Por SHANE ROMIG, de Buenos Aires

A capital da Argentina pode enfrentar um aumento substancial nos seus custos se o governo conseguir empurrar a responsabilidade pelo transporte público para o prefeito Mauricio Macri, mas sua já baixa nota de crédito deve continuar a mesma.

As agências de classificação de crédito Fitch Ratings e Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services dão a Buenos Aires nota B, bem dentro da faixa de alto risco, e com previsão de permanecer assim.

“A incerteza está incorporada à nota de crédito de Buenos Aires”, disse esta semana a analista de crédito da S&P Delfina Cavanagh à agência de notícias Dow Jones.

A Fitch manteve em 29 de março sua avaliação de crédito para a cidade, mas notou que a elevada proporção de dívidas em moeda estrangeira e a necessidade substancial de obras públicas são riscos para a atual nota.

A avaliação da cidade como investimento especulativo não impediu que investidores comprassem US$ 415 milhões em novos títulos de dívida com vencimento em cinco anos e juro de 9,95%, emitidos por Buenos Aires em fevereiro. Foi um juro consideravelmente menor que os 12,5% exigidos pelo mercado em março de 2011 para comprar US$ 475 milhões em títulos de cinco anos.

O governo da presidente Cristina Kirchner e Macri negociaram no início do ano a transferência para Buenos Aires da administração do sistema de metrô da cidade.

Macri rapidamente mais que dobrou o preço do bilhete, um tema politicamente sensível, para 2,50 pesos argentinos (US$ 0,57). Mas o prefeito recusou-se a concluir a transferência do debilitado sistema, depois que um acidente num trem suburbano matou 51 pessoas em fevereiro.

Em retaliação, o Congresso controlado pela presidente aprovou uma lei forçando a cidade a administrar o metrô e suas 33 linhas de ônibus.

Macri disse que a cidade não aceitará responsabilidade pelo sistema de transporte público da cidade se vigorarem os termos oferecidos pelo governo, e prometeu levar a disputa aos tribunais.

A disputa sobre a transferência do controle do metrô deve percorrer lentamente a câmera de vereadores e os tribunais, disse Abel Fernandez, secretário da Fazenda da cidade.

A presidente está ansiosa para eliminar os cerca de 70 bilhões de pesos (US$ 16 bilhões) que gasta por ano com subsídios para transportes e energia. Transferir o controle do metrô e dos ônibus para a cidade economizará ao governo federal cerca de 1 bilhão de pesos por ano.

Mas a mudança também custará à cidade cerca de 5,5% de sua receita operacional, segundo a Fitch Ratings.

Embora considere ainda muito cedo para medir o impacto da transferência nas contas da cidade, Cavanagh, da S&P, notou que Buenos Aires tem flexibilidade para determinar seus gastos e poucas dívidas.

A cidade teve um orçamento operacional de 22 bilhões de pesos ano passado e superávit fiscal, disse ela.

Apesar das finanças relativamente sadias, a nota de crédito da cidade continua de alto risco porque “elas estão operando na Argentina” e a cidade está sujeita à imprevisibilidade das políticas do governo federal, disse Cavanagh.

A Argentina, terceira maior economia da América Latina, continua sendo considerada de alto risco mesmo depois de anos de crescimento econômico veloz e da reestruturação bem-sucedida de cerca de 93% dos US$ 100 bilhões da dívida soberana do país, que remonta à moratória de 2001.

By HELEN KIRWAN-TAYLOR

In an age of seemingly endless connectivity, few places offer a respite from the screens and streams of emails and texts we view on a daily basis. But digital detox no longer requires a week’s escape into the wilderness. An hour in a Wi-Fi-free bathing zone may be enough.

Because it takes only the slightest splash for the iPhone or Blackberry to expire (e-books are not much use here either), the bathroom is rapidly taking over from the study or living room as the home’s place of retreat from the hurley-burley of modern life. Designers are adding to that sense of refuge, as well as creating a new social point, by throwing sofas, club chairs, reading lights, art and even oriental carpets into the mix.

