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Community Events
THU JULY 9
National Gallery Summer Arts Drop Ins
The National Gallery of the Cayman Islands is thrilled to be hosting a Summer of Art, free programming that allows kids to utilise their creativity by participating in a range of imaginative activities. Drop-in sessions will take place in the National Gallery Education Centre every Thursday afternoon from 2:00 PM — 4:00 PM Each Summer Camp Drop-in session is different and gives kids ages 6 to 14 multiple opportunities to take part in a range of art-related activities including stenciling, creative group activities, painting, drawing and more.
Cayman Islands Lions Club PACE raises money from 3day event
The Lion’s Club of Grand Cayman’s Prostate and Colon Cancer Event walk and run campaign, known as PACE, attracted 60 people over the last three days weekend.
PACE stands for Prostate and Colon Cancer Event and saw the most number of competitors since the campaign’s inception four years ago.
Each participant paid a $50 registration fee and runners and walkers were also encouraged to Lions Club donation form to fund raise as much money as they could, with $500 being the minimum.
The walk/run campaign is held each year in memory of past Lion president Delano Hislop, who lost his battle with colon cancer in January 2011.
Starting on Saturday, participants walked approximately 15 kilometers each day until they reached the closing ceremony on the public beach on Monday. Each day’s walk ended at the Lions Community Centre.
The focus of the three-day journey for life educates men and women in the Cayman’s community about early detection and prevention of these diseases, organizers said.
One in seven men in the U.S. will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in his lifetime, according to the American Cancer Society. Nearly all men diagnosed in the early stages are likely to be disease-free after five years.
We do not have the final tally of funds collected at this time.
Avvo ruling reinforces first amendment rights for anonymous reviewers
By Chris DiMarco, Legaltech News
Washington appeals court has denied a lawyer who received a negative review on the website access to the identity of the poster.
Internet anonymity may foster negativity in some cases, but the ability for reviewers to express opinions anonymously can also help consumers make better decisions. A ruling on the case Deborah Thomson v. Jane Doe, out today, has reinforced the protection of that online anonymity, with the Washington state Court of Appeals denying access to the identity of an anonymous reviewer who left comments about a lawyer on Avvo Inc. Avvo offers a directory service that contains ratings and contact information for 97 percent of U.S. lawyers.
In May of 2014, Florida-based divorce attorney Deborah Thomson filed suit against an anonymous poster who had negatively rated her performance on an Avvo profile. Her complaint alleged that the anonymous reviewer was not a client, and that the comment was defamatory in nature. In June, Thomson filed a subpoena in a King County Superior Court that requested the identity of the reviewer.
Following conversations with Avvo that indicated that they would not release the information without the approval of the anonymous poster, Thomson filed a motion to compel against the company in a Washington state trial court. The court rejected this request on July 28, 2014, stating that she had not supplied enough evidence to support her allegation of reputational damage. Thomson appealed.
On July 7, the Court of Appeals of the State of Washington found that, “The trial court applied the proper standard in reviewing Thomson’s motion. Under that standard, Thomson’s motion must fail. As Thomson freely admits, she presented no evidence to support her motion. Therefore, the trial court properly denied Thomson’s motion for failure to make a prima facie showing of defamation.”
The court came to this decision after applying tests that balanced the protection of free speech with the potential for damage from defamatory remarks. The decision could make it more difficult to file suit against anonymous reviewers and at the very least puts additional pressure on plaintiffs to demonstrate the damage sustained by such reviews.
“Whether they’re leaving reviews on Amazon or commenting on an op-ed in their local paper, consumers have a right to protect their anonymity online, and to freely express their opinions on the products and services provided by businesses,” said Josh King, general counsel of Avvo, in a statement. “This is a developing area of the law, and this case helps set a precedent for consumers’ legal rights when expressing themselves online.”
Attorney tests PTAB power to ‘annihilate’ patents
By Scott Graham, From The Recorder
SAN FRANCISCO — A Chicago patent attorney and his client are trying to shut down inter partes review, arguing that the procedure that has reshaped U.S. patent litigation is unconstitutional.
Robert Greenspoon of Flachsbart & Greenspoon is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to rule that once the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issues a valid patent, only an Article III court—and not an administrative court like the Patent Trial and Appeal Board—can take it away.
