Three Days of Rain, Richard Greenberg’s 1997 Pulitzer-Prize-nominated play ends its stream midnight tonight Sunday (book to receive a link).
The genius of this play is simplicity. Never making statements, suggesting only questions. And in doing so, inclusive for everyone not just a well heeled liberal elite. There is an ending, but your ending is equally valid. There is a story, but it could be your story. Another room. Another street. Another reaching out for the truth.
The musical Fiddler on the Roof seems so 'tame' nowadays. Is that so true? If so, how did that ever happen!!!! The world, now, alas, isn't that much different. But there are tectonic political forces at work. Who in fact 'coined' the American nomenclature 'resident alien' ? How could a benevolent country even sanction such a phrase? Beggars belief, just as Roosevelt's send back the Jews policy in 1920 beggars many questions also. Fact: Trump got his planning permission for a Mar al Lago club (after being refused demolishing and building his own launch pad to heaven;) by stating that it would be the only place in Florida friendly to Jews and Afro-Americans. He got his Mar-al-Lago on that. Fact!
I feel heaven and there's no-one there….
Ragtime, a great novel that made it to a great musical. Times haven't changed…will lessons be learned…
Why is it that I want to live in a Disney movie Alan Menken?! Surely I'd be a better 'first-responder’ there than here! :()
History does beggar belief. Doesn't it always? Caught a Zoom event for London Art Week (should be posted on their YouTube site but seems to take a while) about female British artists over the last two centuries. 80% of the names will be unfamiliar to most, unjustifiably so. One known, sculptor Barbara Hepworth is quoted as recalling that when she went to a well-known art college in London in 1960 there was still a sign stating: Woman are not allowed in the welding room.
Maestra (a female musician data-base/collective/mentoring organization founded by Georgia Stitt) held a Zoom event/fund raiser this evening. You may say: well they've been loads of female musicians over the decades. Well, in reality, not really when it comes to hiring for Broadway pit players and elsewhere. And when the facts are presented it's quite shocking. Well. No more!
Senta who gives her life to Wagner's The Flying Dutchman is no shrinking violet either. She is a lone voice in her village of fishermens' sweethearts believing her destiny and love lies in 'another world' than theirs. Mentioned this before, but this was the last performance at The Met Opera before Covid lockdown: a Tuesday camera rehearsal for the live HD stream to theaters across the world Saturday, that alas was never to be.
If there was a production that deserved to be seen and heard in the theater! Conductor Valery Gergiev truly feels the reefs and riptides and his stage producer film director François Girard never over-eggs the video projection or anything else. The fishermens' sweethearts Spinning Chorus is a most simple visual tour de force with the women gently swaying huge ropes reaching to the ceiling.
The sound of the Met Opera Orchestra superb. Different to the Wiener Staatsoper, but that discussion's for another time and place. And of course there is a deep sadness listening to this final performance last year. All the trouble that ensued, as all the musicians went unpaid, many forced to move elsewhere.
We needs move on. The past is painful. Confronting it is, in my belief, the only way to move forward in our lives. Forgetting nay erasing sure folly.
Wigmore Hall in London, has done the world proud continuing its relentless streaming of music events. This Easter with an impressive line-up hitting off with Pergolesi’s exquisite Stabat Mater.
We'll dream with wildflowers in the Spring again,
Another chance to catch a Flying Dutchman (until 1pm Sat EST). Not quite the exhilarating production of Girard's (echoing the end of Götterdämmerung) at The Met. More a chamber piece. Such eloquent, subtle playing from the Wiener Staatsoper Orchester, conductor Peter Schneider. Maybe not quite the 'bite' at times of The Met Orch and Gergiev? Going to remind myself of what Sir Roger Norrington unearthed in Wagner's scores. Haven't seen this Medici TV doc either.
Rather than demonizing the Dutchman, all in all the Wiener Staatsoper creates a gentle, compassionate realization of Wagner's work. What suffering was Senta's in her life we will never know. But clearly it's there in this production. The gravitational pull palpable towards the suffering seaman. Herbert Lippert's Eric (Senta's 'boyfriend') - echoes of that effortless, light, bright bodied Nicolai Gedda sound.
What strange distant stars has the Covid lockdown opened up for some of us.
Such delicacy and furore cheek by jowl. Vienna, 1949.