“They are another room in the house where you might put in chaise longue and a table, and have a discussion while you or your child is bathing,” says Martin Brudnizki, the London-based designer whose low-tech, country-inspired designs for Soho House’s Cowshed Miami Beach spa helped prompt a defection from the high-tech home spas and pretentious hammams of recent years. “I see many couples choosing not to have separate bathrooms anymore because this is the only room where they can talk face-to-face,” he adds.

Like many designers, Mr. Brudnizki is veering away from a built-in, uniform look and toward low-tech, old-fashioned freestanding baths and shower stalls, and vintage storage units, borrowed perhaps from a study. Marble and mosaic are used sparingly. Most importantly, he says, his bathrooms never need an instruction manual. “The last thing anyone wants is to wrestle with yet another high-tech piece of equipment that does your head in,” Mr. Brudnizki says.

Baths run by remote control and showers with complicated functions are falling out of favor, replaced by easy, sleek designs that would look just as at home in the living room. “Bathrooms should not require an IT department,” says Roberto Gavazzi, chief executive of Boffi. “They should be a place you gather your thoughts, not a source of frustration.” The luxury Italian brand’s freestanding “Swim C” island bathtub design (in white Cristalplant, from £8,400) has wooden-finished, open-faced compartments built in along the sides for easy access.

In fact, bathrooms are breaking out of the mold so dramatically that one sometimes has to search for water features. Italy’s Agape is one of the companies revolutionizing the approach to modern bathing. Their “FLAT XL” series of interconnecting cantilevered units in multiple configurations (about £10,400 for four units) doesn’t even vaguely look like a bathroom; you have to concentrate to notice the taps and boxy basins. Their in-situ bathroom suites feature curtains, paintings, vintage lighting and Mies van der Rohe chairs. Again, stone is used as splashback, and many of their suites shun full-size mirrors for ones that discreetly fold shut. “The role of the bathroom in contemporary life is the last fortress to the true self,” says Gergely Agoston, head of retail at Agape. “The bath then becomes the space for justified time off with yourself.”

This idea of the bathroom as a luxurious room prompted Italian company Antonio Lupi to create a range of waterproof oriental carpets (from €416 for a 60-by-90-centimeter rug, to €4,800 for a 180-by-240-centimeter carpet). In their international showrooms, bathrooms not only feature carpets, but also oversized throne chairs and chandeliers. The advertising campaign for American brand Kohler’s Shaker-inspired “Tresham” collection, meanwhile, features bathrooms with books propped on floors, paintings and personal memorabilia on the walls, and even dogs sprawled across floors. There are shag carpets, armoires, suitcases, knickknacks, storage units and lots of furniture, to which they added a bathtub, shower and sink, almost as an afterthought (from £1,400 for basins and taps).

Bisazza, the Italian firm famous for its mosaics, also broke with conventional wisdom when it launched the minimal, really-doesn’t-say-bathroom-at-all “Nendo Collection,” designed by the Japanese architect Oki Sato, at the Milan Furniture Fair last week. The collection of 44 wooden and ceramic pieces (still unpriced) includes a wooden-framed, weightless basin, freestanding storage units, stools and even a plant rack. You could be forgiven for thinking you were at a sculpture exhibition. “In the past, Japanese bathrooms were a place for communication. Families bathing together, as well as public baths, were very common until a few decades ago,” says Mr. Sato, adding that he hopes this collection will revive the tradition.

Bathrooms are increasingly important when it comes time to selling a property, too—enough to warrant stealing space from the master bedroom, or taking it over completely. “People are really investing in master bathrooms,” says James Lentaigne, sales and marketing director of Drummonds, British makers of handcrafted, classic bathroom fittings. “They’re spending money on freestanding basins with their own legs and large towel rails and deep, freestanding bathtubs that defy trends,” he adds. “They’re so worried about things going out of fashion that they’re now veering toward durable, traditional designs that never go out of style.” (Even Marc Newson, the cutting-edge Australian designer known for his space-age shapes, chose a freestanding Drummonds “Usk” bateau bathtub for his own bathroom.)

With prices from £4,000 for the polished and lacquered “Usk” bathtub to £19,140 for the “Spittal” glass-enclosed shower with cast-iron tray, this is a serious investment. But the advantage of these individual units is that they allow the decor to change around them.