The PTO asked the Fourth Circuit a month ago to transfer the case to the Federal Circuit. Binding precedent there will send the case to a swift doom, the PTO says. But the Fourth Circuit hasn’t addressed the motion yet, and Greenspoon filed his opening brief on the merits Monday. He quotes an 1898 U.S. Supreme Court decision that says the only authority for revoking a patent “is vested in the courts of the United States, and not in the department which issued the patent.”
That decision may be 117 years old, but it hasn’t been overruled, Greenspoon argues. And just last month, two Supreme Court justices asserted a similar concern in the trademark context. “Because federal administrative agencies are part of the executive branch, it is not clear that they have power to adjudicate claims involving core private rights,” dissenting Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in B&B Hardware v. Hargis Industries.
Persuading a court to declare a statute unconstitutional is always an uphill battle. Shutting down inter partes review and its cousin, covered business method review, would be extraordinarily disruptive, given the time, money and human resources invested in the procedure to date.
But the Fourth Circuit has shown a willingness to upset the apple cart on occasion. Two years ago it joined the D.C. Circuit in declaring that the National Labor Relations Board overstepped its authority by requiring employers to display right-to-organize posters. And last year the appellate court outlawed North Carolina’s “choose life” license plates on First Amendment grounds, an issue now pending at the Supreme Court.
Greenspoon’s client, J. Carl Cooper—an inventor and longtime target of criticism from patent reformers—hasn’t had much luck so far. After Cooper and his company eCharge sued Square Inc. for patent infringement, Square petitioned for inter partes review of Cooper’s patents, which the PTAB granted. While the case was still pending at the PTAB, Cooper brought his constitutional challenge in Virginia district court. U.S. District Judge Gerald Lee ruled the challenge was not likely to succeed, and in any event that Cooper had not yet exhausted his administrative remedies at the PTAB.
Earlier this year, the PTO addressed a similar constitutional attack that’s already pending before the Federal Circuit. DOJ attorney William Havemann argues in that case that a patent is a public right, not a private one. Therefore, the PTO is well within its authority to correct its own mistakes and “remove patents that should never have been granted,” he wrote, citing Federal Circuit decisions from 1985 and 1992.
Cooper v. Lee, 15-1205, should be in the Federal Circuit too, Havemann argues in a motion to transfer filed with the Fourth Circuit on March 16. Cases arising under the patent laws are appealable only to the Federal Circuit, he points out. The Federal Circuit just last year claimed jurisdiction over a constitutional challenge to a different portion of the Leahy–Smith America Invents Act, in MadStad Engineering v. United States. Greenspoon and his client should first litigate their case at the PTAB, and if they lose, then they can raise the constitutional issue in their appeal to the Federal Circuit, Havemann argued.
Greenspoon responded two days later. “The Federal Circuit hears appeals only in cases ‘arising under’ an act of Congress relating to patents,” he wrote. In contrast, his case “arises over” the patent laws. “This case arises under the U.S. Constitution itself.” Unlike in MadStad, the court is not being asked to interpret any disputed terms in the Patent Act.
Havemann replied March 20.
The Fourth Circuit hadn’t ruled on the motion by Monday when Greenspoon filed his opening merits brief.
The Supreme Court’s “public rights” exception was already established when the high court explicitly forbade the executive branch from adjudicating patent rights, he argues. While the Federal Circuit made an exception in 1985 for ex parte re-examinations, the court relied on the notion that patent examiners were merely restarting the examination process, working hand-in-hand with patent holders. That’s certainly not the case with inter partes review, which is “a court-like trial between adversaries without the protections enjoyed by Article III courts.”
Rather than enjoying life tenure, PTAB judges serve at the whim of the executive branch, and signs of “agency capture” are already apparent, Greenspoon wrote.
Ex parte re-examination was “designed it to help patentees salvage their claims from prospective in-court invalidation,” Greenspoon wrote, “unlike inter partes review, which Congress intended as a streamlined way to annihilate them.”
IMAGE: Diego M. Radzinschi
Health coverage reaches 46 million more in Latin America and the Caribbean
From NewsHour
Since the early 2000s, Latin America and the Caribbean has seen meaningful progress toward universal health coverage with an additional 46 million people in nine countries having at least nominal guarantees of affordable health care, according to a new joint publication by the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) and the World Bank, released here today.
