Shakespeare (and Purcell) on Love

Great art spans the centuries.  Banal statement I guess, but when one sees an example of a piece of work first created in 1594, expanded in form in 1692 and reinterpreted in 2010 and when the audience is still wildly enthusiastic, then you know it is great art.  The Fairy Queen, which was presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last week, is a 17th century semi-opera or masque based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream.  It is seldom performed because the various moving parts of this work are incredibly complicated.  First you need a complete set of actors to perform A Midsummer's Night Dream.  Then you need an orchestra with period (Baroque) instruments, vocal performers including a countertenor, and an imaginative conductor and musicologist who can translate Purcell's bare-boned score for his performers.  Apparently Purcell wrote only the notes with no indications of dynamics or tempo. In addition, the libretto for the staging of the masque was extremely complicated.  Yet when all these moving parts were put into motion at BAM, we all were treated to the roller coaster ride of love.

There were five acts to this masque.  At the beginning of each act the basic plot of MSN is presented and this adheres very closely to Shakespeare's beloved play with the four lovers lost in the fairyland and Titania, Queen of the Fairies fighting with Oberon King of the Elves.  Oberon uses magic which confuses both the four lovers and results in Titania falling in love with Bottom, the buffoonish member of the "mechanicals".  The 17th century audience, however, preferred music and dancing added to their performances so an unknown librettist and Purcell wrote set pieces which were performed at the end of each act.  These were the "masques" and they required very elaborate staging and each had a set theme: Sleep, Seduction, Seasons, Marriage. 

This performance, which also won rave reviews at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival and the Paris Opera Comique, combined traditional 17th century settings and costumes with contemporary concepts.  Greg, the purist, was not sure how he would like this presentation but the results were fantastic.  If you check out the link at the beginning you'll be rewarded with a video which highlights many of the scenes.  Sleep reminded all of us of the power of dreams as we watched dancers and heard singers through a shroud of darkness. More pictures of the Masque of Sleep cand be found in the The New York Times Review.

The interpretation of Seduction was hilarious, and I'll never be able to see a stuffed Easter bunny again without visualizing 20+ lifesize bunnies screwing on the set in time to the music. The Seasons were controlled by the Sun God, pictured above as he descends from the heavens on a golden horse.  When all the lovers were reconciled in the 5th act, they watched Bottom and his gang of "Mechanicals" (in this case Custodians) perform the most hysterical, slapstick Pyramus and Thisbe that I have ever seen.  This was followed by the "Masque of Marriage" in which a very sexy, figleafed Adam and Eve manage to morph into the most modern, vacouous, 20th century lovers complete with surfing clothes for Adam and designer shoes for Eve. 

It is hard to do justice to this work but you may want to listen to a haunting highlight from the music which summarizes all the vagaries of love:

If love's a sweet passion why does it torment?


If a bitter, oh tell me, whence comes my content?

Since I suffer with pleasure, why should I complain,

or grieve at my fate, when I know it's in vain?

Yet so pleasing the pain is so soft as the dart,

That at once it both wounds me and tickles my heart

Egypt at its Grandest

It was appropriate that I would look out the Eyrie window on Monday and see the Egyptian god Anubis floating down the East River with his entourage.  Anubis knew that Greg and I would be transported on Friday night to Thebes and Memphis (Egypt, not Tennessee) to witness the tribulations of the Ethiopian slave princess, Aida, who is torn between her love for Radames and her love for her native country.  Radames, true to grand opera form, is loved by Aida's mistress, Amneris, who is also the daughter of the Pharaoh.  Thus a standard love triangle is set amid the fantastic Egyptian monuments and glorious colors of turquoise, lapis and gold.  The more important "coloring" in this late Verdi opera is the magnificent scoring known for its use of local "color" in which Verdi use chromatic and contrapuntal themes to evoke the local sounds of Egypt.  Think for example of the melodic diminished 3d in the chorus in Act I Scene ii.  (Ha! The only reason I can write this pretentiously is that I'm sitting here referring to The Grove Book of Operas.)  But it would be nice to be able to explain more why I love the music of Aida and to find a way to describe the exquisite music.

