Value for Monday of Week 22 in the season of Growth

Values and Expectations

Salvador Dali, The Enigma of Desire, or My Mother, My Mother, My Mother (1929)

What we want can drive us forward. It can also get us into trouble.

The decisions you make are a choice of values that reflect your life in every way. [attributed to Alice Waters]
I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own. [Michelle Obama]
Twitching like a finger / On the trigger of a gun. [Paul Simon, “My Little Town”]

Salvador Dali, The Enigma of Desire, or My Mother, My Mother, My Mother (1929)

An ethical and moral life necessarily is built on values (grounded in emotion), which guide us in the direction we should go. Yet if our values are misguided or too rigid, they can lead us astray.

We perform best when we expect great things of ourselves. Children fare best when important adults expect great things of them. However, unrealistic expectations (values plus evaluation – emotion and thought) can lead to unhappiness. And when we expect things from others, depending on the nature and quality of the relationship, we may be setting ourselves up for disappointment.

Desire can motivate us, and lead to great accomplishments, but it can also lead to expectations. Expectations, too, can lead to great accomplishments but they can also be unrealistic. When that happens, a critical check is absent from desire.

Real

True Narratives

R. Tripp Evans, Grant Wood: A Life (Knopf, 2010), suggests that this American painter of simple rural life was more complex than he let on. Evans' biography suggests that his Midwestern stoicism masked conflicts about his past and his sexual identity. Perhaps his life is in part a cautionary tale about the damage that can be inflicted by the expectations of others.
Christopher B. Krebs, A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s ‘Germania’ From the Roman Empire to the Third Reich (W.W. Norton & Company, 2011): arguing that the German encounter with Rome nearly 2,000 years earlier led to observations being preserved in the classical literature, which later were transformed into virulent Nazi prejudices.
Michael Holroyd, A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011): this narrative account of two women in early twentieth-century Britain “casts the spell of a time long gone, of loves endured and lost, expectations dashed on the rocks of reality, of inner desires forever stilled, casting their shadows into history.”
Emily Rapp, The Still Point of the Turning World (The Penguin Press, 2013): a mother’s grief memoir about a parent coping with crushed expectations when a child receives a dreaded medical diagnosis
Michael Kimmel, Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era (Nation Books, 2013): an exploration of a once-dominant cultural group’s reaction to its loss of political power
Patricia O’Toole, The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made (Simon & Schuster, 2018): “ . . . the Hazards of Idealism”
Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Penguin Press, 2011): “So many parenting memoirs capture the various ways the authors’ children have taken them to hell and back. Refreshingly, and perhaps uniquely, Chua instead catalogs the various ways she tortured her two young daughters, all in the name of Chinese tradition and the goal of reaching Carnegie Hall (or at least the Juilliard precollege program).”
Robin Romm, Double Bind: Women on Ambition (Liveright, 2017): “. . . explores the way American women are taught to dream very big, and expect very little”.

“The Spanish Empire is worthy of these mega-endeavors. At its height, it was the first truly global enterprise, a federation that sprawled across much of Europe, most of the Americas, parts of Africa and various commercial outposts in Asia.”

Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan (Random House, 2004).
Hugh Thomas, The Golden Age: The Spanish Empire of Charles V (Allen Lane, 2010).
Hugh Thomas, The Golden Empire: Spain, Charles V, and the Creation of America (Random House, 2011).
Hugh Thomas, World Without End: Spain, Philip II, and the First Global Empire (Random House, 2015).

Case studies of political philosophers, as examples of how expectations can lead us astray:

George F. Will, The Conservative Sensibility (Hachette Books, 2019): “ . . . conservatism stems in part, as all conservatism does, from a profound sense of loss: in Will’s case, of the founders’ revolutionary vision of limited government, separation of powers, maximal federalism and inviolable individual freedom. This book, at its best, is a celebration of that vision, and of its counterintuitive impulses — to keep politics in its place, to silo religion outside of government, to resist centralized plans for the imposition of justice and to let a society breathe, live and innovate on its own.”

