Critic-at-Large Moe and I are spending this May Day (and the rest of this week’s lunch hours) in the company of that most aristocratic of communists, the Italian director Luchino Visconti—revisiting one of my favorite movies, Visconti’s dazzling 1963 adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo. Roger Ebert wrote that it “was directed by the only man who could have directed it”—Visconti’s noble ancestry and Marxist outlook subtly intersect all over the film, perhaps uniquely sympathetic to both the patrician way of life and its necessary decay.

Because of the film’s historical backdrop—the Risorgimento and the campaign for Italian unification—it’s not surprising that the music in the film pays extensive homage to Giuseppe Verdi. Nino Rota’s score is skillfully Verdiesque, especially a dotted-rhythm theme that Giuseppe would have been pleased to come up with. Verdi’s own music turns up as well, in two of the movie’s best set-pieces. As the Prince of Salina and his family arrive at their summer palace in the village of Donnafugata, the municipal band greets them (in a detail lifted straight from the novel) with a wheezy rendition of “Noi siamo zingarelle,” the gypsy chorus from La Traviata. It’s a selection rife with connections: a bit of counterpoint with the town’s name (“disappearing woman”), symbolizing both the family’s literal journey and their figurative gypsy-like drift towards irrelevance—Visconti places the band in front of prominent “Viva Garibaldi” graffiti—the wealthy slumming of Violetta’s party made real. Verdi also turns up in the final 45-minute ball scene, in the famous form of a then-unpublished salon waltz to which the Prince dances with Angelica, his nephew’s non-noble wife, a reluctant legitimization of the ascendancy of capitalist wealth over hereditary privilege.

I can’t think of an American movie that uses an individual composer’s music and style to so completely conjure a specific time and place. A lot of that is due to the unique timing of Verdi’s career, coming along just at the time when his creation would have the largest possible extra-musical resonance. (Visconti expertly uses this aspect of Verdi in his earlier film Senso.) Visconti’s achievement is not only to effectively illustrate the film’s setting, but also to reflect back on the Verdian style, to show how the time and place gave the music an added power. Almost certainly Lampedusa and Visconti intend the Prince to be the type of character—proud, impulsive, his intellect and his social responsibilities not always in sync—familiar in post-1860 Verdi: Philip, say, or Boccanegra. The Verdi and Verdi-like music on the soundtrack asserts a common influence of historical setting on composer, novel, and film; in a way, it’s prompting us to imagine what Verdi himself would have done with the story, one that doubtless would have appealed to him. Visconti—a terrific opera director as well—even deploys the music operatically, in contrast with the way film music usually functions in Hollywood. Visconti almost never uses the music to smooth over transitions or to unobtrusively shape the mood; he brings it in with a flourish, a coup de théâtre to punctuate a scene, usually towards the end. Visconti’s epic staging of the siege of Palermo plays out without music until the final moments: only when the Prince’s nephew, Tancredi (note the name) is injured by an artillery shell does Visconti punch in the dramatic cue. In the ball scene, the near-continuous dance numbers provide the sort of ironic set decoration of a Traviata or Rigoletto.

Towards the beginning of The Leopard, there’s a musical moment that’s pure genius. Tancredi is riding off to fight with the Garibaldini, and Visconti sweeps him out of the Salina palace with broad camera arcs and Rota’s swelling strains. But as the film cuts to the next scene, the music cuts off, abruptly, mid-phrase. It’s a jarring transition that reminds us that Tancredi’s enthusiasm is more cynical than idealistic—his ultimate goal is to gain political credibility in order to make his way in the post-unification society he shrewdly foresees. The romantic overtones of his departure are part and parcel with his own wily charisma; the music leaves the narrative along with him. But it’s even more remarkable how the cut reinforces the realist undercurrent of the film. It’s a self-conscious artifice, an emphasis of the cinematic surface, a reminder of the fact that we are, after all, watching a movie. But by placing Tancredi’s music within the cinematic reality rather than layering it over, Visconti paradoxically gives the juxtaposition of the scenes a documentary quality. It’s a combination of opulent fantasy and clear-eyed analysis that vaguely but appropriately echoes Marx himself.

