Health Care For The Poor

By DAVID LITTLEJOHN

San Francisco

Last month, eight of her old and new singing partners gathered at Herbst Theatre here to celebrate Frederica von Stade’s (semi)retirement from the opera stage, after 41 years.

As three musicians looked around, puzzled, Ms. von Stade ran breathlessly onstage and burst into her signature aria—Cherubino’s rapid, confused “Non so più” from Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro”—before the applause had died down. There was little to distinguish this larking showpiece from her performances as the same love-smitten teenage boy she played in San Francisco and New York in 1972-73. Listening to her in 1992, the critic Martin Bernheimer wrote, “Frederica von Stade remains the Cherubino of one’s dreams. She somehow manages to be impetuous, cheeky, sensitive, shy, smug, erotically combustible and self-amused, all at the same delirious time. Also, she happens to sing as one hopes angels sing.” During the rest of the Herbst Theatre show, she sang tender songs by Gustav Mahler and Maurice Ravel, a moving version of Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns,” and modern, semiautobiographical songs by Jake Heggie and Carol Hall.

Ms. von Stade seriously acted and beautifully sang an intimate duet from Claudio Monteverdi’s “Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria” with Richard Stilwell, with whom she had sung Mozart’s “Così fan tutte” here in 1973. She sang robust, semicomic duets with three former partners—the Gershwins’ “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” with Samuel Ramey; Jerry Herman’s ripe, mutually insulting “Bosom Buddies” with Marilyn Horne (an unannounced and delightful surprise); and Mr. Heggie’s “The Years Roll By,” which allowed Ms. von Stade, age 66, and Kiri Te Kanawa, 67, to get in a few bittersweet digs about aging gracefully. (Dame Kiri sang the Countess to Ms. von Stade’s Cherubino in 1972-3.) The next wave of great American lyric mezzos was represented by Susan Graham and Joyce DiDonato.

Singers, conductors, directors and impresarios who paid tribute to her, onstage or in print, used the same words over and over: warm, generous, radiant, selfless, humble, sweet. Tales are told of Christmas caroling, hospital visits, pushing new singers upstage, working tirelessly with students and schools from kindergartens to conservatories. The admiration of her colleagues and fans has probably depended as much on her temperament as on her voice.

Two weeks before Ms. von Stade’s celebratory gala, we talked, among other things, of the agonies that attended the end of her first marriage. How could she keep on singing under that kind of pressure? “When I was going through that, about six years, when I was onstage was the only time the lawyers couldn’t get to me.”

Happily married since 1990 to her second husband, an East Bay businessman, Ms. von Stade (universally known as Flicka) is an unusually doting mother and grandmother. One of her songs at the gala was composed by Mr. Heggie, to her own words, describing an event in the life of her daughter Lisa at age 8. For her encore, she sang Ms. Hall’s “Jenny Rebecca,” after which she had named her first daughter, now a clinical psychologist in Arlington, Va., with an infant daughter of her own. Charlotte Frederica’s worshipful grandmother tries to spend at least one day with her every month.

Now what she wants most is to get younger people singing and making music. She volunteers at St. Martin de Porres, a Catholic elementary school in Oakland, Calif., where she helps the children (mostly black and Hispanic) with their kindergarten violin class, piano lessons and a gospel choir, brings in performers and takes older students to opera rehearsals.

“I sing all the time, walking down the street. And I wonder if it’s because my mother always, always had us singing—and not opera. We never had a party where everyone didn’t sing. Now nobody sings. I bet if you asked, the only Christmas carol the kids at St. Martin’s know is ‘Feliz Navidad.’ I put on a CD of the overture to ‘Marriage of Figaro’ when the kindergarten violinists came into class, and they all went out laughing and shaking their booties to the music.”

Ms. Te Kanawa and Dolora Zajick are among other opera singers who are devoting major efforts to music for youngsters. “Kiri and I talk about it a lot—how much coddling and training we were given, and how empty our lives would have been without it. Now eighth-graders don’t know who Julie Andrews was.” (Ms. von Stade has performed and recorded “The Sound of Music,” and recorded “The King and I.” “I would have loved to have performed it.”)

What does “retirement” mean to Ms. von Stade?

“I’m sort of not out there, but I am out there, even for the next two years—recitals, charity gigs, little bits and pieces. But my answer nowadays to almost everything is ‘Yes.’”

She isn’t scheduled to do any more opera, but “If somebody asked for a ‘Belle Hélène’ . . . Sure! And if they asked me, and if they think I can do it, if I don’t have to make the decision and keep pushing, I’d say ‘Sure! Definitely.’”

