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LOWELL LIEBERMANN, 35; Manhattan, Composer "Haunted" as a teen by Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Liebermann knew he had to set the novel to music one day. Two decades and three Juilliard degrees later, he will see his first opera (of the same title), for which he adapted the text from the 1891 original, premiere next week at the Opera de Monte-Carlo in Monaco. (Princess Caroline, president of the Monaco Spring Arts Festival, encouraged Liebermann's work, and the piece is dedicated to her.) The composer does sense an affinity, in part, with Wilde's portrait of misbehavior: "I don't feel in a way that I've created any of my pieces. They sort of take on lives of their own." MICHELLE CHALFOUN, 29; Manhattan, Novelist The movie rights to Chalfoun's first novel, Roustabout, have already been optioned by actress Winona Ryder. The novel, which hit bookstores two weeks ago, is the tale of Mat, a young woman who grows up alone in a circus after her mother abandons her. Mat is the roustabout of the title, a circus hand engaged in the unglamorous task of setting up the big top. It is a job Chalfoun knows from experience. On a whim, the dance major answered a help-wanted ad and worked on a tent crew for three years. She says, "I learned that I didn't really have any limits unless I put them on myself."
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
MENGISTU HAILE MARIAM, 59; Ousted Marxist President of Ethiopia From 1977 to 1991, he ruled supreme. Now he is Addis Ababa's most reviled criminal defendant. Five years after he was driven out of his country by rebels, Ethiopia's Red Terror despot is being tried on charges of murder and genocide--in absentia. The guest of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe since 1991 (apparently in gratitude for the help he gave Mugabe's independence struggle in the 1970s), Mengistu lives in luxurious exile in a government-supplied villa in an exclusive suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, safe from repeated extradition requests. He remains in virtual seclusion with his wife and at least one son, under strict instructions to keep quiet. According to some reports, Mengistu has purchased other properties in Zimbabwe, and serves as a "consultant" to the country's security services. The consultancy, however, may be of a very personal nature: late last year his tight 24-hour police protection foiled an apparent assassination attempt by two suspects.
26 YEARS AGO IN TIME
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Challenging Yeltsin, Russian Communists are promising a return to the future. But the Soviet record at the beginning of the long Brezhnev era might be enough to give voters pause: "Soviet leaders are now facing their most alarming internal failure in years: a serious sag in the economy...In the Russian Republic...meat will be underproduced by 40% in 1970, eggs by 44%. Other drastic shortages will be in passenger cars, furniture, building materials and synthetic fabrics...[T]o order a pair of pants from a Soviet tailor shop...[n]o fewer than four magazine-size blanks must be filled out...[As for] the military, [it] will continue to demand a disproportionate share of the country's wealth." --May 4, 1970
--By Kathleen Adams, Charlotte Faltermayer, Janice M. Horowitz, Lina Lofaro, Michael Quinn, Jeffrey C. Rubin, Alain L. Sanders, Mark Thompson