battle) set pieces. Nolan fans will spend hours explaining away his densely plotted but scientifically suspect script but Tenet is yet another example of Nolan taking 2-1/2 hours to tell a story that The Twilight Zone would have covered satisfyingly in 30 minutes. John David Washington makes a dull hero, further robbing the movie of credibility; Kenneth Branagh’s colorful if stereotypical Russian villain is fun, while Elizabeth Debiecki gives an exceptionally nuanced performance that has no place in something so singleminded. The UHD transfer looks luminous; lone extra (on a separate Blu-ray disc) is a 75-minute making-of.

VOD/Virtual Cinema Releases of the Week

Louis van Beethoven 

(Film Movement) 

In Niki Stein’s lavish biopic being released on the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth, Beethoven’s life is cleverly reconstructed as it covers three distinct periods: the young prodigy, the teenage wunderkind and the deaf genius near death. While it covers too much ground—there are appearances by Mozart and Haydn, who both give the budding composer-pianist their seal of approval—Stein’s film is intelligent and witty, with musical cues from among works both challenging (late quartets) and popular (the symphonies). Colin Pütz, Anselm Bresgott and Tobias Moretti are exemplary in the title roles from youngest to oldest, while Ronald Kukulies gives a heartbreaking portrayal of Beethoven’s father, whose existence devolved into drink and tragedy. Arthur W. Ahrweiler’s moody cinematography perfectly mirrors the protagonist’s wide-ranging artistry and unpleasant personality.

To the Ends of the Earth 

(Kimstim)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest follows a Japanese newscaster covering a story in Uzbekistan who finds herself in emotional difficulties after evading local cops and hearing that her boyfriend back in Tokyo might be injured in an horrific fire. Kurosawa records his protagonist’s everyday dealings with wry understatement, but at two hours, his film is definitely overstuffed with shots of her wandering the streets. Atsuko Maeda has an ingratiating presence in the lead, and is quite touching at the end when her character sings (Maeda is a famous pop singer in Japan) the last of weirdly placed but effective song interludes.

Wild Mountain Thyme 

(Bleecker Street)

John Patrick Shanley’s beguiling play Outside Mullingar premiered on Broadway in 2014 with Brian F. O’Byrne and an unforgettable Debra Messing as lifelong next-door neighbors in the Irish countryside who bealtedly find love. But everything delectable in his original play is missing from Shanley’s own adaptation, a strained attempt to re-light a fire that burned so brightly onstage. Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan are OK in the leads, Christopher Walken is eye-rollingly bad as Dorman’s father, Dearbhla Molloy (the lone Broadway cast holdover) is terrific as Blunt’s mom, and Jon Hamm—in a thankless role smartly omitted from the play—does what he can as an American cousin with designs on Blunt. Of course, Ireland’s locales are lovely and there are enough rom-com pleasures to make it watchable, but Outside Mullingar deserved much more.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Aviva 

(Strand Releasing/Outsider Pictures)

Director Boaz Yakim juggles with ideas of gender identity by dramatizing the relationship between two dancers, male and female—and their respective feminine and masculine sides—and casting two couples to visualize the interactions. It’s too bad that it turns out so heavyhanded—especially in the many repetitive and explicit sex scenes featuring the performing quartet in various permutations—and that the dancers are inadequate actors: what could have been an insightful study of gender fluidity and sexual complexity becomes banal. Star Bobbi Jene Smith’s often thrilling choreography makes its mark in several dancing sequences, like the final one in Central Park. The Blu-ray transfer looks beautiful; extras are 15 minutes of dance rehearsals with Smith’s discussion.

Mister Roberts 

(Warner Archive)

Jack Lemmon won the 1955 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his semi-comic relief role in this mild entertainment based on the hit play by Thomas Heggen—who wrote the original novel—and Joshua Logan about sailors on the USS Reluctant in Pacific waters during WWII, including the title character (the men’s immediate supervisor) and the ship’s captain. John Ford and Mervyn Leroy co-directed (with uncredited work by Logan), and if the movie lacks comic or dramatic sizzle, it’s worth watching for its cast: Henry Fonda (Mister Roberts) gives his usual sturdy, decidedly “straight man” portrayal; James Cagney (Captain Morton) is enjoying himself immensely; and Ensign Pulver is among the earliest of the typically manic Lemmon performances. Taken together, however, these seemingly inapposite actors make this far more diverting than it should be. The Cinemascope film looks lovely on Blu; lone extra is a Lemmon commentary.

