“The Critic’s Notebook,” by the Editors

Nonfiction:

The Civil War, by Jeremy Black (St. Augustine’s Press): I would not ordinarily expect, in a book about the American Civil War, to see mentioned the eruption of Mount Dubbi in Eritrea, May–October 1861, the largest such documented on the continent of Africa. But then Jeremy Black is no ordinary historian, and his noting that the eruption may have affected American weather patterns in 1862 (wet spring, cold summer) is but one example of his wide-ranging command. The field of Civil War history is already well tilled, but this relatively short volume succeeds in broadening it. —RE

Music: 

Dalibor, presented by SummerScape Opera, at Bard College (through August 3): Each year, Bard College’s SummerScape festival resurrects a neglected opera at its Annandale-on-Hudson campus. Two years ago, at Bard, I was greatly impressed by the quality of singing and Gothic stage design in Jean-Romain Vesperini’s production of Saint-Saëns’ Henri VIII. Now, Vesperini returns to direct a new production of Bedřich Smetana’s Dalibor. An on-again-off-again presence on Central European stages (Mahler made his directorial debut at the Vienna State Opera with it in 1897), Dalibor, whose plot rather resembles that of Beethoven’s Fidelio (prisoners, disguises, songs to freedom), has never been fully staged in America before. Leon Botstein conducts the American Symphony Orchestra, and John Matthew Myers steps into the title role after a successful lead turn in Strauss’s Guntram last month at Carnegie Hall. —IS

Dance:

BAAND Together Dance Festival, at Lincoln Center (July 29–August 2): Now in its fifth year, the BAAND Together Dance Festival, features five of New York City’s premier dance companies performing works at the Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater. This is a rare event in the dance world, given the scale of the collaboration. Audiences will be treated to the Dance Theatre of Harlem performing Nyman String Quartet No. 2 by Robert Garland, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performing Many Angels by Lar Lubovich, the American Ballet Theatre performing Midnight Pas de Deux by Susan Jaffe, and the Ballet Hispánico performing House of Mad’moiselle by Annabelle Lopez-Ochoa. The performance I most look forward to, however, is the New York City Ballet performing After the Rain (Pas de Deux), a dance for two, choreographed in 2005 by Christopher Wheeldon to Arvo Pärt’s hauntingly minimalistic Spiegel im Spiegel. —RSM

Architecture:

Private Planning and the Great Estates: Lessons from London, by John Kroencke (The Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics): The reasons for London’s comparative beauty in residential architecture to, say, New York’s, are myriad and beyond simple illustration, but one compelling explanation is the strength of private landholders in the capital, who during crucial eras of development wielded considerably more power than either the state or the Crown. We owe London’s formidably memorable terraces to the Grosvenors, Cadogans, Portmans, Bedfords, and other illustrious families who constructed leasehold properties with an eye to posterity rather than the quick flip. In Private Planning and the Great Estates: Lessons from London, John Kroencke, a senior research fellow at the Oxford-based Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics, explores the nature of London’s traditional housing market and draws lessons that may be useful today. —BR 

Dispatch:

“Diaspora of a lost cause,” by Warren Frye. On Conflict and Loyality: Jacobitism in Europe and Beyond, by Allan I. MacInnes.