When Lulu Lytle created a luxurious bathroom for Decorex two years ago, based on her own, an old-fashioned bathtub took center stage. “First and foremost, I made it about the bath,” says the co-founder of British bespoke-furniture company Soane. “I think we’re moving away from speedy power showers, and I love the fact you can’t use your Blackberry near it.” She chose all freestanding units, including the “Nureyev” trolley (from £5,400) and the “Halma Man” table (in duck-egg-blue resin, £1,950) from her own collection, to create a room-like effect.

“I wanted low-tech everything, because for me the idea is that the bathroom is about luxuriating, relaxing—it’s a sanctuary,” Ms. Lytle says. “I chose to combine the dressing room and the bathroom into the largest space possible and keep the bedroom small. To me, the bathroom is where I gather my thoughts. The bedroom is where I sleep.”

Write to Helen Kirwan-Taylor at wsje.weekend@wsj.com

By KATY MCLAUGHLIN

Chef and restaurateur David Burke’s business sounds like a financial-crisis perfect storm. Consider:

His restaurants are mainly in hard-hit areas including Manhattan’s Upper East Side and Las Vegas. Mr. Burke has no experience owning restaurants in a down economy; he launched his empire during restaurant boom times, starting in 2003. And the $7 billion fine-dining industry will see a 12% to 15% drop in sales this year, according to Technomic, a Chicago restaurant industry consultant.

And yet…Mr. Burke reports overall growth, some of his restaurants are booked to capacity on some evenings, and restaurant-industry analysts say he is one of the few high-end players with the right idea for the times.

How could this be? Mr. Burke, it seems, has figured out a way to navigate the downturn. His strategy is to throw out the high-end-dining playbook that says discounting should be subtle. Instead, he is offering dramatic, attention-getting and significant discounts. By engineering the menu carefully and keeping labor costs in check, he is able to slash prices without losing money, he says.

His promotions have included $20.09 three-course meals with items such as oysters and lobster at many of his upscale restaurants, including two in Manhattan (where, without discounts, entrees run $29 to $44), and $5 burgers and milkshakes at his Chicago steakhouse (where a 14-ounce sirloin is $48 on the regular menu). On one menu, he crossed out prices of wine and listed new prices with the term “sale” — a rarely seen word in fancy restaurants.

One of his most unusual promotions is the Wine Auction at the tony David Burke Townhouse in Manhattan. Diners are handed a list of high-end wines with prices ranging from $200 to $600 struck out with red ink. The sommelier approaches the table, suggests that diners make him an offer and begins a negotiation. Wine director Bruce Yung says he sells an average of five bottles a night, meeting his reserve price or better.

“It’s worth a shot,” says Mr. Burke of his unorthodox approach to selling fine wine. “I’m sitting on close to $200,000 worth of wine anyway, already paid for.”

The D Word

Discounting is a strategy high-end restaurateurs have traditionally avoided or carried out in subtle ways, out of fear of eroding the cache of their brands. But this winter and spring, an unprecedented number of fine-dining restaurants slashed their prices.

Mr. Burke tries to set his restaurants apart from other bargains being offered mainly by making his discounts as drastic, easy-to-grasp and catchy as those of one of the few restaurants doing well these days: McDonald’s.

“I have teenage kids who go to McDonald’s for a dollar meal,” Mr. Burke says. The snappy ring to that promotion inspired him to come up with a high-end equivalent. “I see that it’s working for them at a buck, so it might work for me at $20,” Mr. Burke says.

Starting in January, he rolled out $20.09 meals on Sunday nights at David Burke Townhouse and Fishtail in Manhattan, and at David Burke Fromagerie in Rumson, N.J. At Primehouse, in Chicago, he offers the $20.09 deal for lunch six days a week, excluding Sunday. At David Burke at Bloomingdale’s, in Manhattan, he serves a $20.09 dinner every night of the week. For a $5 supplement, diners can have a one-pound lobster or filet mignon entrée.