“The region has increased its spending on health and narrowed the gap between rich and poor on a number of key outcomes: average life expectancy has risen significantly, more children live to see their first and fifth birthdays, and fewer mothers are dying from complications of childbirth,” said Jorge Familiar, World Bank Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean.
“In a context of constrained resources and lower economic growth, countries now face the challenge of boosting the efficiency of their health systems to continue building on these achievements,” he said.
The report, Toward Universal Health Coverage and Equity in Latin America and the Caribbean: Evidence from Selected Countries, shows that while countries have been expanding population coverage and access to health services, the poor remain underserved, and inadequate attention is paid to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that account for most deaths in the region. The study primarily focusses on 10 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay.
“The report shows that countries have made meaningful progress toward universal health coverage, with increases in population coverage and access to health services, a rise in public spending on health, and a decline in out-of-pocket payments,” said Dr. Carissa Etienne, PAHO/WHO Director “Despite the advances, much remains to be done to close the equity gap and address new health challenges in the region.”
The report, edited by Dr. Gisele Almeida, Advisor in Health Systems and Services Analysis at PAHO and Dr. Tania Dmytraczenko, Senior Economist at the World Bank, notes persistent health inequities between and within countries and the failure of some health systems to address changing health needs. While the rate of impoverishment owing to health care expenditures is declining, 2 to 4 million people in the nine countries analyzed were driven into poverty due to out-of-pocket health spending, with expenditures on medicines being the largest cost driver.
Latin American and Caribbean countries also face new health challenges. While many countries in the region have achieved impressive gains in the level and equity in access to maternal and child health services, the report stresses the urgency to extend those gains to NCDs, which are an increasing share in the burden of disease.
“The region’s changing demographic and epidemiological profile, notably its aging population, has shifted the burden of disease toward chronic illness, which tends to affect all population groups, while increasing the cost of and demand for health services across the board,” said Dr. Tim Evans, Senior Director of Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank Group.
The greatest challenge now facing countries, the report notes, is the need to increase public financing and efficiency to further expand health coverage and to cope with rapidly aging populations and the rising burden of NCDs. The report recommends that countries explore new, more effective and fairer financing measures, while also increasing the efficiency of health systems through strategic reforms that prioritize primary care.
Delivering on the commitment to universal health coverage will invariably require concerted efforts to improve revenue generation in a fiscally sustainable manner as well as to aim for more value for money.
The report notes that advances have taken place as countries have recognized health as a right by enshrining it in their constitutions or by ratifying certain international conventions that define implementation of the right to health as a state obligation. Nineteen of the region’s national constitutions mention health as a right.
In 2014, the Member States of the Pan American Health Organization unanimously adopted a regional Strategy for Universal Access to Health and Universal Health Coverage.
“National policies and strategies promoting universal access to health and universal health coverage should be firmly anchored in the premise that the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being,” said Dr. James Fitzgerald, Director of Health Systems and Services at PAHO/WHO.
Dr. Etienne praised the World Bank for its embrace of universal health coverage as part of its mission to eliminate absolute poverty by 2030, calling investment in universal health “a powerful and underutilized tool for economic development.”
The report also finds evidence that the best results have been seen in countries that increased public spending on health, covered their whole populations and integrated their health systems rather than maintaining separate systems for different segments of the population. The report is given by going to the link below:
“Shakin’ and Stirred!” MediaMation toasts first Caribbean install of MX4D™ motion EFX theatre on island of Curacao.
We believe our local population, as well as our many island visitors, will enjoy the heightened excitement of the movie experience created by a full 64-seat MX4D™ theatre.— Cor Dammers,Theatre General Manager WILLEMSTAD, CURACAO, THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS, June 23, 2015 /EINPresswire.com/ — Prominent 4D cinema innovator/interactive technology company MediaMation, Inc. (MMI) of Torrance, CA has just announced the installation of its first Caribbean region MX4D™ theatre on the tropical island of Curacao.
Known as the origin of Curacao liqueur (made from the bitter dried peels of Curacao golden oranges, frequently used in “Blue Hawaiian” cocktails), Curacao is a sovereign state of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and boasts a rich and eclectic history. Approximately 171 square miles in size, it is located northeast of Venezuela, near Aruba and Bonaire in the Caribbean Sea.