Amazingly, I think I know the entire score of Aida but we've only seen it performed once when we were on our poor student honeymoon in 1971 and saw the tourist production at the Baths of Caracella.  Years of listening to the Leontyne Price CD have firmly embedded the score in my head, but I think it is also easy to remember because the score matches the plot so well.  Last night's performance at the Met was truly Grand Opera-the staging was dramatic and evocative.  It recalled the wonderful ruins, particularly of Abu Simbel, that we saw in our 1996 trip to Egypt. ( In fact, Greg may have "seen" more of these Egyptian monuments last night than he did at Abu Simbel where we was struck with the curse of the Pharoah and violently ill.)  I'm disappointed that none of my usual sources can supply a good photo of last night's production because the sets were fantastic.  Two scenes visually stood out:  Radames is given his marching orders in the Temple of Vulcan and the handmaidens moved slowly and deliberately from the altar to the floor.  Suddenly all those murals and heiroglyphics of ancient Egyptians came to life for me.  The Act II, scene ii staging of the triumphal march into the public scale was filled with hundreds of extras and several horses. Alexei Ratmansky choreographed the ballet to suggest ancient folk dancing which I liked.  But of course, the most important element-the music-was also well served by lead singers.   Radames was performed by Salvatore Licitra whom Greg also saw as Calaf in Turandot in January and Dolora Zajick sang Amneris. This performance was the Met debut of a new Chinese soprano, Hui He, in the title role of Aida.

We'll have an additional exposure to Egypt on Monday evening when we join Dr. Yassin El-Ayouti for dinner.  Yassin was introduced to us by Father Bob of Cornell Catholic Community and he is the founder of Sunsglow a center for Global Training in the Rule of Law.  Greg will be participating on the Sunsglow Board at future meetings.  And what was Anubis doing on the East River?  He was announcing a new King Tut exhibit opening in Times Square later in April.    Ironically all this exposure to Egypt comes at a time when I've decided not to go to Egypt and Israel with Greg this summer, so the opera and the exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum will have to satisfy my interest in the kingdoms of the Nile.

The View From the Bridge

From the window of the Eagle's Eyrie I can see five of the old piers that for so many years were part of Brooklyn's thriving shipping industry. The photo above shows these piers and our Brooklyn Heights neighborhood from the Manhattan side of the East River.   Today, after twenty years the city opened Pier One,  the first of an ambitious plan to turn these old docks into the Brooklyn Bridge parks.  I've been wondering what life must have been like in Brooklyn when these piers were the lifeblood for many immigrant workers and the mob controlled the wharves as in the great  1954 Elia Kazan movie On the Waterfront  which starred Marlon Brando.  Back then the struggling immigrants were Italians, who fled Europe to earn enough money to feed their starving families back home and would stand outside the docks and hope that the longshoremen bosses would choose them for the daily jobs unloading the boats.  This doesn't sound much different than the Hispanic "illegals" who hope they'll get some day labor in New York or on Long Island or in the meat-packing towns in the mid-west does it?

