Bomarzo tra il Santo Biscotto e la Fava Marxista: 23-25 March 2012, by Michael Miller

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Il Biscotto di S. Anselmo

My days in Bomarzo in 2009 did not show the town at its most industrious…or, on the contrary, perhaps it did. The end of April and the beginning of May mark holiday season in this medieval hill town of fewer than 1800 inhabitants. The third weekend of the month and the weekdays that lead up to it mark the festival of the local saint, Saint Anselm of Bomarzo, the 25th also being the national holiday of the Liberation. The following weekend embraces May Day, the international celebration of the working man and woman, which needs no explanation. A young person asked me why we don’t celebrate this holiday in the United States, conjuring up old photos of the police and the National Guard in my mind.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!


Three New Ballets to Open the Australian Ballet’s 50th Anniversary in Sydney by Andrew Miller

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Jack Wunuwun. Banumbirr the Morning Star, 1987. Natural pigments on bark 178 x 125 cm. National Gallery of Australia.

Sydney Opera House, Opera Theatre: 10 April, 2012
continues in Sydney until 25 April

The Australian Ballet presents Infinity, a triple bill:

The Narrative of Nothing
Choreographer – Graeme Murphy
Creative associate – Janet Vernon
Music – Brett Dean
Costume design – Jennifer Irwin
Stage and lighting design – Damien Cooper
Sound design – Bob Scott

There’s Definitely a Prince Involved
Choreographer – Gideon Obarzanek
Music – Stefan Gregory after Piotr Tchaikovsky
Costume design – Alexi Freeman (original costumes from Swan Lake (1977) and Night Shadow (1993) designed by Tom Lingwood for the Australian Ballet)
Stage concept – Benjamin Cisterne and Gideon Obarzanek. Original sets designed for The Australian Ballet by Hugh Colman
Lighting design – Benjamin Cisterne

Warumuk − in the dark night

with Bangarra Dance Theatre
Choreographer – Stephen Page
Music – David Page, orchestrated by Jessica Wells, featuring Dhuwa and Yirritja songs and stories from North East Arnhem Land
vocals by Jamie Wanambi, Banula Marika and Janet Guypunguna Munyarryun
Costume design – Jennifer Irwin
Set design – Jacob Nash
Lighting Design – Padraig O Suilleabhain
Sound design – Bob Scott

Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra
Conductor – Nicolette Fraillon

With the Evening Star just about to set, hanging a little above a Harbour Bridge pylon, and, by the second interval, a waning gibbous moon rising through a back-lit bank of cloud, so the Sydney season of the Australian Ballet opens, with three new short ballets. They cover a broad range, like three points of a very large triangle, showing some of the versatility of the company.

The Narrative of Nothing as the name implies is an abstract ballet, mostly. The Australian Ballet along with the BBC and the Stockholm Symphony Orchestra, has commissioned from Australian composer Brett Dean “Fire Music“, a new score specially for this ballet, and the music and lighting contribute almost as major a part as the dancing. 

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!

Les opéras en contexte, deuxième partie: l’Opéra Bastille (version française), par Alan Miller


L'Opéra Bastille. Photo © Alan Miller 2012.

To read the English version, click here.

What does it matter what you say about buildings? Est-ce qu’il existent des bâtiments mauvais ou médiocres qui nous fascinent quand-même?  Je ne parle pas des “guilty pleasures,” une tendance devenue si quotidienne qu’on peut voir Plan 9 from Outer Space à la Cinémathèque Française. Je parle, bien sûr, de l’Opéra Bastille, une édifice qui résiste à chaque tentative de la décrire ainsi.

Peut-être sent-on quelque peu de compassion pour un bâtiment critiqué, par Hugues Gall, l’ancien directeur de l’Opéra national de Paris, par exemple, comme une “mauvaise réponse à une question qui ne se posait pas.” Si cette question—Paris, est-ce qu’elle a besoin d’un nouveau opéra?—était en jeu aux années 1980, elle n’est pas plus contestée. Paris soutient simultanément le Palais Garnier, l’Opéra Bastille, et des autres théâtres qui présentent l’opéra.


Lisez l'article entier sure la Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!