Last year, DB Global, Mr. Burke’s New York-based company, had $35 million in revenue, and for this year he predicts $45 million. Like many multi-unit operators, he reports that his less-expensive restaurants are doing well this year. For instance, David Burke at Bloomingdale’s, which has both a sit-down restaurant and a Burke in the Box take-out area, is up 2% over last year. Sales at all three Burke in the Box restaurants — the others are at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, and Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut — are up from last year.

Still, even his high-end restaurants, while taking a hit, are doing better than many of their high-end competitors: Primehouse had a 2% decline in sales in the last quarter of 2008 and beginning of this year, compared with the prior year; Fromagerie is down 5%, and David Burke Townhouse in New York City saw an 8% sales drop. Across Manhattan, meanwhile, fine-dining operators are reporting sales declines of around 15%, and some celebrated restaurants, including Fiamma, a highly praised Italian eatery in the same price range as Mr. Burke’s fanciest restaurants, recently closed.

Some of the impact of Mr. Burke’s discounting is measurable: The Sunday discount dinner at Townhouse in Manhattan turned a night that typically grossed $5,250 into a $12,750 night, Mr. Burke says. There are softer benefits, too, such as increased goodwill, publicity, and customers who discover the restaurants and return on full-price nights, Mr. Burke says.

Internal Breeding

Mr. Burke is somewhat insulated from the risk of besmirching his high-end image with discounts because of his unique public persona, says Ed Levine, founder of the food blog SeriousEats.com. “David Burke is the master of the culinary grand gesture, so this is perfectly in keeping with his brand,” Mr. Levine says. Mr. Burke now has “pricing gimmicks” that link up with other gimmicks he’s used over the years, Mr. Levine says. Mr. Burke, for example, bought his own breeding bull to sire the beef cattle used at Primehouse. He also lines his beef-aging cave with Himalayan rock salt, which he sells for $29.99 for a two-pound box.

Discounting, if done too often for too long by too many players, can erode pricing power in the long term, says Dennis Lombardi, executive vice president of WD Partners, a restaurant and retail consultant in Dublin, Ohio. Citing one example, “customers have been trained to expect to buy pizza at a discount,” because of all the coupons and deals, Mr. Lombardi says.

Mr. Burke says that by limiting most of his discounts to Sunday and varying the deals, he avoids such expectations.

Less Bass

With careful planning, Mr. Burke says he is able to keep food costs on his discounted menus at about 45% of the menu price, which is higher than the traditional 35% most fine-dining restaurants aim for but still enables him to earn a profit, because people tend to order more drinks when they are paying less for food. He sprinkles in luxurious ingredients, though some, such as dry-aged beef or black bass, are served in smaller portions than on the a la carte menu. He caught a break this winter when the wholesale prices he was paying for lobster fell to about $5 a pound, from a norm of $7.50, enabling him to include on the discounted menu items such as lobster carbonara and half an “angry lobster,” a spicy signature dish.

Stephen Hanson, a New York-based restaurateur who manages operations for the Chicago hotel where Primehouse is located and who helped devise the concept for the restaurant, disagrees with the discounting approach. Mr. Hanson says he fears that the customer will think, “Were you gouging me beforehand?” But Mr. Hanson, whose company, New York-based B.R. Guest Restaurants, owns 14 other restaurants in New York and Las Vegas, says he is content to let Mr. Burke, whom he calls “a marketing genius,” decide the menu pricing.

During a weeklong promotion in October at Primehouse in which Mr. Burke sold normally $12 burgers for $5, the restaurant made money, Mr. Burke says. Serving lunch to 30 to 40 people on an ordinary day yields about $8,000 per week. During the promotion, the restaurant served 300 lunches a day, Mr. Burke says, for a weekly lunch take of $30,000. While food costs were higher, because more was served, labor costs stayed almost the same, because waiters at the restaurant make most of their wages through tips and the kitchen required only two extra line cooks, who make $15 an hour, he says.

In addition to discounting, DB Global is reducing labor costs. Every week the company analyzes how many bookings have been made at each restaurant and looks at past history to determine how busy it will be. Then it pares or increases hourly staff — about 70% of all employees — accordingly. In winter, about a dozen cooks usually return to their home countries, including Mexico, India and France, for six weeks of unpaid vacation; this year, Mr. Burke encouraged them to take two or three months off. Because his three Manhattan restaurants are in close proximity, he also moves staff from less-busy to fuller restaurants and asks them to multitask. For example, the company butcher now also makes ravioli and crab cakes.