Saturday night Greg and I went to see the revival of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge which stars Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber.  This play is classic Miller-an understated tragedy that occurs in the confines of family and home.  Apparently the plot was based on a true story that Miller heard from a lawyer friend when Miller lived in Brooklyn Heights.  It concerned an Italian longshoreman in the Red Hook nieghborhood (which is about 3 miles from here) who snitched on the illegal cousins who were living with him because he was jealous when his young ward (his niece) fell in love with one of them.  A tragic, violent ending results from this act of jealousy and treachery. There were some background stories about Miller's intent in writing this play.  These range from his appreciation of the tragic influence lust can wield on a seemingly good person (based on how he treated his wife after he met Marilyn Monroe) to a response to Elia Kazan for his testimony ("snitching') to the 1952 House Un-American Activities Committee).  The acting and production of this play was excellent, although it didn't grab Greg and me as much as we expected it to.  In retrospect I think its because Miller did too good a job of being understated.  Now that plays and movies have dialogue that holds no bars, his dialogue outlining  the underlying tensions in the family seemed almost too subtle.  The view from my "eyrie" is of a Brooklyn waterfront that has lost its dynamic economic past and is now being groomed to be a pastoral recreation destination but still hovers in a state of sad underdevelopment and lost influence.

City Hall Trifecta

Last Thursday I didn't even know about the beautiful New York City Hall and City Hall Park, and today (Sunday) I can report having been there three times in the past three days!  Who would of thunk it?  Friday was an absolutely glorious day so I decided to set out on my goal of walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and exploring downtown Manhattan.  The pedestrian walkway for the Bridge ends right at City Hall Park (whereas whenever we drive it we exit onto FDR Drive hence my ignorance).  This wonderful spot of green in the heart of downtown was orginally the green pastureland of the Common established by the original Dutch settlers. When the decision to build a new City Hall in a new United States of America was made in 1776 many thought this location was too far "north" of the city but the open space was already available and in 1811 the beautiful French Renaissance and Georgian building was completed.  The Park was renovated multiple times, the lastest in 1999.  The Giuliani administration restored several features of the Park including the wonderful Mould Fountain with its gas lamps.  There is a fascinating circular monument at the entrance which traces the history of the park in about 8 different time periods, mapping out the changes in buildings and roadways over the past 300 years. This was a very helpful tool for me as I have been reading the great history of New York Gotham and the maps reinforced what I had been learning.

During my Friday excursion I also walked through St. Paul's Chapel which is adjacent to the World Trade Center site and which served as a refuge and vital resource center for the many volunteers.  Amazing that George Washington worshipped here and yet it also served such a pivotal role on 9/11/2001! From St. Paul's I went into the 9/11 Memorial Center, which demonstrates the stages of the rebuilding effort and shows the architectural plans for the Memorial.  I tried to remember the status is of this development, as I know there have been many setbacks to this ambitious project, but assume that the center reflects the current status.    After I left Ground Zero I walked down Fulton Street to see the South Street  Seaport to take a close-hand look at many of the skyscrapers that I see everyday from my window.  I hope to have my photos posted on Flickr within the next week as I took quite a number.  It was such a lovely day and, standing on the wharf for the New Jersey ferries, or watching the helicopters leave from the heliport, was liberating (although I did wonder what it felt like for the New Jersey commuters one week ago when they had to stand on the wharf in the downpour!)

Saturday night Greg and I found ourselves at City Hall around 11 p.m.; while it was interesting to see it at night we hadn't planned on being there desperately seeking a cab.  The MTA has had many late night/weekend changes to their routes and we thought we were being clever avoiding the 2/3 line after going to a play by taking the 4/5/6 line.  Alas, there was no access to Brooklyn without taking a variety of complicated transfers so we opted to get out at City Hall and grab a cab.  Not a smart choice.  We were just heading to walk home across the Brookyn Bridge when we found a cab.  I was willing to take the nighttime walk, which would have been beautiful, but I had very uncomfortable shoes on and knew I'd be miserable.  Lesson learned: always check the MTA trip planner before going anywhere!

Sunday morning I headed over to Chambers Street and the West Side Highway to cheer Beth on in the NYC Half Marathon.  It was a beautiful day and I grabbed a good viewing spot near the finish line.  Beth did a wonderful job, although she was clearly in pain, and finished in 1 hour 39 minutes.  She was disappointed by her time-typically demanding higher standards for herself.  But the run also nettted money for GHESKIO from many generous sponsors.  It was such a fantastic day and I was so inspired by the runners that I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and walked home from the West Side of Manhattan.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I managed to visit City Hall Park three times in three days!