“Music for a Time of War” – The Oregon Symphony under Carlos Kalmar play Ives, Adams, Britten, and Vaughan Williams on a Pentatone Release Highly Recommended! by Michael Miller

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Carlos Kalmar

Music for a Time of War
The Oregon Symphony
Sanford Sylvan, Baritone
Carlos Kalmar, Music Director, Conducting

Pentatone Classics
PTC 5186 393

Charles Ives (1874-1954) – The Unanswered Question (1906, rev. c. 1930-1935)
Jeffrey Work, Trumpet

John Adams (b. 1947) – The Wound-Dresser (1989)
Sanford Sylvan, Baritone
Jun Iwasaki, Violin

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) – Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20 (1940)
Lacrymosa (Andante ben misurato)
Dies Irae (Allegro con fuoco)
Requiem Aeternam (Andante molto tranquillo)

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) – Symphony No. 4 in F minor (1931-1934)
Allegro
Andante moderato
Scherzo: Allegro molto
Finale con epilogo fugato: Allegro molto – con anima

The Review has quite a backlog of recordings piled up, and we hope to make our way through as many as we can. I especially wanted to make note of this full concert recording by the Oregon Symphony, not only because our own Steven Kruger wrote the perceptive and witty program notes, but because of its exceptional musical quality and its truly extraordinary recording. A multichannel recording from Pentatone Classics, which released the Berlin concert performance of Der fliegende Holländer under Marek Janowski reviewed a few months ago, it amazed me with its timbral and spatial naturalness. It most definitely belongs in the reference collection of any audiophile, whether they are inclined to multichannel playback or not. I listened to it in stereo on headphones, using an SACD-compatible player.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!


The Night of the Iguana

Stephanie Moffett Hynds and Doug Ryan, Photo: Sherry Recinellas

By Keith Kibler

Art is a hungry master, often demanding no less than all. Chekhov's Nina, at the end of "The Seagull," found this to be a drudgery, but there are many of the un-famous out there who render homage to the quest. Few professions require the level of perseverance that a life in the arts demands. Yet those who do persist, many unsung, make rare things every day and enjoy the inestimable privilege of hearing Shakespeare and Mozart come out of their mouths. Being an artist is making the trip to Baudelaire's island. Once you have heard that performance or two which cannot be forgotten, which showed you what was really in the piece, which made you feel that this was the performance you always knew but hadn't heard – there is no going back. You have heard the horns of Elfland faintly blowing. So I go to Cambridge, New York, and sit in the maternal arms of Hubbard Hall. Here I have heard fully competitive actors in great works and not getting rich. I will not forget what I saw a few nights ago, in John Hadden's production of Tennessee Williams' "The Night of the Iguana." The role of Hannah in this rambling play, which is somehow a slow mover and melodramatic at the same time, was taken by Stephanie Moffett Hynds. This character is travelling the world with her ancient poet-grandfather, drawing portraits for survival money, it being long past the time that the old man could produce a poem for cash money. In the course of the production, the actress playing Hannah has to be, by turns, a Nantucket spinster, a con-artist, a loving granddaughter, a loner, a wooer of a highly-unsuitable man, someone who is able to see her one carnal adventure (a sordid one at that) as a kind of love, and finally at the end assume tragic stature by applying her muse-like encouragements, and hearing the greatness of the poem her grandfather finally writes. Then he dies. Then she loses the mate she might have had. Tennessee Williams! Ms. Moffett Hynds is the most lyrical actress I know – the actress whose voice affects me physically more than any other, except possibly for Rocco Sisto (I look forward very much to hearing Mr. Sisto speak – or is it sing? – a great description of music as Calaban in this summer's Shakespeare and Company's "The Tempest"). It is really the very sound of Ms. Moffett Hynds' voice which arrests you. There is a strange and original connectedness in her speaking that makes me feel that her ear imagines differently from other actors'. It sneaks up on you. It is also remarkably versatile, easily able, it seems, to find the right music for each of the roles I have listed above. The largest capability she has is making this into a single thing. I saw this in a Hubbard Hall "Private Lives" which became something profound in her hands. This is an A-list actress, one of the best I have seen.