Mouchette 

(Criterion)

Following one of his most singular films, his 1966 allegory of faith and sacrifice that centered on a donkey, Au hazard Balthasar, French master Robert Bresson returned the following year with another bleak journey, this time following a young girl through her harsh existence. Exquisitely shot in black and white by that extraordinary choreographer Ghislain Cloquet—whose photography shimmers in Criterion’s new hi-def transfer—Mouchette has a quietly devastating finale that is among Bresson’s most indelible images. Extras are an audio commentary; Au hasard Bresson, a 1967 documentary with Bresson on the Mouchette set; segment of a 1967 episode of French TV series Cinéma, with on-set interviews of Bresson and actors Nadine Nortier and Jean-Claude Guilbert; and the original trailer, edited by—of all people—Jean-Luc Godard.

Tex Avery Screwball Classics, Volume 2 

(Warner Archive)

Animated genius Tex Avery was responsible for a lion’s share of the classic output during the golden age of animation—in the ‘40s and the ‘50s—and this second volume brings together another 21 of his most wanted treasures, some starring his classic canine character, Droopy, and several others featuring his most memorable anthropomorphic animals and goofy contraptions. Some of it is dated and in questionable taste; nearly all of it is entertaining and funny. The restored hi-def color images pop off the screen; the lone extra is a substantial documentary of Avery at work, Tex Avery: King of Cartoons.

2020 World Series Champions—Los Angeles Dodgers 

(Shout! Factory)

For a sports year unlike any other, the Dodgers won the championship in a shortened regular season made up of 60 games followed by four playoff rounds, but not before COVID outbreaks threatened to derail the whole thing. But the Dodgers prevailed, finally, over the Tampa Rays in six games, and this disc revisits the ups and downs of a strange season that most are hoping is an anomaly, all narrated by legendary Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully. The hi-def images and audio are top-notch; extras are season highlights, clinching moments and “How They Got There” featurette.

DVD Releases of the Week

My Dog Stupid 

(Icarus Films)

French director-writer-actor Yvan Attal has yet to make a truly satisfying comedy of manners in a career as a third-rate Woody Allen yearning to be second-rate, but this is an only intermittently irritating dramedy about a blocked middle-aged writer who lets a huge, dumb canine into his life, only to watch its arrival parallels the disintegration of his marriage and the straining of his relationships with his adult son and daughter. Attal still goes for cheap laughs or fake profundity, but his other actors—led by his always dependable real-life wife, Charlotte Gainsbourg—are fine and the oversized pooch (actually named “Stupide” in the film) is irresistible, which helps smooth over the rougher edges of Attal’s inconsistent filmmaking.

Roadkill 

(PBS)

British playwright David Hare, one of our most skillful and insightfully political playwrights, tries his hand at parsing a conservative cabinet member—Hare is a leftist—in this intelligent if melodramatic four-part miniseries that rides on Hugh Laurie’s potent portrait of a man who, despite his act as honest and straight-talking, is not what he seems. Although Hare allows contrivances that wouldn’t pass muster in a Screenwriting 101 course, he’s on firmer ground when he’s assailing the machinations of the prime minister (a terrific Helen McCrory) and her minions at 10 Downing Street, while Michael Keillor’s direction smartly guides Hare’s story to its satisfying conclusion.

Route One/USA 

(Icarus Films)

Robert Kramer’s legendary road movie that travels along the Eastern Seaboard, following U.S. Route 1 from Maine to Key West, was made in 1989 but remains particularly relevant today, as Kramer chronicles Americans of all walks of life, political persuasions and economic classes, along with visiting landmarks from Walden Pond to the D.C. Vietnam Memorial. An American expatriate based in Paris (he died in France at age 60 in 1999) who returned to the U.S. for this film, Kramer adroitly handles the camera while his friend, actor Michael Keillor, does the questioning and observing. Route One, USA’s four-hour exploration of the deep and dark crevasses of American life is crammed with incident, detail and insight but is far from exhaustive, mirroring Kramer’s wanting to “understand” the country he left.

The Trip—Four-Course Meal 

(IFC Films)

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon went on four go-rounds touring Europe, annoying each other and eating superb meals along the way, and this set collects all of them: 2010’s The Trip (at home in England), 2014’s The Trip to Italy, 2017’s The Trip to Spain and this year’s The Trip to Greece. Although it’s as formulaic as hell—amazing scenery, delectable dinners, good-natured banter and dueling impressions—the stars have such undeniable chemistry that it all works. Michael Winterbottom directs all four series with his usual light hand; it’s too bad that the full version of these peregrinations—each trip began as six-part series for British television—isn’t included. But even as standalone, shortened films, these are extremely pleasurable journeys. 

CD Release of the Week

Charles Wuorinen—Haroun and the Sea of Stories 

(BMOP/sound)

Novelist Salman Rushdie’s typically fantastical story about an imaginative young boy growing up in a world of misery and censorship was adapted into a musically adventurous opera by American composer Charles Wuorinen, which premiered in 2004 by New York City Opera. Wuorinen, who died this past March, was known for this thorny, difficult scores, but taking a cue from Rushdie's playful and multilingual pans, Wuorinen’s Haroun is dotted with references to various musical works past and present. This new recording by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), from the company’s 2019 concert performances, features the original Haroun from the premiere, the terrific soprano Heather Buck, who centers the rangy score with her radiant singing throughout. Gil Rose conducts the BMOP musicians and chorus in this enchanting reading. It's too bad that such a colorful and visual opera does not have a video release to complement this recording.