Alas! poor Yorick

Yorick wasn't in the Metropolitan Opera's new production of the French composer, Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet when it premiered on Tuesday evening and he missed an excellent performance.  This version abridges much of the plot-in fact the original version had a happy ending.  Yet, I found myself connecting more with Hamlet's angst during the opera than I recall understanding it as an undergraduate when I last read the play.  Perhaps it's the wisdom that comes with age, but it could also be that the opera cut to the essential conflict of regicide and sexual tension.  The outstanding baritone Simon Keenlyside was a compelling and virile actor, and the other principal performers were as strong actors as they were as singers.   For the first time I understood Hamlet's repulsion that his mother had married his uncle within two months of his father's death.  Jennifer Larmore, the mezzo soprano who played Queen Gertrude had a youthful figure and commanding profile and I could sense the Oedipal conflict between Hamlet and his mother much more vividly.  "Commanding profile" puts it kindly-her high forehead looks frightful in the photo above but from the Grand Tier where I sat she looked convincingly like one of the upper East Side "lemon tarts" who are thin and stylish. 

The nineteenth century musical score, much like Lucia di Lammermoor, was romantic and brooding. I had wanted to see this opera in order to see Natalie Dessay play Ophelie as well as Keenlyside.  But Dessay withdrew due to illness and a young German soprano stepped in at the last minute. There is a fascinating short video on the NYTimes review that documents the last minute flurry to get Marlis Petersen prepared for the role.  Her voice was beautiful, so clear as a bell that for a minute I wondered if she was amplified as her sweet tone reached me in my upper level seats. And her Act IV mad scene was painfully beautiful.  So I may not have seen a classic Dessay performance, but I think I saw the debut of a major new star.  Only time will tell.  Oh, and this Hamlet maintained the tragic ending, so as Keenlyside fell to the stage I could only think "Good night sweet prince," flights of angels sang thee to thy rest.

East Side-West Side All Around the Town

Greetings from the soggy Sidewalks of New York.  This weekend our good friends, Wendy Wilkes and Jim Krier, joined us for the New York experience and we traveled to the east side, west side, uptown and downtown all in the midst of torrential rain and wind.  Saturday night we went to one of Zagat's top rated restaurants, Daniel, for our fanciest New York meal.  It was exquisite, but also edible, "small and fancy" food.  I say "edible" because some of the menus of the top rated restaurants don't even appeal to me any more but we all were happy with our choices at Daniel. I can tell I'm getting old because my palate has stayed in the late 60's early 70's for what I consider haute cuisine.  Daniel is located in a beautiful, intimate room on the upper East Side. A sign of the times was the large, expensive painting downstairs outside the lounges.  It was of a young man looking at his Blackberry.  I came out from the ladies room to encounter a young man looking at his Blackberry standing next to the painting and he could have been the model. 
Jim grabbed a cab in the downpour and we headed down to the trendy new midtown apartment of his son, Andrew, on the 39th floor across from the Empire State Building.  Many of you know I've been "burned" by Google and I've learned my lesson.  Don't put the names of real people who might get googled in this blog.  So I have to be cryptic about Andrew.  Andrew is a very well known celebrity the "late-nineties-party-starter turned record-producer/motivational-speaker/ general-jack-of-all-trades" to quote New York Magazine  His stage name is Andrew followed by the initials of his hyphenated surname (Wendy's surname-Jim's Surname).  But if I put his real name in this blog it might come up when fans are searching and Andrew would not like for them to read the observations of a 61 year old lady who remembers him from when he was an adorable boy playing with Beth in the swimming pool.  Andrew is a singer, songwriter, performer, nightclub owner, motivational speaker and an ever-evolving art form.  So getting to visit with him fit in with all my recent performance art experiences.  He and his lovely wife, Cherie, shared their fantastic view with us and gave us a tour of his apartment (with Andrew's studio in the center of the living room).  Cherie is also a performer and the two of them appeared in a photo layout in the February issue of Elle.  Then Andrew hailed two cabs (now that there were five of us we couldn't take one) and we went downtown to the outskirts of Chinatown to his club (which I also won't name to avoid a Google link).  There are over 300 live music Clubs in New York and we always see the under 30 crowd on the subway going downtown at 11:00 p.m. just when we are heading home from the opera to go to bed.  So I was thrilled to have the opportunity to head into one of these secret societies and learn how about the next wave of avant garde (?!) culture. We were able to bypass the rope line, pass the bouncers, and enter a very dark room with 100,000 watts of sound (that's what the website says).  Your body moved just from the sound and since Greg had been fighting migraines all day we did not last long and quickly left.  Next time I'll wear earplugs so I can last longer and actually see more dancing.  We returned home to the bad news we had been dreading:  before we left for dinner Jim notice that the elevator was leaking water.  When we left the elevator didn't work and when we returned we learned both elevators were water damaged.  So after our night on the town it was 11 flights up to the apartment.  Not a great way to host one's guests.