The 64-seat MediaMation MX4D™ theatre was installed for “The Movies & Cinema Curacao” chain located in the historic capital city of Willemstad, designated as a United Nations (UNESCO) world heritage site. The official MX4D™ premiere took place June 11 with “JURASSIC WORLD.”
MX4D™ is MediaMation’s uniquely branded “4D” pneumatically driven motion EFX system. In general, 4D refers to an emerging “immersive” technology which allows movie-goers to experience big Hollywood “blockbusters,” as well as locally produced major films, in a new way via the addition of moving seats, air/water blasts, leg/neck ticklers, fog, seat/back pokers, seat rumblers and other special effects that emanate from specially designed theatre seats, or from inside the theatre itself. These multiple special effects are programmed to both sync with and enhance the action on the screen and sound in the theatre for a more exciting and realistic movie-going experience.
Observed Cor Dammers, Theatre General Manager: “The Movies & The Cinema Curacao chose MediaMation because we liked their eco-friendly technology. We believe our local population, as well as our many island visitors, will enjoy the heightened excitement of the movie experience created by a full 64-seat MX4D™ theatre. We also believe that MX4D™ is the next step after 3D.
“MediaMation is simply the best option for our theatre at this time,” he continued. “Regarding distant competitors who only offer a couple rows of moving seats, we don’t consider that 4D at all, just a part of it.”
Added Heather Blair, MediaMation Head of Cinema Sales: “We at MMI are genuinely pleased that our innovative MX4D™ theatre is making its debut in the Caribbean, in such a beautiful island locale as Curacao. We believe it will further enhance the city of Willemstad’s status as an entertainment destination in this popular tourist region of the world, as well as serve as a major draw for young locals looking for a more immersive movie experience.”
About MediaMation, Inc. — For more than 24 years, MediaMation has provided innovative and visionary technological solutions to the entertainment market. MediaMation is an interactive technology company and a worldwide, leading supplier and manufacturer of patented technology for 4D/5D motion EFX theatres and seats. Besides its MX4D™ Motion EFX technology and seats, MMI designs and implements creative solutions for complex shows, rides, exhibits, fountain shows, etc., for theme parks, zoos, aquariums, museums, cinemas and FECs. From concept to design to installation, MediaMation provides turnkey solutions to creating state-of-the-art 4D theatres and themed environments. For more information, visit www.mediamation.com, www.MX-4D.com, call 310.320.0696 or email: [email protected]
About The Cinemas and The Movies Curacao — This entity is part of a small theatre chain which started more than 80 years ago in Aruba. This innovative company was the first to switch completely to digital in the Caribbean in 2009. Now, they are among the first theatres to adopt 4D cinema technology.
Deborah Brown
MediaMation, Inc.
714.239.6035
IMAGE; Willemstad, Curacao Theatre
US Judge weighs limits on cellphone location tracking
By Ross Todd, From The Recorder
SAN JOSE — Federal prosecutors and defense lawyers tussled at a court hearing Wednesday over whether Fourth Amendment privacy protections apply to the cell-tower data that is often used by law enforcement to track the locations of suspects.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California gave little indication of how she might rule, but sounded sympathetic to some of the privacy concerns raised by a lawyer from the Federal Public Defender’s Office who argued the government should be required to show probable cause to access past cell-tower records.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Schenk asked Koh to rule that no warrant is necessary. Cellphone users automatically disclose location information to mobile service providers, and the cellphone companies keep it as a business record, Schenk said.
The Stored Communications Act allows investigators to subpoena business records from electronic communications services under a lower burden than probable cause, Schenk said. Under the SCA, the government need only show “specific and articulable facts” that there’s a reasonable belief that records requested will be “relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.”
Cellular companies keep records of the cell site towers that transmit signals to and from customers phones, as well as the 120-degree sector of the tower from which the communication came in or went out. Such records offer investigators a powerful tool to establish the location of suspects, particularly in dense urban areas served by many cell towers.
Schenk said that the length of time telecom companies hold on to cell site location records is a decision left to individual companies and the government has no control of what information companies track or whether they track users continually when their phones are switched on or only when their phones are in use.