Mr. Heggie’s last two operas for Ms. von Stade, “Dead Man Walking” (2000) and “Three Decembers” (2008), both had a kind of valedictory quality. In the former, she played Mrs. De Rocher, the poor, distraught mother of a Louisiana murderer on death row—a part far out of her normal dramatic range—with unforgettable poignancy and power; since then, the opera has been performed more than 150 times. In “Three Decembers,” a three-person chamber opera, Ms. von Stade sang the role of an aging Broadway star blinded by egotism and denial from understanding the needs of her own childen.

“I couldn’t play Mrs. De Rocher anymore—I’d have to be his grandmother. That Sears Roebuck outfit is worn out. Maybe something like the Grandmother in ‘A Little Night Music.’ Not Marcellina in ‘Figaro,’ not the old Countess in ‘Queen of Spades.’ I won’t take old-lady roles just to be onstage. But a handful of things . . .

“Kiri retired, then she didn’t,” Ms. von Stade notes. Ms. Te Kanawa surprised people by risking the major role of the Marschallin in Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” in Germany last year.

No, Ms. von Stade hasn’t made the decision to stop playing stage roles. Performing them is “so much fun,” she says. “Look at Tony Bennett—totally retired, talked him into returning 15 years later. You’ve got something that’s given pleasure to people, use it.”

“So,” she’s asked, “you’re still . . . available?”

“Yes. I’m increasingly available,” Ms. von Stade replies. “I’m not quite as booked up as I was 30 years ago.”

Mr. Littlejohn writes about West Coast events for the Journal.

By SARAH NASSAUER

When consumers see brown they think green, say companies that sell products like paper towels, napkins and diapers.

Brown napkins, paper towels, coffee filters and even diapers are increasing in popularity as companies play up an image that brown means less chemicals, Sarah Nassauer reports on Lunch Break.

Dunkin’ Brands Inc. and Target Corp.’s in-store cafes among other chains have made the switch from white to brown napkins. Next week, Cascades Tissue Group is trying what marketers long considered the unthinkable: brown toilet paper. It is pitching beige rolls, dubbing the product “Moka.”

Brown paper products are becoming an obvious way for consumers to show that they care about the environment. They assume the products are made with recycled materials or didn’t involve whitening chemicals.

Now, however, white paper can be made from 100% recycled fibers and whitened without the chemical chlorine, traditionally the primary complaint against it. Still, Cascades says dropping the extra step of bleaching reduces the environmental impact of Moka toilet paper by about 25% compared to their white recycled paper because of energy savings and other benefits.

Even so, Dunkin’ Donuts decided to use recycled brown napkins about three years ago, in part because of what the color “symbolized,” says Scott Murphy, vice president of strategic manufacturing and supply for Dunkin’ Brands. Tests in a handful of restaurants showed the brown napkins made customers “feel like they were doing something good for the environment,” and matched the décor, he says.

F. Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal, Styling by Anne Cardenas

Clockwise from top right: Seventh Generation paper towels; If You Care coffee filters; Cascades Moka bathroom tissue and Seventh Generation diapers.

Target is rolling out brown 100% recycled napkins, replacing a white version in its Target Café in-store restaurants. Focus Brands Inc. switched from white to 100% recycled brown napkins in its Cinnabon and Moe’s Southwest Grill brand restaurants last year.

At least one company adds brown pigments to non-chlorine bleached diapers to drive home the environmental message. The diapers need “visual differentiation,” says Louis Chapdelaine, product director of fibers at Seventh Generation Inc., a Burlington, Vt.- based company that specializes in eco-friendly household cleaning products and paper. It’s important “not so much that it’s brown, it’s that it’s not white,” he says. All diapers, if left undyed, would be the color of raw plastic or semi-translucent, he says.

Nonwhite, recycled papers come in a range of hues, from dark brown to beige to off-white speckled with bits of brown.

Paper bleached without chlorine is usually whitened with a combination of hydrogen peroxide, oxygen or ozone, chemicals environmentalists have few complaints about. The most harmful, pure form of chlorine, what is called elemental chlorine, is no longer used to bleach paper in the U.S. Recycled paper is sometimes slightly rougher than paper made of virgin fibers from trees because it is made of shorter fibers or comes from different sources, not because of the bleaching process.

To get its toilet paper the perfect color—not too “gray and dirty” or “dark brown”—Cascades makes the rolls with a recipe of 20% recycled corrugated box combined with other fiber, says Isabelle Faivre, marketing director for Cascades Tissue Group, owned by Cascades Inc. and one of the largest sellers of paper towels and tissues in North America.