Sunday it was uptown, upper West Side for a trip to the Museum of Natural History and their Silk Road exhibit.  This was an interesting, but not great, exhibit that walked you through the route from Xi'an China (which Greg and I visited in 2008) to Baghdad via the silk road of the middle ages.  Highlights included a demonstration of how silk is made, Arabic writing and scientific instruments, spices and dyes and perfumes, and the spread of religion. There was an interesting article in yesterday's New York Times about European mummies found in the Taklimakan Desert.  I never heard of the Taklimakan Desert until Sunday so this obviously widened my horizons.  We next wearily meandered through the  dinosaurs and we were through for the day.

You know you have good friends when the real highlights of the visit were sitting around the living room, reading the Sunday New York Times, eating pizza and watching The Pacific.  We were sorry to see Jim and Wendy go on Monday, but I suspect they were happy to leave the 11 story walk-up.

Marina Abramovic-The Artist is Present, Clothed and Recreated, Unclothed

On Thursday, March 11, when  I went to MOMA to see the William Kentridge exhibit (which I discussed in the prior blog) I discovered that it was the first day of a "members only" preview of the new Marina Abramovic exhibit.  I knew getting a membership was a good idea!   So I took the opportunity to participate in yet another mind-expanding introduction to performance art.  The exhibition covers the forty odd years of  work by this very distinctive woman, born in Yugoslavia in 1946-so she is a contemporary of ours but her life is very different from the country mouse from Ithaca.

The actual performance art for The Artist is Present involves her sitting at a table in MOMA's atrium.  If members of the audience want to join her one can. I took a renegade (blurry) picture which is posted above.  "Presence" defines the experience.When I saw her, I was reminded of a favorite book of Ted's "Be Here Now" which encourages one to live in the moment.  Abramovic will sit in the atrium, motionless like this, until May 31 and if she succeeds it will be her longest performance ever which is saying something because she has challenged herself for these forty years.  The rest of the exhibit documents and recreates the history of her canon of performance art and is getting plenty of press.

Undoubtedly some of the buzz is because of the nudity of the artists as this YouTube/AP video illustrates.  I chose to not walk between the nude doorway...was it because I felt so fat next to the lithe models?  I was most interested in Luminosity in which a nude woman is perched on a wall, sitting on a bicycle seat like a human clock. She very slowly moves her arms from the 9 and 3 position to the 12 noon position.  I watched her diaphragm because this seems to be exceedingly hard on the body.  It made me think of a crucifixion.  There are reviews and commentary galore about this exhibit on the web now so if you want to see more just Google Marina Abramovic-The Artist is Present.  I don't know if this is great art, but I was very happy that I turned up at MOMA on the opening preview day and had the luxury of walking through a very uncrowded exhibition because the lines for this show are going to get very long.  And as a personal aside, I took some comfort in the fact the Abramovic now prefers to "perform" in a long dark dress and she may not have the same lithe body she did when she first did these works.  I can relate to her better as a peer when she is clothed.