Koh asked whether it’s reasonable to force consumers to shut their phones off in order to avoid being tracked. But Schenk pointed out that individuals’ banking and credit card account information is accessible to the government at an even lower burden. “You can’t really live in society today without participating in the banking system,” Schenk said.
Koh asked if it matters that California law requires state investigators to get a search warrant to access the cell site data. Schenk said that California’s law didn’t apply to the federal system.
But Assistant Federal Public Defender Ellen Leonida said that the state law affects the “reasonableness of the expectation” that Californians have to privacy in the cell site records. Leonida maintained that cell site location information is “much more analogous” to the content of communications—which the government must get a search warrant to access—than to subscriber information and telephone dialing information that don’t require warrants.
Phone numbers dialed are “qualitatively different” than cell site location information, Leonida said, since most cellphone users keep their devices with them at all times in public and private spaces. Consumers are “not notified by the phone company what information is being recorded let alone that it can be handed over to law enforcement,” she said.
Koh noted that if she found that cell site information is the equivalent to content, she would be the first federal judge to make such a finding.
The judge suggested toward the end of the hearing that individuals might have a different level of expectation of privacy to their location when they place calls or send text messages than they do when receiving an unsolicited call from a telemarketer. Neither Schenk nor Leonida seemed to find that distinction a workable marker of whether or not the government should be required to get a search warrant for certain types of data.
Digital surveillance requests have become something of a friction point between prosecutors and the federal bench, but they are rarely aired in public hearings. The government generally makes surveillance requests at ex parte proceedings before magistrate judges during criminal investigations to avoid tipping off suspects.
Wednesday’s hearing was the result of the government’s appeal of a decision by U.S. Magistrate Judge Howard Lloyd requiring the government to get a search warrant for cell site records. Koh invited the federal public defender to brief and argue the underlying privacy issues, creating a rare adversarial hearing on the issues.
Koh isn’t the first Article III judge to take up the cell-tower data issue. In March, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found that prosecutors should have shown probable cause and gotten a search warrant to access cell tower location records in United States v. Cooper, 13-693, a drug prosecution. The Cooper case was dismissed in the run-up to trial, so Illston’s ruling isn’t subject to appeal.
In April, Lloyd became the first magistrate in the district to force the government to show probable cause before signing off on such an request in the wake of Illston’s decision.
IMAGE: U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, Northern District of California
Jason Doiy / The Recorder
FCC resistance dooms Comcast deal, lawyers say
By Jenna Greene, from The National Law Journal
Facing stiff regulatory resistance, Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc. are expected to pull the plug on their $45 billion merger more than a year after the deal was announced.
A lawyer involved in the process said the companies could not persuade the Federal Communications Commission that the merger offered sufficient benefits for consumers.
“If it was only the Justice Department, Comcast would have gone to court and could have won. But there was no way to get beyond the FCC process,” said the lawyer, who spoke anonymously to discuss the private matter. “They realized they couldn’t convince the FCC.”
There is no breakup fee for abandoning the deal. However, the companies hired a fleet of lawyers, including Willkie Farr & Gallagher partner Francis Buono and Davis Polk & Wardwell partner Arthur Burke. Time Warner turned to Latham & Watkins partner Matthew Brill.
Brill declined to comment. Buono and Burke did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Justice Department in its merger review focuses on strict antitrust questions, but the FCC takes a broader approach, considering whether the combination is in the public interest.
Comcast originally argued that the deal was pro-consumer in part because the company was the only Internet service provider bound by “full net neutrality rules,” as the company put it in an ad campaign. Comcast in 2011 agreed to adhere to FCC open-access rules to win regulatory approval of its purchase of NBC Universal.
If Comcast bought Time Warner, it argued, more consumers would benefit by being under the net-neutrality umbrella. After the FCC passed net-neutrality rules in February that apply to all Internet service providers, that argument became less compelling.
Comcast and Time Warner are, respectively, the first- and second-largest cable companies in the nation, and the first- and third-largest Internet service providers. But they don’t compete head-to-head in most markets.
“Comcast took the position that given the absence of geographic overlap, [the antitrust concerns] weren’t a big deal,” said Boies, Schiller & Flexner partner Robert Cooper, who represents deal opponent Cogent Communications Group Inc. “I always thought that was the wrong way to look at it. They were looking at it through the old world of cable, as opposed to what it really was—a broadband merger.”