Technical and Analytical Readings

William Glaser, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom (Harper Collins, 1998).

On some of the difficulties with systems of ethics and morality:

Mark Osiel, The Right To Do Wrong: Morality and the Limits of Law (Harvard University Press, 2019): “Osiel argues that to better understand how law works, we need to pay more attention to this interaction between relatively lenient rights and a more stringent morality.”
Todd May, A Decent Life: Morality for the Rest of Us (University of Chicago Press, 2019): “ . . . May argues that whichever moral theory we might favor — be it utilitarianism, Kantianism or virtue ethics — ‘we will find it difficult to live up to its requirements’ because ‘all these theories ask more than most of us are capable of.’”
Holly M. Smith, Making Morality Work (Oxford University Press, 2018): “What if we grasp the principle of utilitarianism, for example, but because of ignorance or uncertainty about the predicament we find ourselves in, or because we simply aren’t smart enough, we can’t determine which of our actions would in fact promote the greatest good?”

Photographs

Documentary and Educational Films

Documentaries on Expectations:

Bigger, Stronger, Faster: on steroid use among body builders
Deep Water: a man cuts corners to sail solo around the world, leading to his own tragic undoing
Sound and Fury: examining the lives of deaf people with deaf children – members of a “deaf subculture” – and the aversion of some parents toward cochlear implant surgery
Sherman’s March: a young man sets out to make a documentary about the Civil-War Sherman, and ends up making one about himself

Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

In this passage from Les Misérables, Cosette is falling in love with Marius, and Valjean makes the mistake of thinking that her future life is with him, not with the young man:

Jean Valjean was sitting in a cross-walk on some planks deposited at the gate of a timber-yard. His face was turned towards the highway, his back towards the light; he had forgotten the sun which was on the point of rising; he had sunk into one of those profound absorptions in which the mind becomes concentrated, which imprison even the eye, and which are equivalent to four walls. There are meditations which may be called vertical; when one is at the bottom of them, time is required to return to earth. Jean Valjean had plunged into one of these reveries. He was thinking of Cosette, of the happiness that was possible if nothing came between him and her, of the light with which she filled his life, a light which was but the emanation of her soul. He was almost happy in his revery. Cosette, who was standing beside him, was gazing at the clouds as they turned rosy. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume IV – Saint-Denis; Book Third – The House in the Rue Plumet, Chapter VIII, “The Chain-Gang”.]

Once there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivens. He always obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands were; and he always learned his book, and never was late at Sabbath- school. He would not play hookey, even when his sober judgment told him it was the most profitable thing he could do. None of the other boys could ever make that boy out, he acted so strangely. He wouldn't lie, no matter how convenient it was. He just said it was wrong to lie, and that was sufficient for him. And he was so honest that he was simply ridiculous. The curious ways that that Jacob had, surpassed everything. He wouldn't play marbles on Sunday, he wouldn't rob birds' nests, he wouldn't give hot pennies to organ-grinders' monkeys; he didn't seem to take any interest in any kind of rational amusement. So the other boys used to try to reason it out and come to an understanding of him, but they couldn't arrive at any satisfactory conclusion. As I said before, they could only figure out a sort of vague idea that he was "afflicted," and so they took him under their protection, and never allowed any harm to come to him. . . . Once, when he was on his way to Sunday-school, he saw some bad boys starting off pleasuring in a sailboat. He was filled with consternation, because he knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on Sunday invariably got drowned. So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log turned with him and slid him into the river. A man got him out pretty soon, and the doctor pumped the water out of him, and gave him a fresh start with his bellows, but he caught cold and lay sick abed nine weeks. But the most unaccountable thing about it was that the bad boys in the boat had a good time all day, and then reached home alive and well in the most surprising manner. Jacob Blivens said there was nothing like these things in the books. He was perfectly dumfounded. [Mark Twain, “The Story of the Good Little Boy” (ca. 1865).]