Richard Howe gave the best performance I have seen from him as the old poet. His recitation of the poem at the end of the play (that's right – verse written by Tennessee Williams) was deep. Like so much that happens in a Williams' drama, it was a rescued melodramatic event, a Liebestod. Mr. Howe was not the only one who had tears in his eyes at the end. Still, even what the old man is able to make seemed more like an extension of the innate beauty that Stephanie Moffett Hynds' Hannah left on the stage. There were also fine performances from Doug Ryan as Shannon, who was more bewildered than crazy and spoke some lines softly which had great beauty. Christine Decker, Katherine Stevenson, and Kim Johnson Turner all convinced, without overplaying their parts. Hadden's direction let the actors act. It had a welcome openness in it.

American Mavericks at Davies Hall: the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas and Friends Play Cage, Foss, Cowell, and Ruggles, by Steven Kruger


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Jessye Norman, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Meredith Monk in John Cage's "Song Books"

The San Francisco Symphony
Davies Hall, San Francisco
Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
Meredith Monk, Joan La Barbara, Jessye Norman, vocalists
Jeremy Denk, piano

Cage – Song Books (1970)
Foss – Phorion (1967)
Cowell – Piano Concerto (1928)
Ruggles – Sun Treader (1931)

Revolutions, the saying goes, are frequently revisited as farce. If only one knew it at the time! In the ferment of the 1970s, a seeming battle to the death played itself out among advocates of dodecaphonic music and the apostles of deconstructed “happenings.” Both insurgencies would ultimately lose. But the arrogance of the revolutionaries was no different in music from what it would have been in politics. The average listener hoping for Brahms found himself besieged in those days—contemptuously marginalized in either camp—-and marked for replacement. That is always the frightening dimension of revolution: the smugness of the cook breaking eggs for the new omelette—-and the suspicion that you may be one of the eggs.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!


On Wisconsin, Part 1: Highlights from MadMOCA

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Paul Shambroom, "Dassel, Minnesota, City Council March 15, 1999” inkjet on canvas with varnish

The global art scene certainly is alive and well in Madison, Wisconsin. Evidence: the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MadMOCA), which contained three decent shows, two small shows and then a main event surrounding the life of Houdini.

Read the full review
 on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!








A BR Exclusive: Superstarchitect Jefe Anglesdottir’s First Project in the Hub! by Alan Miller

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“I call this project “soft traces and unstable vectors.” It is situated at Alewife, in what one might call the ‘wild west’ of Cambridge, a place where one encounters a series of relentlessly traced layerings of the urban condition, more like concrete brushstrokes rather than a congealed city. There is a sense of theatrical passage, even when standing still. A highway. Some trace of savage swampland. The forlornness of parking. Squirrels."

Read all about Herre Anglesdottir's vision on the Berkshire Review, an international journal of the arts!

A BR Exclusive: Superstarchitect Jefe Anglesdottir’s First Project in the Hub!, by Alan Miller

Project Target Area.

In the architect’s own words:

“I call this project “soft traces and unstable vectors.” It is situated at Alewife, in what one might call the ‘wild west’ of Cambridge, a place where one encounters a series of relentlessly traced layerings of the urban condition, more like concrete brushstrokes rather than a congealed city. There is a sense of theatrical passage, even when standing still. A highway. Some trace of savage swampland. The forlornness of parking. Squirrels.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!


Opera Houses in the City, Part I: The Palais Garnier (English Version) by Alan Miller

Paon

Imagine a peacock at the Paris Opéra. Having taken the Métro eastwards from his digs in the heavenly Parc de Bagatelle, he passes the intermission munching an eight euro canapé. As we stare at the cultured bird, we find his feathers blurring into the architecture. Does the peacock, we wonder, prove that ornament is hard-wired into nature? This is not a “modernist” bird, a bird with clean lines and sharp edges like an Australian King Parrot. Like the Garnier, the patterns of the peacock’s plumage are subtle and layered, they seem to curl in on themselves until, through modern eyes, it is difficult to read in the ornament anything but beauty itself. This is a particular kind of beauty, one which provokes émerveillement rather than analysis.

Read the rest at the Berkshire Review, an international journal of the arts!