DOJ traditionally takes the lead on merger review. However, in this case Antitrust Division head William Baer was recused. His absence seemed to give the FCC “more sway” over the proceedings, a lawyer with knowledge of the review said.
The lawyer also said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, generally viewed as a centrist when he was first appointed, moved to the left during the protracted debate over net neutrality.
“The FCC seems to have blocked the deal entirely based on concerns about future conduct related to over-the-top video,” the lawyer said, referring to services such as Netflix.
An FCC representative was not immediately reached for comment.
In comments to the FCC, the merger met with widespread public opposition. “More than 800,000 Americans told the FCC that the Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger would be bad for competition and innovation; their arguments were well-founded and have now carried the day. This is their victory,” said Common Cause President Miles Rapoport in a written statement.
For more on this story go to: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202724407100/FCC-Resistance-Dooms-Comcast-Deal-Lawyers-Say#ixzz3YFGaxaZP
A thought provoking Caribbean opera from Donizetti
From Seen and Heard Productions
The Wild Man of the West Indies (Il furioso all’isola di San Domingo, 1833):
Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of English Touring Opera / Jeremy Silver (conductor), Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham,. Pic credit Richard Hubert Smith. Shows Cardenio (Craig Smith) and Kaidama (Peter Brathwaite)
Cast:
Cardenio, a Spanish gentleman: Craig Smith
Bartolomeo. The plantation manager: Njabulo Madlala
Marcella, his daughter: Emma Watkinson
Kaidamà, Bartolomeo’s slave: Peter Brathwaite
Eleonora, Carde3nio’s estranged wife: Sally Silver
Fernando, Cardenio’s brother:
Production:
Libretto: Jacopo Ferretti
Director: Iqbal Khan
Designer: Florence de Maré
Set Construction: Harrogate Theatre Scenic Services
Lighting Designer: Mark Howland
One doesn’t normally associate Donizetti with the Caribbean, but other opera composers have chosen exotic locations – Egypt, Japan and Algiers, for example – so why not Donizetti? However, I feel sure it was not the exoticism which attracted James Conway, ETO’s General Director, to Il furioso all’isola di San Domingo so much as its musical riches; for this is vintage Donizetti with plenty of rattling good tunes, choruses and drama.
The action takes place on the island of San Domingo – now shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic – and centres on a Spanish nobleman, Cardenio, who after being driven insane by the infidelity of his wife Eleonora flees Europe to find isolation far away from home. Yet San Domingo is far from being a tropical paradise where one can drink cocktails from dawn to dusk; it is a Spanish colony bent on making a profit from its plantation by the merciless exploitation of its workforce – and having a maniac in their midst only reinforces the wretched lot of the plantation workers, especially the slave Kaidamà who is brutally attacked by him. The story is from Cervantes and is also believed to be the inspiration for one of Shakespeare’s “lost” plays; one suspects he recycled some of the material in The Tempest.
A tempest and a shipwreck feature in this opera, one of the victims being Cardenio’s estranged wife Eleonora who is cast ashore after her long quest to find him. (Her tattered skirt which exposes the hoops sustaining it is surely a warning to ladies to equip themselves with sensible clothes before embarking on a voyage!) Later Cardenio’s brother Fernando turns up as well having been entreated by their mother to effect a reconciliation with Cardenio. Fernando had been the cause of Eleonora’s infidelity, and his appearance by her side in front of Cardenio’s does nothing to heal the latter’s emotional scars; on the contrary it serves only to revive Cardenio’s murderous maniacal tendencies.
Later Cardenio is struck blind and Eleonora seems to be making progress in renewing their love, but when his sight miraculously returns the mere glimpse of his brother is enough to make him dash off into the sea to drown himself. Fernando plunges in after him – the slave Kaidamà gives a vivid blow by blow account of the rescue – and when Cardenio tosses off his rags and starts dressing like a European nobleman again, normality seems to have been restored. But not quite: the next stage in this saga is his decision to make a suicide pact with Eleanora (“He deciso e secco spento”) which will reunite them in death – a sort of pre-Wagnerian Liebestod. I hope I am not giving too much away when I assure you that in spite of everything the opera has a happy dénouement with the European contingent taking leave of the island for Europe to the accompaniment of flag-waving by the locals.