The three largest household paper sellers in the U.S.—Procter & Gamble Co., Kimberly-Clark Corp. and Georgia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries Inc.—only market brown paper products to businesses, not households. “White is hygiene and purity and it’s clean,” in consumers’ minds, says Tony Morakis, senior director of sustainability for North American consumer products at Georgia-Pacific.

Sales of recycled (not necessarily brown) household paper products are rising faster than the overall market, says Ali Dibadj, senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Since 2007, average annual sales of recycled toilet paper have risen about 8%, and diapers sales have almost doubled in that time.

Americans are especially picky about toilet paper and use more of it on an annual basis that any other nation.

Danielle Schneider, a 36-year-old writer and actor who lives in Los Angeles, says she is willing to buy inexpensive or recycled napkins and paper towels, but she is loyal to Charmin Ultra Soft, a P&G brand. If a store doesn’t carry it, “I will go to another store,” she says.

Consumers in regions outside of North America are more accepting of recycled toilet paper and more readily embrace colored or fragranced rolls. Kimberly-Clark’s local brands sell apricot-colored paper in the U.K., green in Poland, “sunny orange” in Switzerland and “natural pebble” in Germany, the company says.

It’s a different story in the U.S. When Cascades pitched its Moka toilet paper to distributors at a recent trade show, “faces showed disgust” at first, says Ms. Faivre. “Then they would feel the product and it was, ‘Oh, wow, that would be perfect,’ ” for customers who want softness, but also want green credentials, she says.

“Dark greens,” or businesses and people that prioritize environmental concerns, will be the early adopters, predicts Brian Carlson, director of consumer products for the company. “Light greens,” will be harder to nudge away from white, he says. “Those are the soccer moms that like to be green, but they don’t want to compromise. They don’t want to pay more. They want the same quality.”

Write to Sarah Nassauer at sarah.nassauer@wsj.com

Por ALEX BRITTAIN

LONDRES—Los consumidores de la zona euro se mostraron un poco menos pesimistas en enero, pero el ligero aumento de la confianza no augura un mejor futuro económico del bloque en el plazo inmediato.

La Comisión Europea informó el lunes que, según una lectura preliminar, la confianza del consumidor en los 17 países que usan el euro subió a -20,6 puntos en enero, frente a -21,3 en diciembre. Los economistas esperaban que cayera a -21,5.

A pesar de la mejoría, que revierte seis caídas consecutivas, la lectura del lunes aún indica una zozobra entre los consumidores a medida que crecen los temores de una inminente recesión en la zona euro. Eso sugiere que es poco probable que los consumidores gasten de manera considerable en bienes y servicios en el corto plazo, lo que priva a la economía de un apoyo vital en momentos en que los gobiernos reducen su gasto en un esfuerzo por contener la crisis de deuda del bloque.

“La leve alza en la confianza del consumidor en enero alimenta de manera modesta las esperanzas de que la actividad económica de la zona euro podría estar estabilizándose a un nivel muy bajo”, afirma Howard Archer, economista de IHS Global Insight. “Aun así, la confianza sigue siendo muy débil y es probable que el consumo siga limitado por lo menos en el corto plazo”.

Muchos economistas prevén que los datos oficiales mostrarán una contracción de la producción económica en el último trimestre de 2011, que seguiría reduciéndose en el período actual, lo que colocaría al bloque oficialmente en una recesión.

La Comisión Europea no divulgará un desglose de las cifras de confianza del consumidor hasta fin de mes, por lo que no se conocen las razones de la ligera mejoría. Sin embargo, una posible explicación sería una menor inflación en diciembre, que redujo la presión sobre los presupuestos familiares.

This year, auto makers are accelerating a drive to link your next car’s dashboard to all the music and data stored in the Internet cloud.

Car makers and innovators of the mobile infotainment industry will offer consumers easier in-car access to smartphone and tablet applications that create personalized radio stations or locate good restaurants, and that someday might even find the cheapest nearby gasoline.

Internet radio service Pandora Media Inc. has deals with nearly two dozen major auto makers, including BMW and Hyundai, to adapt its popular streaming-music app to allow consumers to easily create or call up personalized music channels on the road. Rival streaming radio services such as Stitcher, TuneIn and National Public Radio are also scrapping for space on dashboard displays.

In the not-too-distant future, a car with a radio that receives only AM or FM will qualify as an antique.

“We expect Pandora to be available in any car,” says Jessica Steel, the company’s executive vice president for business development. “We’ve been planting seeds for three years. We’re about to reap the fruits.”

Pandora is among the best known of an array of information and entertainment services looking to extend their reach beyond smartphones and tablet apps.

A recent survey by Deloitte LLP found 59% of car buyers aged 19 to 31 viewed in-car connectivity as the most important aspect of a car’s interior, and 72% wanted to use smartphone apps in their cars.