The Nose-Three Artists Span Three Centuries

The great Russian author, Nikolai Gogol wrote HOC (The Nose) in the 19th century and the great Russian composer, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the opera The Nose in the 20th century.  Finally in the 21st century the South African artist, William Kentridge framed this amazing piece in a production that premiered at the Metropolitan Opera this past week.  The Met's production is a breathtaking integration of literature, music and art that felt like it was written by three contemporaries who were sitting in one room rather than three men separated by two hundred years and thousands of miles.

If you know The Nose you'll know what a difficult plot this satirical short story would be to build into an operatic storyline.  If you know Shostakovich's music you'll know that its dissonant modernism is a far cry from the lyricism we associate with composers like Verdi and Puccini.  But William Kentridge has spent his career building live action stories that tie the use of jolting visual imagery to music and I wonder now how any other director could face the challenge of mounting The Nose better than Kentridge.  I knew very little about Kentridge but took advantage of an exhibition at MOMA "Five Themes" just prior to viewing the opera and the back-to-back experience was remarkable.  Kentridge's work has spanned South Africa's painful history of apartheid and reconciliation and Kentridge produces animated artwork that builds on successive layers of charcoal drawings that grow and dissolve as the film progresses. His work is also deeply personal and he includes two alter egos "Soho Eckstine" and "Felix Teitelbaum" in his films. What is truly unique about his work is the precise manner in which sound is "married" to the imagery.  It is very difficult for a non-art critic such as me to explain this to you, but I encourage you to look at the link if you are interested. 

Kentridge translated many of his themes and techniques to the Met stage, and after viewing his animations I knew he would be a perfect translator of the dynamic sounds of Shostakovich's opera and the alienation experienced by the unfortunate bureaucrat, Kovalyov, who wakes one day to find his nose missing.  Words and fantastic images are continually  flashed across the proscenium while Muscovites mingle with the giant Nose who shows up in the Kazan Cathedral, on the Nevsky Prospect, or at the Railway Station. Intimate scenes take place in small inset rooms cut out of the massive projection of words and images.  Happily for this blogger, the New York Times has compiled a wonderful audio slideshow which gives you "A Sense of the Nose"  Finally, I need to close this entry with comments on the wonderful orchestration and singing that went with this amazing visual exploration.  Ordinarily I spend most of my time describing the music at the Met, and I want to emphasize that the vocal and orchestral performances were every bit as wonderful as the sound and light show that dazzled this viewer.

Divine Vespers

Greg loves Baroque music and was thrilled to discover that Boston Baroque was performing the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 on Saturday evening (March 6).  This was the first performance by Boston Baroque in New York City in 25 years and they were celebrating the 400th anniversary of this piece.  Other "early music" groups plan to also perform the Monteverdi Vespers this year.  These are orchestras that use replicas of the unusual instruments that were popular in the Baroque period and being able to see a live concert is a unique experience. (Of course my Cornell friends are spoiled because Malcolm Bilson will frequently conduct "early" chamber music recitals.  But a full orchestra and chorus is a real treat.)  I've linked us to the New York Times review of the piece if you care to learn more, or you can hear a recording from another group.  I think Greg and I love this music because it reinforces our Catholic traditions and we can imagine ourselves worshipping in St. Mark's in Venice 400 years ago, referring to a liturgy that we know and love.