My brief account of the plot may suggest this is a story of self-obsessed Europeans washing their dirty emotional linen in front of the natives, though I doubt whether 19th century audiences would have viewed it in that way. The difference is that nowadays we tend to sympathise with the underdog – in this case the slave Kaidamà – who, far from being an object of fun, is an outsider offering a suitably jaundiced commentary on the shenanigans of the Europeans. The Europeans may be slaves to their own passions, but in Iqbal Khan’s production the plantation workers are just slaves, and have no choice in the matter, making this is a far more thought provoking opera than one generally associates with Donizetti.
The production was enhanced by Florence de Maré’s intriguing set, apparently inspired by the ship-breaking yards of Bangladesh. In the overture one has the impression of a massive wave surging out of an ever changing seascape. It later reveals itself to be the battered hull of a wrecked ship which is progressively dismantled in the second act. Credit is also due to the atmospheric and continually changing lighting effects designed by Mark Howland.
Emma Watkinson, deputising for Donna Bateman in the role of Bartoleneo’s daughter Marcella started off the opera very creditably with the aria “Frema il mar lontan lontano” and grew into her sympathetic role as the opera progressed. Her dad, played by the normally very personable Njabulo Madlala, was something of a cold fish, a stickler for law and order with his whip always at his side; but his rich bass-baritone voice was, as always, a delight to listen to. I couldn’t help feeling that the two brothers were miscast, with the one several decades older than the other. Craig Smith’s Wild Man came over as a senile crackpot; he may have inspired terror in Kaidamà and the plantation workers but he didn’t have this effect on me, and somehow his plaintive life story and memory of past nuptial happiness, “Era il sorrio gioni miei” did not really engage my sympathy. Fernando, played by Nicholas Sharratt, struck me as rather characterless, going through the motions of reconciliation rather than putting his heart into it. Yet, as we hear from Kaidamà’s (possibly embellished) account. he shows considerable courage in rescuing Cardenio from the ocean’s deeps.
Once she had got over her shipwreck Sally Silver dominated the stage as Eleanora and her powerful diva voice gave plenty of momentum to the closing scenes of the opera. However, to my mind the star of the show was Peter Brathwaite as the much put upon Kaidamà, the one person who doesn’t take himself too seriously. (When you’re at the bottom of the heap, you don’t have that privilege!) He enlivened every scene he appeared in – and fortunately there were plenty of these . Whether describing his escapades with relish or attempting to detach himself from the deranged Cardenio’s amorous gropings his singing and acting were funny and engaging. He is surely a natural for the role of Leporello?
Jeremy Silver and his musicians kept up the impetus of the plot and there was good lusty singing from the men’s chorus who despite their shabby clothes looked fit, well fed and not particularly down trodden. Earlier in the day I had heard two of them plus an understudy from La Bohème in a recital – an excellent way to offer up-and-coming talents professional exposure. Tenor Ronan Busfield performed Donizetti and Puccini with passion but Rossini’s devilishly complicated “Si, ritrovario io giuro” made excessive demands on his voice. Susanna Fairbairn proved equally accomplished in the roles of Mimi and Musetta, so ETO need not panic if one of its principals in La Bohème calls in sick. The audience were especially impressed by baritone Gareth Brynmor John’s whose singing of arias and songs by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov were seemingly effortless; the warmth of expression he brought to Wagner’s “O du, mein holder Abendstern” was out of this world.
English Touring Opera’s tour, which also includes the operas La Bohème and The Siege of Calais, moves on to Wolverhampton, Aldeburgh *, Leicester *, Warwick Arts Centre *, Exeter *; (May) Crawley, Canterbury, Blackpool, Buxton *, Durham, Perth and Cambridge *. (* indicates that The Wild Man of the West Indies will be performed at this venue). This Donizetti rarity is well worth seeing, but I suggest for the next tour it should be renamed Kaidamà!
For further details please see www.englishtouringopera.org.uk.
Pic credit Richard Hubert Smith. Shows Cardenio (Craig Smith) and Kaidama (Peter Brathwaite)
For more on this story go to: http://seenandheard-international.com/2015/04/a-thought-provoking-caribbean-opera-from-donizetti/?doing_wp_cron=1428886973.4093220233917236328125