“Poor fellow,” she said. “He was very fond of me and he was such a gentle boy. We used to go out together, walking, you know, Gabriel, like the way they do in the country. He was going to study singing only for his health. He had a very good voice, poor Michael Furey.” “Well; and then?” asked Gabriel. “And then when it came to the time for me to leave Galway and come up to the convent he was much worse and I wouldn’t be let see him so I wrote him a letter saying I was going up to Dublin and would be back in the summer, and hoping he would be better then.” She paused for a moment to get her voice under control, and then went on: “Then the night before I left, I was in my grandmother’s house in Nuns’ Island, packing up, and I heard gravel thrown up against the window. The window was so wet I couldn’t see, so I ran downstairs as I was and slipped out the back into the garden and there was the poor fellow at the end of the garden, shivering.” “And did you not tell him to go back?” asked Gabriel. “I implored of him to go home at once and told him he would get his death in the rain. But he said he did not want to live. I can see his eyes as well as well! He was standing at the end of the wall where there was a tree.” “And did he go home?” asked Gabriel. “Yes, he went home. And when I was only a week in the convent he died and he was buried in Oughterard, where his people came from. O, the day I heard that, that he was dead!” She stopped, choking with sobs, and, overcome by emotion, flung herself face downward on the bed, sobbing in the quilt. Gabriel held her hand for a moment longer, irresolutely, and then, shy of intruding on her grief, let it fall gently and walked quietly to the window. She was fast asleep. [James Joyce, “The Dead” (1907).]

Novels and stories:

Jonathan Franzen, Freedom: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010): a “family romance” about the clash between dreams and power, in which the protagonists, “(l)ocked together in obligation and duty, assailed by guilt and love . . . thrash against the cycle of needs – to forgive, to explain, to solve the riddle of unacknowledged hurts buried under thick layers of half-repressed memory”.
Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest, Or many who have an idea of their possibilities and need nevertheless accept the prevailing order in the way they act, and thereby strengthen and confirm it absolutely (1895): the author’s subtitle expresses the theme. The novel “looks at adultery and “fallen” women in mid-19th-century Germany.”
Bart Schneider, Beautiful Inez: A Novel (Shaye Areheart Books, 2005). “Inez Roseman, a noted beauty, has a charismatic husband, two bright children, and a successful career as a lead violinist with the San Francisco Symphony. On the surface, she is a woman with an enviable life. But since the birth of her second child, Inez has been plagued by a depression that’s been deepened by her husband’s philandering. Now, at forty, the violinist is obsessed with thoughts of suicide.”
Bart Schneider, Secret Love: A Novel (Viking Adult, 2001).
J. D. Landis, Longing: A Novel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000).
Dinaw Mengestu, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2007).
Thad Ziolkowski, Wichita: A Novel (Europa Editions, 2012), is “a novel about expectations and outcomes, about what is open and what is veiled.”
Samantha Schweblin, Mouthful of Birds: Stories (Riverhead Books, 2019): “Her stories are obsessed with notions of purity and danger; with the ways people can be deformed, very early on, in the name of tenderness, teaching and care.”
Curtis Sittenfeld, You Think It, I’ll Say It: Stories (Random House, 2018): “'And underneath all the decorum, isn’t most everyone judgmental and disappointed?' wonders Hannah Gravener, the judgmental and disappointed narrator of 'The Man of My Dreams.' 'Or is it only certain people, and can she choose not to be one of them — can she choose this without also, like her mother, just giving in?'”
Vanessa Hua, Deceit and Other Possibilities: Stories (Willow Books, 2016): “The most memorable stories address familial expectations placed on the next generation: A closeted gay couple pretend to be traveling roommates when they run into family friends at a bed-and-breakfast; a pastor bribes an entire East African village to claim he converted them on a mission trip, to save face with his family and congregation; a man in his 70s returns to a tiny town west of Hong Kong to fulfill his (he thinks) dying mother’s wish that he marry someone from home.”
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Big Girl: A Novel (Liveright, 2022): “. . . an 8-year-old girl in Harlem is forced to change her body to fit someone else’s standard.”
Ling Ling Huang, Natural Beauty: A Novel (Dutton, 2023): “Every shopping trip offered the possibility that I would find the product that would change everything, not only my visage but my very nature. Money may not buy happiness, but it can secure confidence, which is close enough.”