The performance took place at the magnificent Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Columbia's campus. That is Greg walking up the aisle to our seats in the nave in the photo above.   This is the largest cathedral in the world, and like the great cathedral's of Europe it is still a work in progress even though the cornerstone was laid in 1892 because they are using traditional Gothic engineering and construction.  It's hard to find a good stonemason these days!  I remember going to the St. John the Divine when I was 12 and taking a tour of the massive bell tower.  When they mentioned the bells would chime in 5 minutes, I took one look at them and at the height we were at and I panicked and quickly hightailed it downstairs.  My family knows I was a pretty plucky 12 year old, so this fear was in response to the massive size of the towers and bells.  We really enjoyed our first trek up to Columbia and will return in a few weeks during the day time to see the campus.

The Joy of Being in the Company of Loved Ones

I always count the days that I can spend alone with my adult children as priceless, for I know that I won't have many more of these occasions.  I was reminded of this gift by one of those chain email recollections on "Being A Mother" sent by my wonderful sister-in-law, Jan.  Seems like a nice way to tie together today's blog entry.

Ted arrived back at the apartment on Monday evening having spent Sunday and Monday at a "meet and greet" for potential PhD candidates at NYU.  We had a good evening reviewing all the exciting but intimidating options he now has for graduate school.  Tuesday I took the subway with him to Grand Central Station where he caught a train to Yale for another "meet and greet" and I went to the Morgan Library for their exhibit A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy.  Austen destroyed her novel manuscripts, but that rapacious capitalist J.P. Morgan did manage to buy up a large portion of her correspondence to her beloved sister Cassandra.  Reading these intimate letters (in tiny handwriting to conserve precious paper) was a glimpse into a household of loving sisters but also a preview of Austen's wonderful powers of observation into human nature.  Ted returned to the apartment Wednesday evening and we had three (precious) hours together as I helped him organize his busy travel schedule.  I told him I gained my experience at multiple cross country trips from my consulting days.

Friday evening I was able to enjoy Beth's company at a wonderful performance of Brahm's Piano Concerto #1 in D Minor by Andras Schiff with Riccardo Muti conducting the New York Philharmonic.  I became a "Friend of the Philharmonic" this year and two nice benefits are free tickets to open rehearsals and "last minute" cheap tickets to concerts-I guess they'd rather fill the seats at $29 which makes everyone happy. This is one of my favorite piano concertos, with dramatic, passionate outbursts (the opening notes of the orchestra  from a kettle drum knock you out of your seat).  Once again we were in the rafters, but I brought my opera glasses with me and concentrated on Schiff's hands as he attacked the challenging piece.  As  you may have noted, I love learning about the biographies of the great artists and am especially taken with how many of them produced such phenomenal work in their youth.  Brahms wrote this piece in his twenties shortly after meeting the Schumann's, Robert and Clara, who were his mentors.  Robert had serious mental health issues and tried to commit suicide- he died a few years after being  institutionalized.  The piano concerto was written during this tumultuous two year year period.  Brahms became an extremely close (platonic) companion of Clara and he provided her family with support and she provided him with guidance on his music.  The concerto recalls both the tumult of the psychological upheavals as well as the comfort (in the adagio) of the loving relationship with Clara.  My mother used to always say that biography was much more compelling than novels and it seems like each of my exposures to art and music reinforce this observation.

Finally, on Saturday afternoon I watched the joy others had in the companionship of loved ones as I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge on the first warm, sunny day in many weeks. It was pleasantly crowded.  I hope you are enjoying your loved ones also!

For my 61st birthday-Time stood still

For 2010, my fortunate year, I was granted the additional good fortune of having a birthday that straddled the weekend.  Beth arrived Saturday afternoon and proceeded to whip up a chocolate cake for me and we had a fun dinner together and she spent the night. (Confession time: I gave up chocolate for Lent but we all agreed I could break my resolution since it was my birthday).  Ted was supposed to have rounded out the meal, but because his flight was cancelled by the blizzard it was just the three of us. On my actual birthday Sunday we went out to brunch together.  In the afternoon Greg and I went to the play Time Stands Still, which only partially justifies the pun in the title.

