Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Mongolia: Dance, Music and Ballad

Fantastic muscial and cultural experience.

Divinas Palabras (Ramon del Valle-Inclan)

Centro Dramatico National production
Quarrel that develops between family members for a hydrocephalic dwarf good for begging.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Into the Little Hill (George Bejamin & Martin Crimp)

A lyric tale for two voices and ensemble (2006), preceded by Viola, Viola for two violas (1997) and Three Minatures for solo violin (2002).
Interesting music performed by excellent musicians.

This jewel of a narrative is based on the traditional tale of the Pied Piper, who brings music (to a town concerned about a rat infestation) with promises that he will rid the town of their problem. When the strange stranger is denied financial compensation for completing the task, he lures the children away.

Now there are many ways to consider this as an allegory, particularly appealing is the relationship between arts and politics in twenty-first century USA. Politicians want the arts to shape students to concervative values; however, because the arts are actually starved in our schools, the younger generation is denied an intellectually grounded education in the arts, and it turns to a more seductive, maybe even baser but certainly more rebelious form of the arts. Musically, not such a simple allegory: very spare. In works more vertically dense (but not overly so), the ear can hear/apprehend a lucious texture. In works more horizontally dense, that is more melodic, the ear can hear the melody. This work seemed spare in both ways, requiring an ear both better trained than the average ear and a mind curious enough to listen attendtively and repeatedly.

Highly recommend.

Monday, July 23, 2007

De Monstruos y Prodigios: La Historia de los Castrati (Jorge Kuri)

Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes

The Full Monteverdi

I Fagiolini's unusual performance of Claudio Monteverdi's Il quarto libro de madrigali (Fourth Book of Madrigals).
Wow!
After 35 minutes sitting at cabaret-style tables drinking wine and eating cheese/fruit, a voice to my right began to sing, soon followed by six to eight others who were engaged with another at the table. It was like overhearing a very intimate conversation between a couple. I first thought that the guy to my right was embarrassed to be seated next to a singer, but it was soon clear that he was (as were the other 'partners') part of the performance.
There were no pauses between madrigals, but the music moved straight from one to the next. The ensemble relayed the music from one couple to the next, with each couple in different points entering the lover's quarrel.
The difficult of the music was compounded by the performers' movement and the distance which they were spread. Divided into pairs, they sung/acted the madrigals. Their virtuosity was demonstrated in their ability to overcome problems of tuning and coherence magnified by the space and spacing.
The venue provided good acoustics and fabulous views of midtown Manhattan.
Thus presented dramatic, it is easy to recognize how Monteverdi was the originator of Western opera. It would have been good, however, to have possessed translations in order to understand more fully the arc of the poetic narrative.

High recommend.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Hokaibo (Heisei Nakamura-za)

This performance featured one of only two comic Kabuki and starred Nakamura Kanzaburo XVIII in the lead role. Wonderful and colorful sets and costumes were the backdrop to a drama that depended on physical humor and sexual double-entendres (that weren't always apparent in the English synopsis broadcast through the headsets). The morality of the play was rather dubious, and the rogue character ends up murdered (though he comes back to haunt his somewhat innocent nemesis).
The narrative occupied the first two acts performed before the intermission. After the intermission, the performance accorded more closely with my conceptions of kabuki: traditional Japanese music and dance.
Though predominantly performed in Japanese, the Kanzaburo frequently dropped into English, speaking directly to the audience. This gracious gesture, however, was not necessary for the large number Japanese speakers in the audience, who obviously were able to understand the jokes not apparent via the English synopsis.

So Percussion and Matmos. Lincoln Center Festival. 21 July 2007

This was a fantastic evening of very exciting music. Among the highlights:
"Aluminum Song" was played entirely with items made of aluminum. Its tempo was based on rhythmic period that began when a can of Bud Light was popped open, continued while it was drunk (actually 'chugged'), and then ended once the can was tore into two pieces after being repeatedly bent in half.
The first segment of "Water Song" was structured by the time it took to empty a bucket of water with a coffee cup. That was the only full-fledged water sound. All other 'water-sounds' were instrumental ones traditionally associated with water.
They closed with a selections from a longer work that proposed to translate Verdi's "Aida" into electronic media. The first two segments were difficult to relate to the opera, though I suspect the new piece borrowed rhythmic (rather than melodic) elements. The final segment employed the grand march from the opera and featured manipulated videos from a 1950s-looking movie (maybe either the Elizabeth Taylor "Cleopatra" or "Ben Hur"?). (The longer work is the result of a commision from the city of Verona Italy.)
Though some of the pieces were probably more fun and exciting to perform than they were to listen to, it was a very worthwhile evening.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Broken English. Zoe R Cassavetes, director

This small film traces the distraught lovelife of a 30-something New Yorker, Nora Wilder. Threaded against a series of single encounters with various men, her affair with a younger Frenchman helps her begin to drop her fears.
Very good acting by Parker Posey (Nora Wilder) and Drea XXX (her friend, Audrey).
I'm a bit tired of the over-indulged narrative of the unhappy, bored NY single woman failing to find happiness in all the wrong places while having all the means to live without many worries.