Making Internet radio more accessible in cars presents a challenge to SiriusXM, the subscription satellite radio service now available in about 67% of vehicles sold. SiriusXM said earlier this month it added 1.7 million subscribers last year. It has outlined plans to compete against free Internet music with more exclusive programming and highlighting unique news and sports channels.

Several auto makers have opened offices in Silicon Valley to get plugged in to the rapidly shifting online-services market. BMW AG now has 30 people there tracking mobile-app development and looking for deals. Car makers were also a prominent presence at the Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, earlier this month in Las Vegas, touting their latest connectivity deals.

The confluence of mobile infotainment and cars is in its early days, and the ability to maintain a seamless Internet connection over today’s wireless networks isn’t guaranteed. Auto makers are still sorting out how to avoid expensive fights over basic technology standards, and are taking diverse approaches to how they offer connections to customers.

Some companies offer full-service app access only through dashboard navigation systems. Others let mobile phones do most of the work, keeping the onboard hardware costs down. Some auto makers want to carefully control how drivers interact with potentially distracting menus and data. Others are more comfortable letting consumers decide.

“All the [car makers] have taken a little bit different approach,” says Doug VanDagens, director of Ford’s Connected Services.

Ford offers a system called AppLink free on cars equipped with its Sync system, which allows drivers to control smartphones with voice commands or buttons—physical and virtual. Ford offered 10 models with AppLink last year, and plans to roll out more this year, Mr. VanDagens says.

The AppLink system allows customers to stream music and other data from their wireless data providers. Ford can give developers the software codes for AppLink so they can design apps that work in the car. National Public Radio developed a compatible app to allow drivers to stream programming that will be available within the next four weeks, Mr. VanDagens says.

And car makers are looking beyond music services.

“People hunger for information when traveling,” says
Tim Nixon, executive director of engineering systems at GM’s OnStar subsidiary. “Show me an Italian restaurant. Show me the lowest gas price around me.” One idea: Design an app that knows when the car needs gas, and automatically searches for the cheapest nearby fuel.

Germany’s Audi is equipping new models with wireless modems that can transmit data roughly as fast as a standard cable modem.

“The vehicle is a Wi-Fi hot spot,” says Anupam Malhotra, product manager for Audi Connect. Audi uses that pipe to provide Google Earth maps to navigation systems, and passengers can get online with Wi-Fi-enabled gadgets using the car’s connection, which is essentially a big T-Mobile cellphone modem with its own account. Audi pays the first six months, and it’s about $25 a month afterwards.

What Audi isn’t doing is making it easy for customers to download just any app.

“Everybody’s being very careful about how apps are designed” to minimize distraction, Mr. Malhotra says.

Designing apps that are safe to use at speed and picking the services to offer are just two challenges auto makers face.

Mobile communications providers, such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, have struggled to expand their network data capacity fast enough to keep pace with demand.

The potential growth of in-car mobile data consumption is another reason “why the industry needs access to more spectrum,” says Jot Carpenter, vice president for government relations at CTIA-The Wireless Association, a wireless-industry trade group in Washington.

Write to Joseph B. White at joseph.white@wsj.com

Por PAUL HANNON

Troika Irlanda dice país cumple objetivo, pero avisa sobre crecimiento

DUBLÍN (EFE Dow Jones)–El Gobierno de Irlanda cumplió en el cuarto trimestre del año pasado los objetivos fijados en su programa de rescate, pero se enfrenta a “retos considerables” en los 12 próximos meses, dijo el jueves la troika formada por la Comisión Europea, el Fondo Monetario Internacional y el Banco Central Europeo.

Al no poder pedir prestado dinero en los mercados internacionales de bonos, el Gobierno irlandés se vio forzado a solicitar préstamos por 67.500 millones de euros a la Unión Europea y el FMI en noviembre de 2010.

Funcionarios de los tres organismos de la troika han pasado en Irlanda 10 días para comprobar los avances del país a la hora de cumplir los objetivos fijados, especialmente en cuanto a reducción del déficit público, el saneamiento de su sistema bancario y otras reformas necesarias.

La troika destacó la ralentización en el crecimiento de los principales mercados a los que exporta Irlanda como una fuente de dificultad para que el país pueda cumplir sus objetivos de déficit para este año.

Los inspectores de la troika dijeron que prevén que la economía irlandesa crezca un 0,5% este año, tras haber crecido un 1% en 2011. Esa estimación está muy por debajo del crecimiento del 1,3% que prevé el Gobierno, y que es sobre la que se basan los objetivos de ingresos fiscales.