Poetry

VALUES:

Robert Frost, “Reluctance”
Edgar Lee Masters, “John M. Church”
Edgar Lee Masters, “Lambert Hutchins”

EXPECTATIONS:

And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.

We are striving to forge our union with purpose.

[from Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb”]

Poems:

Robert Frost, “Dust of Snow”
Robert Frost, “Home Burial” (analysis)
Robert Frost, “To Earthward” (analysis)
Billy Collins, “Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House”
Pablo Neruda, “Love”
Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XI
William Wordsworth, “A Complaint”
Javed Akhtar, “Whenever the clouds of pain and sadness loomed”
Edgar Lee Masters, “Fletcher McGee”
Edgar Lee Masters, “Nellie Clark”
Edgar Lee Masters, “Searcy Foote”
Wallace Stevens, “The Well-Dressed Man With a Beard”

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Jacques Offenbach, Les Contes d’Hoffman (The Tales of Hoffman) (1880) (approx. 138-184’) (libretto) (list of recorded performances) is another allegory about desire, and expectations of another in a slightly lighter vein. “Why did Jacques Offenbach, the original gay boulevardier, choose for his ultimate text, the one most dedicated effort of his life, a play based on the life and works of so alien an artist? Or to put it more simply, what has Offenbach in common with Hoffmann?” “Offenbach could very well understand Hoffmann’s personal situation he had grown up in great poverty and his field of tension was always between art and commerce, which was the motivation to create true art in later years with the 'Contes d’Hoffmann'.” Performances, with video, have been conducted by Karytinos in 1998, Denève, Nagano in 2003, and Carydis. Best audio recordings feature Gedda, d’Angelo, Schwarzkopf, de los Angeles & London (Cluytens) in 1964; and Alexander, Sutherland & Hecht (Bonynge) in 1970.

In the classic German legend, Faust is a successful scholar who is not satisfied. He bargains with the devil for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures but the cost is his soul. “The original Faust is said to have been an eccentric scholar, Dr. Johann Georg Faust, who lived in Germany in the early 1500s. His legend showed up in a 1604 play by Christopher Marlowe, a classic drama by Goethe and a popular opera by Gounod — all of which are named after the good doctor.” Here are links to Goethe’s play, and to Marlowe’s drama.