At a Boston Symphony Orchestra press conference with James Levine yesterday, the always voluble music director had some interesting things to say about where new music fits in running an orchestra. Levine has fashioned the BSO into perhaps the leading major-orchestra exponent of a kind of serious, mostly American modernism—the living composers for the 2008-09 season are Carter, Schuller, Kirchner, Boulez, and Previn (the last with the composer conducting). The BSO hasn’t completely ignored other contemporary styles, but, as with Golijov and Adams performances in the past couple seasons, they tend to come in with guest conductors. Levine talked about this, saying that he saw his job as not so much personally ensuring a wide variety of music, but making sure that what is performed receives a fully committed performance, and that it would be irresponsible for him to conduct music that he can’t establish a strong personal connection with; better to leave composers he doesn’t feel close to—which also include Bruckner and Shostakovich—in the hands of conductors who do. (His impression of a lot of neo-tonal new music is that it has too much “pastel droopiness.”)

Levine was asked about the pros and cons of his modernist programming: “The most gratifying aspect is that I have lots of warm feedback”—something he loves about the city. But the downside was more fascinating: “The only sad side of it is, some kinds of music take more time for people to want to hear it, and I can only present it at certain intervals.” Levine firmly believes that all music will find an audience as long as there are regular chances to hear it—he made comparisons with the BSO’s current project, Berlioz’s Les Troyens, which wasn’t even fully published until the 1960s; he pointed out with wonder that he made his 1972 BSO debut with what was the Tanglewood premiere of Mahler’s 6th. But he also clearly believes that the orchestra should be a specialist in all historical genres of music—much of the discussion was about the various ways the programming is designed to keep all kinds of styles and composers, new and old, in front of the players on a regular basis.

Perhaps because Levine has perhaps been pouring his modernist energies into this summer’s staggeringly encyclopedic Elliott Carter festival—or, always a consideration, perhaps because of marketing concerns—the upcoming season is pretty light on even 20th-century repertoire, especially in comparison with the BSO’s multi-concert Beethoven-Schoenberg series of two years ago. Levine clearly loves the idea of presenting modernism in such an illuminating context: he talked at some length about all the ideas that pairing was able to encompass, and self-deprecatingly lamented a dearth of similar inspirations. It’s in keeping with Levine’s new-music enthusiasms, his championing of a generation of composers who, in his view, never found the audience they deserved because listeners were more swayed by the idea that those composers were breaching the historical tradition, rather than continuing it. Levine takes a long-range view of modernism—”Music made a great leap forward with the Beethoven late quartets,” he said, starting a parallel tradition that Schoenberg carried on—and there’s quite a bit to be said for simply getting the music out there: anyone familiar only with Charles Wuorinen’s thorny reputation had a chance to be sensually surprised by last season’s BSO performances of the Eighth Symphony. But I later found myself wondering if that focus on context was the cause or result of Levine’s comparative neglect of younger composers: one could say, after all, that really new music doesn’t need a presented context—we’re already living in it.

Levine did say something rather striking, subtly turning a half-century of critical energies on its head. “What can you do,” he said, “when there are still people out there trying to sell the idea that unless a piece of music has [a tonal orientation], it’s not music?” I never thought of anti-atonalists as actively “selling” their position, but it makes sense; it takes just as much energy to deny something’s worth as to proclaim it. Maybe that’s why I tend to like both tonal and atonal music with equal enthusiasm—because I’m too lazy to take on an aesthetic belief system that requires actual effort to maintain.

Lisa Hirsch tagged me with the following meme.

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Wait a minute—those directions sound awfully familiar. Even memes are in reruns now? Civilization really is going to hell in a handbasket. But I knew that already.

Anyway, here you go.

Well, this trick of the trade was well-known to me. I therefore decided to speak to the young white-washed eagle in the overt slander!

‘Ruler of the firmament! Son of the mightiest bird!’ I told the feller in jeering vernacular, ‘thy sister my darling, thy name?’

—G.V. Desani, All About H. Hatterr

I’m not much of a fiction reader, but back in the day, I searched high and low for a copy of this one, and it was worth it—consider yourselves lucky to have it readily available. I won’t tag anyone else, lest this thing turn into the Beethoven’s 5th of memes.

J. S. Bach: “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ” (BWV 639), transcribed by Wilhelm Kempff.

The Marujyu Soy Sauce and Seasoning Corporation (est. 1844) has a new product: Bach-infused bean paste.

A food company here has produced luxury miso bean paste made while music by maestro Johann Sebastian Bach played constantly during its 150-day fermentation process, company officials said.

Marujyu’s President Tomoaki Sato was inspired by a similar Mozart sake, which will be duly assessed as soon as a bottle finds its way to Soho the Dog HQ. The Bach effect apparently enables a pretty fair mark-up in the Japanese market—300 grams of the stuff will go for over six bucks, which is more than you’d expect to pay for a whole kilo of paste born in silence. (Unless it’s John Cage silence, in which case you can make pesto.)