Laura Linney led the cast of a play described as "flawless" by Charles Ishwerwood in the New York Times review ( linked above-and this link has some interesting video).  Time doesn't stand still for "Sarah Goodwin" either, and the play follows her physical recovery from devastating IED injuries suffered as a war photographer in Iraq.  As she tried to re-acclimate herself to life in a "safe" Brooklyn loft she confronts her incompatibility with lovers and friends who are trying to negotiate their personal empathy for victims of war and suffering with an innate desire to have a happy, safe life for themselves.  I think Laura Linney is a subtle yet powerful actress and this role was an excellent vehicle for her talents.

Following the play we went out to a dinner at an elegant and charming northern Italian restaurant Bottega del Vino on 59th street.  Beth saw an actress from Gossip Girls there, but if you want to know who she was you'll have to email me and I'll ask Beth (you know me and names!).  Meantime Ted finally arrived at LaGuardia and made his way to the NYU Open House and then he spent the night with students.  I finally got to see him on Monday evening after NYU and before he left for Yale.  It was a wonderful visit and a wonderful birthday weekend.

Oh brave new world!

The Tempest at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the second of director Sam Mendes' Bridge Project which mounted two Shakespearean plays, drew us into a wonderful, magical world on Friday night.  This is such a beautiful play, full of mystery and wonder, and once again the Bridge Project production created this world through a wonderful repertory cast, original music, creative staging.  Greg and I saw As You Like It in late January (as you may recall from this blog) and the cast members re-connected with us immediately.  Mendes also linked the two plays together visually through his casting, costumes and scenery.  We left the theatre with much food for thought.  Once again I'm going to list some highlights rather than make any attempt at an intelligent, coherent review of the entire production.  Mendes and the Bridge Project were certainly intelligent and coherent; but I'm not.

• Stephen Dillane's Prospero was an author, scholar, and creator of this magical world. (Dillane also played the skeptical, melancholy Jacques in AYLI).  Dillane straddled the audience and the stage before the play began, sitting with the show's violinist reviewing Prospero's yellowing manuscripts and precious books while we 21st century humans settled into our seats.  But then Prospero gets up, puts on his robe and begins to circle the sand  sprinkling water from a bucket in a ritualistic fashion.  He moves slowly but then moves quickly around and around the diameter and we are pulled into his world as water is pulled down the drain.  We are now ready to suspend disbelief and become inhabitants of this tropical island originally populated by witches.
• Christian Carmargo (the romantic hero in AYLI) is now the androgynist sprite Ariel and he ushers in the magical spells in a variety of costumes ranging from a fearsome bird of prey to a slinky seductress.  Yet he is a most appealing sprite, longing for freedom as he caters to Prospero's demands.
• Caliban is both loathsome and pitiable, emerging from the center of the sand pit with first one hand piercing its way through the stage floor and then his pathetic, unhappy head (much like Gollum) whining about his misfortunes.

• Caliban's is even more loathsome when he is seen next to the radiantly beautiful Miranda whose eyes widen at the sights beyond her imagination and limited experience when the "Brave new world, that has such people in't" lands on her isolated, primitive island.  Juliet Rylance is as entrancing as the naive Miranda as she was as Rosalind charmingly confused by love in AYLI. 
• Miranda and her new love, Ferdinand, are allowed a glimpse of their glorious future IF they refrain from consumating their love until they can be properly married (oh that all we parents had the same power as Prospero!)

• Mendes "twins" some of the characters:  the evil usurping brother Antonio is the same actor in the same tuxedoed costume as Oliver in AYLI.  The loyal Gonzalo in the Tempest is the same as Adam whose touching death in AYLI moved me.

All the action was held together by a magical set in which sand and water were subtly controlling the lives of the shipwrecked characters.  Ethereal music from drums and wind instruments enchanted both the characters and audience.  In the end, we (the audience) had to release Prospero with our applause which we agreed to reluctantly because no one wanted the magic to end.