Wagner's The Ring Cycle. Kirov Opera at NYC's Lincoln. 16-19 July 2007

With a group of six other opera enthusiasts, we attended The Kirov Opera's performance of Wagner's The Ring Cycle this week at Lincoln Center. Though I'm pleased to have seen a production of the entire cycle, I am sorely disappointed with the quality of the production the Kirov Opera brought to New York. Not surprisingly, the music was wonderfully performed. Opera, however, is not solely a listening experience but also a spectacle that should delight the eyes as well. For this reason, this production falls short of the grand opera long associated with Lincoln Center.

I do not claim any expertise regarding either opera in general or Wagnerian opera in particular. I do, however, absorb lots of theatre every year, and I expect that my experience in the theatre should be better than listening to a recording or reading a text. With this in mind I want to discuss three aspects of the experience: (1) the drama as written by Wagner, (2) the musical performances, and (3) the production values.

(1) Wagner created an series of complex characters whose motivations are not consistent. More on this later.

(2) The musical values were of a high caliber. I especially appreciated the performances of XXX (Brunnhilde in Die Walkure), XXX (Sieglinde in Die Walkure), XXX (Wotan in Siegfried), and XXX (Siegfried in Gotterdamerung).

(3) I'll assume that I don't know enough about Russian folklore to understand the little ET-like stones or the Transformer-like giants or the ICU-patient dragon or the goldish lattice-ball Rhinegold. And I simply mention my disappointment with the fire encircling the dreaming Brunnhilde and my puzzlement that Siegfried's pyre is just a dirt-pile. I'll also pass over a couple of questions about costumes: why did Brunnhilde have to look so ghastly Goth and why doesn't Siegfried ever progress from little-boy overalls? The greatest weaknesses of the production values lies primarily in the quality of sets. Granted, sets are all about deceiving the eye: making fiberglass and paper look like walls of stone and forests of trees. And much of this deception rests of the shoulders of the lighting director. In this case, too much of the lighting was focused on creating dazzling moods and too little on making us believe that large totems were made of stone rather than fiberglass.

All in all, I'm glad we made the effort to attend this operatic marathon. I do wish, however, that our efforts were more richly repaid.

Bodies: The Exhibition

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Book of Longing

Musical setting by Philip Glass based on Poetry and Images of Leonard Cohen

Book of Longing

1. "Prologue--I Can't Make the Hills" LC voice over with music

2. "I Came Down from the Mountain" Images added. Male vocal

3. "A Sip of WIne" Female vocal solo plus 3 for 'chorus'

Interlude: solo cello

4. "Want to Fly" female vocal solo

5. "The Light Came Through the Window"

6. "Puppet Time" faster tempo, more energy, all 4 vocals, images of LC in Nazi/German uniforms

7. "G-D Opened My Eyes" female images

8. "You Go Your Way" LC Voice over with no music

9. "I Was Doing Something"

10. "Not a Jew" LC voice over with no music

Interlude: oboe solo with image that says 'Life is a drug that stopped working'

11. "How Much I Love You" male/tenor solo

12. "Babylon" [See notes for more]

Interlude: Violin solo [instrumental solos include some of the Glass trademarks but also feel like traditional/Romantic lyrical lines; moments of bravura and cres...]

13. "I Enjoyed the Laughter" LC voice over with no music

14. "The Morning I Woke Up Again" images with WOW-red background. [Note: female images all nude: adored yet objectified]

[Many images include the traditional red stamp of Chinese arat but LC uses a star of David instead]

15. "I Want to Love You Now"

[Often unclear who LC's "you" is, even when he tries to distinguish between "You" and "you" in previous song: woman, women, God, spirit, world, listener.

16. "Don't Have the Proof" LC Voice Over in silence

Interlude: Saxophone solo

17. "The Night of Santiago" [cello has turned back around]

18. "Mother Mother" image of woman was face only

19. "You Came to Me This Morning" Highly choreographed with movement of singers and some musicians, including Phillip Glass; singers sit in chair and stand: part of choreography. included a short violin "cascade"; lush harmonies; simple vocal lines

Interlude: Bass solo with glass in swivel chair facing the attractive young female bassist dressed in red dress, with breasts embracing the bass; high register; loveliest bass line I've ever heard; musician leaning over the instrument in order to paly high notes; highly sensual image;

20. "I Am Not Able" LC voice over with "My heavenly seat" visual image that looks like the chair that Glass was sitting in in #19.

21."Roshi's Very TIred"

22. "Epilogue--Merely a Prayer" images: series of self-images. Beautiful closing.

Fables de la Fontaine

Comedie-Francaise

Friday, July 13, 2007

Gemelos

Compania Teatro Cinema

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Fables de La Fontaine

An adaptation of La Fontaine's Fables by Comedie-Francaise.

Visually interesting but difficult to follow because the supertitles were so out of line with the audience's sight line.

Recommend with Caveats.

Monday, July 2, 2007

La Vie en Rose

Edith Piaf bioflick

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