Dance and Opera Reviews—The Beatles and Britten in Brooklyn: “Pepperland” and “Owen Wingrave”

Pepperland
Music by the Beatles; choreographed by Mark Morris
Performances May 8-12, 2019
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
bam.org

Owen Wingrave
Composed by Benjamin Britten; directed by Philip Shneidman
Performances May 9-12, 2019
Little Opera Theatre of NY; 29 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY
lotny.org

Pepperland (photo: Mat Hayward)

For the 50th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the city of Liverpool commissioned Mark Morris to create Pepperland, a dance fantasia inspired by the Beatles’ classic album. Finally arriving at BAM last weekend, the hour-long work has flashes of Morris’s wit and playfulness but often feels like something done in half-measures, only intermittently catching the Fab Four’s gleeful exuberance and restless experimentation.

Comprising Ethan Iverson’s arresting arrangements of seven Beatles songs and his own compositions—he was also in the pit playing piano as part of a bright septet—Pepperland glistens with “summer of love” sights and sounds. Elizabeth Kurtzman’s brightly colored costumes hint at the flamboyant uniforms the band wears on the Sgt. Pepper cover, and Nick Kolin’s clever lighting follows suit, especially in a sequence where the dancers strike poses of various celebrities—among them Albert Einstein and Shirley Temple—adorning the album’s cover collage. 

Iverson’s tunes—which take a Beatles riff or chord, winding their long and winding way around them—and arrangements of seven songs from the Sgt. Pepper sessions (title track/reprise, “With a Little Help from My Friends,” “When I’m 64,” “Within You Without You,” the single “Penny Lane” and “A Day in the Life”) are compressed or stretched out, depending on their usefulness for Morris. The musical highlight is the bizarrely apposite “A Day in the Life” for piano and theremin, the latter “singing” Lennon and McCartney’s vocal lines as spookily as the original track.

It’s too bad, then, that in “Penny Lane” and “A Day in the Life,” Morris seems content to coast, letting his talented dancers mime the actions in the words. “On the corner is a banker with a motorcar/and little children laugh at him behind his back/And the banker never wears a mac/ In the pouring rain, very strange” and “Found my coat and grabbed my hat/Made the bus in seconds flat” are rather routinely acted out. 

There’s far more inventiveness in other numbers, notably “When I’m 64,” as the dancers delightfully pair off in varied configurations, changing partners at will, and “Within You Without You,” conveying the pseudo-profundities of George Harrison’s earnest lyrics and tuneful Indian-influenced melody as the troupe fans out across the stage, embodying the song’s introspective universality. If only more of Pepperland was that musically and balletically engaging. 

Augusta Caso and Michael Weyandt in Owen Wingrave (photo: Tina Buckman)

Benjamin Britten’s opera Owen Wingrave has never been performed in New York before—not surprising, since it was a TV opera written for the BBC, premiering in 1971—but thanks to the enterprising Little Opera Theatre of NY, it finally arrived last weekend in Brooklyn.

Based on a story by Henry James and with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper (who also did the honors on Britten’s adaptation of James’ ghostly The Turn of the Screw), Owen Wingrave deals with a subject close to Britten’s heart: pacifism. The opera’s title character makes the decision, while in military school, that he wants out: unlike the long line of military people in his family, war is not in his blood. 

Owen returns home where he finds his family against him: even his grandfather disinherits him. Lurking in the background are the specters of his ancestors, visualized by their formal portraits projected onto the back wall. While didactic in its war/peace dichotomy, the opera contains much haunting and tautly dramatic music, its spare orchestration (the chamber version was arranged by David Matthews) anticipating Britten’s final operatic masterpiece, Death in Venice, completed three years before his own death, in 1976 at age 63.

This often captivating staging made striking use of the GK ArtsCenter’s cramped quarters, as Philip Shneidman’s resourceful direction went a long way toward making the opera less a soapbox tirade and more an unsettling morality play. Richard Cordova persuasively conducted Britten’s gripping score, and his fine orchestral ensemble was up to the challenge. 

The performance I saw was sung superbly by the ensemble cast, which included a quartet of young boys that deftly handled the difficult vocal writing, along with the staging (offstage for much of their time singing, they also had to climb up a staircase while performing). Best of all was Augusta Caso, whose Kate, the young woman who loves Owen (a stentorian Michael Weyandt) but cannot reconcile her feelings with his hardened anti-war stance, was the most touching and tragic figure in the opera.