DB Global also focuses on retaining every potential customer. On a recent Tuesday, Fishtail was too full to accommodate more patrons. Mr. Burke instructed the Fishtail hostess to send patrons to nearby David Burke Townhouse, promising a free drink would be waiting. Out of 20 potential guests, 18 took the offer, Mr. Burke says.

—Ms. McLaughlin is a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Los Angeles.

Write to Katy McLaughlin at katy.mclaughlin@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page R3

By HEIDI WALESON

New York

The Metropolitan Opera has been cultivating Anna Netrebko as a house star, and its new production of “Manon,” originally staged at the Royal Opera House in London, illustrates the limitations of that strategy. In principle, her sultry lyric soprano is better suited to Jules Massenet’s siren than it was to Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, with which she opened the season. But she’s a one-dimensional actress, albeit a sexy one, her pitch is often approximate, and her dark middle voice is static and dull, drawbacks that limit her charisma.

Laurent Pelly directs comedy brilliantly, however, and used that skill to tailor this production to his star. He updated the opera to the 1880s and gave it a bouncy, operetta-like flavor, with Manon as a gold-digger from the start. There’s no innocence to be lost, and no contest between impoverished love with Des Grieux and riches with the morally bankrupt De Brétigny; this Manon kisses the boys, shows some leg, and goes for the money every time.

It worked, up to a point, especially with conductor Fabio Luisi giving the score a fleet, frothy energy and tenor Piotr Beczala making the hapless Chevalier des Grieux the opera’s real innocent victim with his open-hearted, pure and impassioned singing. He didn’t have a chance: When Manon showed up in St. Sulpice to reclaim him from his priestly vows, Ms. Netrebko sang with the sinuous dominance of Eve and the serpent combined. Of course, in this scenario, Manon’s moments of vulnerability and regret are unconvincing. But Ms. Netrebko doesn’t project those emotions anyway, so staging the opera as a satirical comedy made sense.

Chantal Thomas supplied a different set for each of the six locations, a treat in these days of unit-set tyranny. Mostly gray and schematic, they were lighted atmospherically, used the Met’s vast space creatively and provided good frames for Mr. Pelly’s terrific costumes, which conjured up the Belle Epoque with crowds of staring men in black suits and top hats and preening women in the period silhouette of wasp waist and trailing skirt, all in pink or white. Lionel Hoche did the “Giselle”-like choreography for the Cours-la-Reine ballet.

Paolo Szot was properly aggressive as Manon’s venal cousin, Lescaut; David Pittsinger was eloquent as Des Grieux’s disgusted father; and Christophe Mortagne stood out as the vicious Guillot, who orchestrates Manon’s downfall. Anne-Carolyn Byrd, Jennifer Black and Ginger Costa-Jackson were excellent as Manon’s role models: women bought and sold.

***

In his new production of Mozart’s “Così fan tutte” for the New York City Opera last week, director Christopher Alden defied the spirit of the score, turning this eloquent tragicomedy about love and fidelity into a dark treatise on the consequences of letting carnal desire take over.

In Mr. Alden’s interpretation, the opera’s premise—in which two young men, Guglielmo and Ferrando, disguise themselves and switch sister girlfriends on a bet to prove that their women are faithful—became just a way to get past talk and straight to bed. All four of these characters are consumed with lust (Fiordiligi, one sister, fights a little longer than Dorabella, the other), but when they finally give in, it’s a disaster—no one respects anyone in the morning. There’s no pairing off at the end—the girls clutch each other in horror; the boys look shell-shocked.