Charles Gounod, Faust (1859) (approx. 140-190’) (libretto) (list of recorded performances) “is an admittedly hybrid work, where both Faust and Mephistopheles inevitably emerge as somewhat trivialized, while secondary characters are vividly portrayed and the figure of Marguerite transmutes as the emotional core, which makes her, vocally and dramatically, one of the memorable figures in nineteenth-century opera.” Faust “been a scholar for decades but has now become an old man with nothing to show for it. He doesn’t really know anything. He doesn’t really feel anything. He has no idea what the meaning of life is. And he’s entirely alone.” Some scholars think that “Gounod came closest to realizing Goethe’s inspiration in music.” What seems like success ends in disaster. Performances with video are by Kraus, Ghiaurov & Freni (Prête) in 1980; Raimondi, Araiza & Beňačková (Binder) in 1985; and Kaufmann, Mosuc & Colombara (Friedrich) in 2004. Top audio-recorded performances are by Vezzani, Journet & Berthon (Busser) in 1930; Noré, Boué & Rico (Beecham) in 1948; Gedda, de Los Angeles & Christoff (Cluytens) in 1959; and Corelli, Sutherland & Ghiaurov (Bonynge) in 1966.
Hector Berlioz, La Damnation de Faust, Op. 24, H 111 (1846) (approx. 130-135’) (libretto) (list of recorded performances): Faust-like themes appear in several of Berlioz’s works, including his Symphonie Fantastique. Regarding his opera on Faust: “Berlioz was addicted. 'I could not put [Goethe’s Faust] down,' he recalled. 'I read it constantly, at meals, at the theater, in the street, everywhere.' He must have recognized himself in Goethe’s lost scholar. Berlioz shared some of Faust’s idealism, alienation, desires, loves, nature-worship. Goethe’s play became 'a silent confidant of my suffering,' holding 'the key to my life.'” Recorded performances with video feature Kaufman, and Kaufman. Top audio recordings feature Jouatte, Cabanel & Lauréna (Fournet) in 1942; Poleri, Singher & Danco (Munch) in 1954; Verreau, Rubio & Roux (Markevitch) in 1958; Burrows, Mathis & McIntyre (Ozawa) in 1974; Riegel, von Stade & Van Dam (Solti) in 1981 ; Myers, van Otter & Lafont (Gardiner) in 1987; Lewis, van Otter & Terfel (Chung) in 1996 ***; and Spyres, DiDonato & Courjal (Nelsons) in 2019.
Arrigo Boito, Mefistofele (1868, rev. 1875) (approx. 139-165’) (libretto) (list of recorded performances): “Whereas most adaptations of (Goethe's 'Faust') focus on the first part of the work, Boito adapts both sections, including the the Helen of Troy sequence. As such, it is by far the most cohesive interpretation of the famed philosophical text in opera history.” Video-recorded performances feature O’Neill, Ramey & Beňačková (Arena); Giaiotti, Ordóñez & Caballé (Collado); and Abdrazakov, Vargas & Racette (Luisoti). Top audio-recorded performances are by De Angelis, Melandri & Favero (Molajoli) in 1931; Neri, Taglivini & Pobbe (Questa) in 1954 **; Siepi, Del Monaco & Tebaldi (Serafin) in 1958; and Ghiaurov, Pavarotti & Caballé (De Fabritiis) in 1980/1982 **.
Louise Bertin, Fausto (1831) (approx. 126’): “Bertin’s reworking of the text ‘softens Fausto’s character.’ He is still corrupted by temptation, but eventually transformed into a tragic hero with a conscience.”
Franz Liszt, A Faust Symphony (Eine Faust-Symphonie in drei Charakterbildern), S. 108 (1854, rev. 1861, 1880) (list of recorded performances): “The full title of the work, A Faust Symphony in Three Character Sketches after Goethe: (1) Faust, (2) Gretchen, (3) Mephistopheles, delineates the three movements of the composition.” “In Liszt's musical telling of the tale, Faust is a combination of the other two characters. He has a warm loving side and a dark, satanic side that is willing to do anything for knowledge, including selling his soul to the devil.” “The symphony was originally fully instrumental. Yet three years after completing it, Liszt added an ‘appendix’ with tenor solo and men’s chorus setting the ‘Chorus mysticus’ that concludes lines of Faust, Part II, extolling the spiritual power of Das Ewig-Weibliche ('the eternal feminine').” Top recorded performances are by Beecham & Silvestri in 1959, Bernstein & Bressler in 1960, Horenstein & Mitchinson in 1972, Bernstein & Riegel in 1976 ***, Solti & Jerusalem in 1976, Masur & König in 1981, Rattle & Seiffert in 1993, Ligeti & Molnár in 1995, Sinopoli & Cole in 1995; Barenboim & Domingo in 1998; and Karabits & Hernández in 2023.
Liszt, Mephisto Waltzes (list of recorded performances): No. 1 in A Major (1862) (approx. 10-13’) (list of recorded performances); No. 2, S. 515 (1881) (approx. 11’) (list of recorded performances); No. 3, S. 216 (1883) (approx. 9-10’) (list of recorded performances); No. 4, S. 696 (1885) (approx. 3’) (list of recorded performances)
Sergei Rachmaninoff, Piano Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 28 (1908) (approx. 33-38’) (list of recorded performances): “Rachmaninoff's inspiration for the sonata was Liszt's Faust Symphony. While the programmatic elements are more overt in Liszt's composition, the three movements in both works are musical portraits of prominent characters from Goethe's Faust: Faust himself, his lover Gretchen, and the devil Mephistopheles, respectively.”
Robert Schumann, Szenen aus Goethe's Faust (Scenes from Goethe's Faust), WoO 3 (1853) (approx. 105-115’)
Alexander Lokshin, Three Scenes from Goethe's Faust (1980) (approx. 34-38’)
Emilie Mayer, Faust Overture in B minor, Op. 46 (1880) (approx. 11-12’)

In romantic tragedy, amore (often called “love”) is a central value and expectation, which always goes awry.

