Broadway's Susan Stroman's vibrant, fun,fun,fun, English sung The Merry Widow Met Opera streaming until 6.30pm today (Friday). And tomorrow (April 25 1pm) is a star-studded At Home Gala live streaming.
Everyone's musical tastes differ. Last Saturday it was the world's wondrous 'contemporary' singers. I'd find it hard to imagine, though, that anyone could watch this Met Gala feeling in the last bit elitist. Great opera singers sing from their homes, and there are pre-recorded orchestral interludes remarkably linking all the players from their homes. It is so very, very beautiful and life affirming. Not a dull moment. Give it try-it's free, you can't complain! Who's that Sara Bareilles opera singer from New Haven tinklin'' those 'ivories' and 'meowing'. Show off:) (That's of course Kitty asking, not me;)
Technology is now amazing. What's so interesting, though, is that if (Mars forbid) a solar flare did hit earth (well, not now, in the future!) people will be allowed to gather in a tech/electric months even longer black out. This Met Gala totally reminds us of solidarity. Even if one is a 'loner' being human means an awareness of at least some connectivity, otherwise one couldn't be a 'loner'. I mean, even Nietzsche was writing for someone/s apart from himself!
The Universe in Verse set to take place April 18 inside a 3,000-person outdoor amphitheater situated in California’s redwoods. Now, in the wake of being canceled amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the event will find a home online, where a worldwide group of participants will be invited to consider science and the cosmos through poetry. 4:30 p.m. April 25
Vimeo and the Pioneer Works website (the livestream in its entirety will not be viewable after the gathering). (info courtesy allarts.org)
Watching this LIVE (as of 6pm, Sat)- please join me. A transcendent celebration of thoughts, words and mortality. Great poetry readings. You 'all opera stars, come see how it's really done:) Joking, joking and thank you all for that 4 hours of co-operative Met Gala pleasure today. The Universe in Verse won't get a replay though.
Meanwhile back at the Met at Home Gala…
Isabel from New York
Kitty: She didn't pronounce her last 'h' in Somewhere.
Andrew: Kit! You can't criticize a Met opera star!
Kitty: Only following Maestro Sondheim's advice. Dispiace.[seriously] otherwise she was purr-fect.
Andrew: all a capella!
[Kitty looks puzzled.
I'll explain later.
Kitty: She might be single.
Andrew: Kitty!!!!!! You're like a Cat Covid dating service!
We are live! You're embarrassing me.
[Kitty has those 'wheels' again going round in her eyes. 'Now there's a thought to replace the NYCat tours'.]
New York City Ballet has a good virtual presence but oh how I feel for all those dancers that can't do class because Covid-19. Sure you can rig-up one's own barre- I did Jane Fonda's work-out in my living room for years! Good time to remember old limbs;) and get with the flow. But dancers need to take class. Some of the attitude and rivalry isn't always very pleasant, and unless you are a dancer one probably doesn't quite get the need to take class with others.
Yet everyone (hopefully) is re-thinking about how necessary are some things they thought immovable in their life/work/practice. There are now virtual yoga, dance, zumba etc classes up there through Zoom. And maybe now there is a future for those who never felt they could feel 'included'. A first step to a something.
Covid-19 makes music!?
For many years, Outsider Art gallerist Frank Maresca purchased cases of small hard-bound editions of Here is New York to give away. At first he would give them to new arrivals in the city, then to friends old and new who were unfamiliar with E.B White's book. Here is New York is a glimpse into the past, present, and future. (Available for download)
Twenty years ago, choreography/dancer Seán Curran did a one-man show (with text) based on the E.B. White book. It was amazing! I hope wherever he is that all is well, and his enormous passion for dance theater still rages.
Still working my way through all the art galleries virtual online content. So far:
MoMA PS1-Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration Book Launch (Tuesday, April 28, 8 p.m.)
Join a live Zoom conversation and Q&A with author Nicole R. Fleetwood, poet and scholar Fred Moten, and artists Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter and Jesse Krimes about the work of incarcerated artists and art that responds to mass incarceration (RSVP needed for link).
MoMA-The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, and Flavin Judd, artistic director of the Judd Foundation, about the exhibition Judd.
Microscope Gallery's artist Jeanne Liotta’s film Crosswalk is featured for the month of April in the Wexner Center for the Arts’ The Box (until April 30)
Hauser & Wirth unveil ArtLab – a new Virtual Reality (VR) exhibition modeling tool called HWVR – in late April 2020 with Hauser & Wirth’s first entirely VR-based exhibition. By ‘taking place’ in a gallery site of the future, Hauser & Wirth Menorca, this exhibition will allow visitors a coveted online preview of the art center they will be able to visit in Spain when it opens in 2021.
Light Industry screens Ben Rivers film and a conversation.
Leon Tovar Gallery
The Jewish Museum host a Zoom conversation with Esther Safran Foer (I Want You to Know We’re Still Here: A Post-Holocaust Memoir) and Keith Gessen (A Terrible Country) as they recount journeys to their ancestral homes of Ukraine and Russia, respectively, as they grapple with how the past informs our understanding of self and home. Explore a century of personal Jewish history in a conversation moderated by Tablet Magazine ’s Stephanie Butnick.
And if you think you'll have any money left by next year, Bonhams (London) -The BLUE Auction in aid of NHS Charities Covid-19 URGENT APPEAL-have an eclectic auction of art and celebrities of all sorts offering their time for 'a date' (in England).
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
Incatstent moon,
Dunkel, gespenster..
Kitty's TRRRRaum:
Oh, Katz asunder
Like the thunder
Die Tragödie von Romeo und Julia
Fledermaus
Moohaus
Our house
….