The production’s bleak look telegraphed this outcome. Andrew Lieberman’s set (a blown-up photograph of a park as a backdrop, hanging industrial lights, and a long bench), Terese Wadden’s black 1920s costumes, and Aaron Black’s cold lighting suggested a depressed version of Georges Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” Despina (Marie Lenormand), the sisters’ maid, was a flask-toting bag lady with a sideline in prostitution in addition to her libretto-sanctioned disguises of doctor and notary. Already “fallen,” she was this show’s only marginally cheerful character. Don Alfonso (Rod Gilfrey), who makes the bet with the boys, was a string-pulling sadist who occasionally skulked behind his cape like a silent-film villain. In Act II, he wore a bearskin and was tamed by Despina. It was a hoax to lull the girls into false confidence about female power and male tractability.

Alternating between stylized gesture and rampant overacting, the characters rarely connected to one another, except when engaged in foreplay. They often faced the audience as if in a police lineup. Sara Jakubiak sang Fiordiligi’s defiant “Come scoglio,” one of the most difficult arias in the repertory, in a rigidly awkward posture, pitched forward with her hair covering her face. The few sincere moments of human connection were islands in a sea of concept.

The music warred with the heartlessness on stage. Conductor Christian Curnyn led an idiomatic, lively performance, despite some tinny sounds from the strings. The singers were solid and occasionally inspiring—Ms. Jakubiak’s luminous Fiordiligi and Jennifer Holloway’s poignant Dorabella were vocally well matched in the ensembles. Tenor Allan Clayton brought passion and clarity to Ferrando, though he tended to oversing in the small theater, and Philip Cutlip was more bitter than lyrical as Guglielmo. No wonder; it was a losing battle.

Ms. Waleson writes about opera for the Journal.

By JOANNE LEE-YOUNG

STATS: A 3,327-square-foot, traditional Japanese-style home with three bedrooms and three bathrooms on 1.2 acres of land in Kanazawa, Japan, asking ¥800 million ($9.8 million), or $2,945 a square foot. The owners say the city lowered the 2011 tax bill from $15,990 to $3,690 because it considers the garden a “cultural asset.”

DETAILS: This property is on the west coast of Japan’s main island, a four-hour train ride from Tokyo. It includes extensive gardens that were built around the end of the Meiji period in Japan, between 1868 and 1912. The owners say they grew up hearing how landscape designer Jihei Ogawa (who was more famous for his work in Tokyo and in the imperial capital of Kyoto) used molten rocks from Mount Fuji to build the waterfall. It was a logistical feat at the time. “There were no roads back then. They had to go by sea and ship them around the peninsula,” says one of the owners.

SELLERS:
Takashi Tsuji, chairman of a Kanazawa-based building materials company, and his two brothers, Akira Tsuji, a consultant, and Susumu Tsuji, a retired CEO.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD: Step outside and explore the approximately 70 temples in the Teramachi district. Next door, stay a night at Kincharyou, an upscale guesthouse. The experience includes a set, multicourse kaiseki dinner and breakfast in your room for $745.

WHAT WE PAID: The brothers don’t know what their father paid for the property when he bought it in 1947.

WHY WE’RE SELLING: Finding a way to pass the house to all of their children (seven in total) is too complicated. The brothers seek a buyer who would appreciate the cultural value of the property.

WHAT WE’LL MISS: A place of childhood memories: playing with the family dog, having barbecues in the garden and watching fireworks.

WHAT WE WON’T: Maintenance costs, like having someone feed the koi carp in the ponds three times a day, run around $30,000 a year. Also, near the house, there is a hill and sometimes “you can hear the sound of drivers putting their foot on the pedal, to get their cars up it,” says Mr. Tsuji.

COMP: In Kamakura, 30 miles southwest of Tokyo, there is a 2,653-square-foot traditional, Japanese-style home, built in 1972, on under one acre of land, also with gardens, asking $8.4 million.

OTHERS SAY: The high Japanese yen will be a disadvantage in attracting overseas buyers, says Takenaga Ito, general manager at Mitsubishi Real Estate Services, but the garden and house are “precious in a way that makes it hard to compare to other properties.” Yukiko Takano of Japan Sotheby’s International Realty, which is marketing the property, says the price doesn’t just cover the land and the house, but includes “all the old trees, shrubs, the stones in the garden, the municipal and national heritage designations.”

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W3

A version of this article appeared March 9, 2012, on page D9A in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Garden With a Past In Traditional Japan.