Giuseppe Verdi, Il Trovatore (The Troubador) (1852) (approx. 114-155’) (libretto) (list of recorded performances) is “story of witchcraft, murder, and vengeance”, with “a weirdly implausible plot”. Verdi drew it from Antonio García Gutiérrez’s play “El travador” (1836). Verdi composed the opera amid a backdrop of disagreement within his personal-professional life. An excellent performance with video features Bonisoli, Cortez, Kabaivansky & Berliner Staatskapelle (Bartoletti) in 1975. Top recorded audio-only performances feature Scacciati & Merli (Molajoli) in 1930; Carena & Pertile (Sabajno) in 1930; Callas & DiStefano (Karajan) in 1956; Del Monaco & Barbieri (Previtali) in 1957; Parutto & Corelli (de Fabritiis) in 1961; Corelli & Price (Cleva) in 1961; Corelli & Price, (Karajan) in 1962; Price & Domingo (Mehta) in 1969 ***; Plowright & Domingo (Giulini) in 1983-84 ***; and Gheorghiu & Alagna (Pappano) in 2001-02.
Gaetano Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) (approx. 120-180’) (libretto) (list of recorded performances) “is a story of forbidden love, deceit, treachery, violence, family hatred, and suicide, culminating in the mother of all mad scenes.” Performances with video are conducted by Guidarini, and Oren. Top audio recordings are by: Callas, Di Stefano & Gobbi (Serafin) in 1953; Callas & Di Stefano (Karajan) in 1955; Gencer, Prandelli, Carta & Massaria (De Fabritiis) in 1957; Sutherland, Pavarotti, Milnes & Ghiaurov (Bonynge) in 1971; Gruberova, Kraus, Bruson & Lloyd (Rescigno) in 1983; Ford, Michaels-Moore, Miles & Rost (Mackerras) in 1998; Damrau, Tézier, Calleja & Testé (López-Cobos) in 2015; and Oropesa, Pop, Olivieri & Zanellato (Carminati) in 2025.
Giuseppe Verdi, Don Carlo (1867) (approx. 145-205’) (libretto) (list of recorded performances): “The story takes place in the mid-1500s, at the time of the Spanish Inquisition, and it's loosely based on historical characters and events. The title character is the son of Spain's King Phillip II, and he is clearly both bewitched and bothered — his real life counterpart was sometimes described as simply insane.” “Don Carlo, the King of Spain's son, laments that Elisabeth of Valois, the woman he loves, has been forced to marry his father to forge peace with France. With everyone under the watchful eye of the Grand Inquisitor, tension and paranoia run rampant, leading the king to suspect his wife of infidelity with Carlo. What follows is a fierce struggle between father and son, allegiance and devotion, honor and the heart . . .” Verdi drew the story from Schiller’s play, “Don Carlos”. Performances with video are conducted by Fulton, Haitink and Levine. Top audio recordings (five acts) are by: Tucker, Rigal, Barbieri & Silveri (Stiedry) in 1952; Loforese, Cerquetti, Barbieri & Bastianini (Votto) in 1956; Fernandi, Jurinac, Simionato & Bastianini (Karajan) in 1958; Labò, Stella, Cossotto, Christoff (Santini) in 1961; Bergonzi, Tebaldi, Bumbry & Fischer-Dieskau (Solti) in 1965; Liccioni, Sarroca, Dourian & Manuguerra (Lecomte) in 1967; Carreras, Freni, Obrasztsova, Cappuccilli & Ghiaurov (Abbado) in 1977; Margison, Gorchakova, Borodina & Hvorostovsky (Haitink) in 1997). Top audio recordings in four acts are by: Fernandi, Jurinac, Resnik, Bastianini, (Santi) in 1960; Corelli, Verna, Dalis & Sereni (Verchi) in 1961; Corelli, Janowitz, Verrett & Wächter (Stein) in 1970; Carreras, Freni, Baltsa & Cappuccilli (Karajan) in 1978; and Pavarotti, Dessì, d'Intino & Coni (Muti) in 1992.
Verdi, Ernani (1844) (approx. 123-138’) (libretto) (list of recorded performances): “Ernani thinks of his beloved Elvira and prepares to stop her from getting married to the old Silva. Elvira is worried about her incoming marriage and ponders her love for Ernani. . . (After much going-on) Ernani and Elvira are to be married. Their bliss lasts little as Silva sounds the horn and demands Ernani’s suicide. He ultimately obliges.” Performances with video are conducted by Pirolli, Muti, and Santi. Top audio recordings are by: Penno, Taddei, Vaghi & Mancini (Prevatali) in 1951; del Monaco, Bastianini, Cerquetti & Christoff (Mitropoulos) in 1957; del Monaco, Macneill, Cavalli & Rossi-Lemeni (Santini); Price, Bergonzi, Sereni & Flagello (Schippers) in 1968; Domingo, Bruson, Freni & Ghiaurov (Muti) in 1983; and la Scola, Coni & Dessì (Carulli) in 1991.
Jules Massenet, Werther (1887) (approx. 121-133’) (libretto) (list of recorded performances): “Following a promise made to her dying mother, Charlotte unenthusiastically marries the respectable but dull Albert – whom she does not love. Refusing to accept that he has lost her, Werther becomes increasingly unstable and eventually commits suicide, dying in her arms in the opera’s final scene.” Performances with video feature Dale, and Álvarez. Top audio recordings are by: Thill, Vallin, Féraldy & Roque (Cohen) in 1931; Tagliavini, Tassinari, Neviani & Cortis (Molinari-Pradelli) in 1953; Fasasbaender, Domingo, Seibel & Nocker (Lopez-Cobos) in 1977; Kraus, Troyanos, Barbaux & Manuguerra (Plasson) in 1979; and Carreras, von Stade, Buchanan & Allen (Colin Davis) in 1980.
Jean-Baptiste Lully, Atys (1676) (approx. 125-186’) (list of recorded performances) “is basically a hot-blooded romantic triangle. The goddess Cybele desires the shepherd Atys, who loves Sangaride. When he spurns the goddess, she drives him mad. He murders his beloved, then takes his own life from grief. Mournfully, the goddess transforms him into a pine tree.” Performances are conducted by Kossenko, Christie, Christie, Rousset, and Alarcón.
Jean-Philippe Rameau, Dardanus, RCT 35 (1739) (approx. 155’) (libretto) (list of recorded performances): the title character wrestles with Jealousy, Troubles, Suspicions and Pleasures, and eventually marries his love. Pichon has conducted a performance on video. Top recorded audio performances are by: Ainsley, Gens, Naouri, Smythe & Les Musiciens de Louvre (Minkowski) in 2000; Richter, Arquez, Arnould & Buet (Pichon) in 2013; Mechelen, Arquez, Sempey & de Pierro (Pichon) in 2016.

Béla Bartók, violin concerti:

Violin Concerto No. 1, Sz 36, BB 48a (1908) (approx. 22’) (list of recorded performances)
Violin Concerto No. 2, Sz 112, BB 117 (1938) (approx. 36-39’) (list of recorded performances)

Other compositions:

Fire! Orchestra has created three albums whose lyrics speak to life’s primal desires, underlain by wrought and urgent instrumentation. As a whole, this combination evokes expectations.

“Arrival” (2019) (66’)
“Enter” (2014) (55’)
“Exit” (2013) (44’)

Other albums, from the dark/gray side:

Wallace Roney, “Blue Dawn – Blue Nights” (2019) (53’) (expectations defeated)
Alex Harding & Lucian Ban, “Dark Blue” (2019) (50’)
Alister Spence & Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe, “Imagine Meeting You Here” (2019) (49’): what did you expect?

Music: songs and other short pieces

Peter, Paul and Mary, “Lemon Tree” (lyrics)
Franz Schubert (composer), “Die Erwartung” (Expectations), D. 159 (1814) (lyrics)
“Defying Gravity” (lyrics), from the musical “Wicked”
Coldplay, “Fix You” (lyrics)
Green Day, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” (lyrics)
X Ambassadors, “Unsteady” (lyrics)

Visual Arts

Grant Wood, Death on Ridge Road (1935)
Grant Wood, Self-Portrait (1932)
Salvador Dali, The Birth of Liquid Desires (1932)
Salvador Dali, The Great Masturbator (1929)
Giorgio de Chirico, Philosopher and Poet (1916)
Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Mada Primavesi (1912)
Gustav Klimt, Expectation (1905)
Jacques-Louis David, Antiochus and Stratonice (1774)

Film and Stage

Values and expectations:

Jalsaghar (The Music Room), a tragedy about a once-wealthy man whose addiction to music and social standing leads him to squander the remnants of his fortune.
A Separation, writes Roger Ebert “is a film in which every important character tries to live a good life . . . That this leads them into disharmony . . . is because no list of rules can account for human feelings. The film involves its audience in an unusually direct way, because although we can see the logic of everyone’s position, our emotions often disagree.” These comments are accurate as far as they go but the film goes beyond emotions into their resulting values and expectations.
Mud, a story of murder, romantic love, disappointment, fidelity and infidelity, and growing up

Values:

Repulsion, abouta woman who becomes obsessively violent when her sister carries on a relationship with a married man
Summer, a light-hearted treatmentof one woman’s attachment to ideals
The Little Foxes, a “fable of second-generation carpet-baggers in a small Southern town around 1900” and their mercenary values

Expectations:

Devi (Goddess) relates the unrealistic cultural demandsplaced upon women in traditional Indian society.
Tabu: idyllic love denied in Polynesia
Rebecca, Hitchcock’s suspense yarn about “the second mistress of Manderley, a simple and modest and self-effacing girl who seemed to have no chance against every one's—even her husband's—memories of the first”
Ugetsu, about the pitfallsof ambition
Harakiri, illustrating the pitfallsof social expectations
8½, about the pitfallsof personal expectations
The Godfatherand The Godfather II, films that explore violence-laden expectations of organized crime families
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, a dry critique of upper middle-class manners and mores
All About Eve, a film about ambition
The Asphalt Jungle, illustrating that criminals too have aspirations
Death of a Salesman, about a man’s failureto capture the American dream
Effi Briest, a film abouthow social expectations turned into demands, consistently at a woman’s expense
The Player, about a writerwho expected to be called back
Pride and Prejudice: about husband-seekingin nineteenth-century “refined” society (also the 2005 version)
Stage Door, on young women trying to make it in New York theatre
The Story of Adèle H, a biographical dramatizationabout the romantic obsession and descent into madness of Victor Hugo’s youngest daughter
Stroszek, a tale of three mismatched misfitswho seek their fortunes in Wisconsin, unrealistically and with little success

Two Bob Rafelson films questioning “American myths of success”:

Five Easy Pieces, a now-classic American portrayalof 1960s-style alienation: the title refers to “the distance between (the protagonist), practicing to become a concert pianist (as a boy), and the need he feels twenty years later to disguise himself as an oil-field rigger”
The King of Marvin Gardens, criticized for “exploiting rather than exploring its themes of failed dreams and tawdry realities”

This is Our Story

Humanity United in Action,
Driven By Love and Compassion,
Informed by Science and Reason.

Deferential Values in Relation to Other People

Deferential Values in Relation to the Material World

Transitions

Restorative Values

Preferences – Desire

Relationships: Material World

Relationships: Public

Relationships: Intimate

Relationship to Self