Sad news that British actress Helen McCrory has just passed away from cancer. Ironically, the Covid pandemic year had 'up-sides' for some. Never would we have had another chance to see McCrory in Terence Rattigan's play The Deep Blue Sea. (does not appear to be available on demand as a rental from the National Theatre though her Medea is). An extraordinary play for its time (1952) and worthy of Arthur Miller. When a famous 'thesp' asked playwright Harold Pinter whether he had a favorite play he surprisingly replied Rattigan's. Helen McCrory is heartbreakingly haunting as Hester whose resilient heart almost destroys her.
Some actresses one meets are personable, talented etc etc. though seem more interested in 'being an actor'. Others like Helen, subtly peer into the new worlds orbiting whilst theirs whirls on.
More sad news that the Turtle Bay Music School has been forced to close. Most folk will not know this school. Just so happened I attended one end-of-term year evening years ago. So special and unforgettable was the sheer conviction of every performer (ages 4ish to 80ish). Not everyone was a great singer but the school's coaching ensured there was not an insincere note to be heard. Not an insincere gesture to be seen. And as with the great music schools of the world, whether one pursues music professionally that experience is life-changing. Even in your 80s!
Barrie Kosky's new audience-less Der Rosenkavalier at the Bavarian State Opera (almost finished streaming after a month) proves there can still be hope for a 94-year-old former house 'extra' (Ingmar Thilo) as he wanders around in underwear and wings, a vital member of this production as the cupid/time figure. Kosky speaks in German in an interval interview "not a worse or better production, simply another way of seeing". Like all Kosky's work it's unmissable and unforgettable. And certainly on par with (though in a totally different realm) Ruth Berghaus' Frankfurt production all those decades ago. Marlis Petersen sings the Feldmarschallin as if the words' precision were out of an Alban Berg opera (roles she's lauded for). Hoffmanstahl the librettist would be 'over the moon'.
Absolutely nothing to criticize in this production only praise. Even the reduced score for 38 players works wonders making Strauss' strange oscillations between harmony and dissonance even more thrilling. Heard an amazing piano transcription of Strauss' Metamorphosen. And when Lloyd Webber says that the reduced pit orchestra of 14 instead of 27 will make his Phantom of the Opera score sound even richer (June, London), he's got a point. Bavarian State Opera (and Theater) have lots more on demand.
Very fair-minded comment on the death of Brit choreographer Liam Scarlett. Everything demands an answer. An explanation. A closure almost within the hour nowadays. Happier living with Mark Morris this week.
Strand Books have a great virtual talks line-up. Most are pay-ticketed, but there are those who will pay $34 for what they are interested in. Some are free. Chloe Angyal's Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers Is Saving Ballet from Itself will only set you back $7.50. Patrick Radden Keefe's Empire of Pain (Monday night) was illuminating and deeply disturbing. Worrying when American arts institutions emerging from Covid are offered business deals that may be morally deeply reprehensible. But where else do they find the money? This ain't Europe with government subsidy.
Warren Delano Jr. (grandfather of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and responsible for the family's wealth) traded opium in Canton. Read Shannon Butler's book Extracting the Truth from the Trade: The Delano Family at Home and in China. Not that the sins of fathers are always thrust upon the children. The truth of history hurts. Is ignorance ever bliss?
To be remembered that early 1900's in New York, opioids were a 'part of life' and eugenics was being taught at Columbia University. Soderbergh's TV series The Knick (2014) is well worth the watch for all its factual research. Cinemax a precursor (if not parent) to all the Amazon Studios/Netflix 'indy' [hmmm, relative to Hollywood that is] cinema we all now take for granted.
For those not 'in the know', The Met Opera gets only $120million in box office if every performance is sold out. Well, that never happens. Annual operating costs are $300million. That shortfall is an awful lot of cash seeking donors every year. In an interview General Manager Peter Gelb quoted a union rep who once said wryly that when The Met closes its doors forever then they [the unions] will believe you!
Always there's the 'Robin Hood' argument in the philanthropic equation. It may indeed be a form of' money/reputation laundering' but at least the artistic laundry stays afloat and does some good for the world. Others will disagree. One thing 'giving' definitely isn't, though, is charity. In America it's always a business deal. Every 'i' dotted, every 't' crossed. And then some.
Independent Book Store Day this Saturday 24th. Track any author's book tours and dozens of virtual discussions enticingly appear. Mostly for free/donation. Looking forward to Peter Wohlleben's The Heartbeat of Trees.
What It Takes to Open a Bookstore
If you buy a book at Strand (New York) tomorrow, there's a free coffee and bagel to go with it for Indy Bookshop Day. Sounds like a good business deal to me. Around $6 in said NY designer stomach produce. And the book's probably second-hand so...;) Who says the little creature can't win this!
Until last night's Oscar wins for Nomadland, many may not have heard of its sound mixer's suicide 6weeks ago, Michael Wolf Snyder.
A must read book on depression is Johann Hari's Lost Connections. Ever more so under Covid isolation conditions. We live now in a climate where there is a 'fix' marketed for everything. Hari's book isn't against pharmatheutical companies and anti-depressants per se, only oftentimes drugs for some can be like using a hammer to mend a watch. Perhaps a larger part of some sort of solution lies in social interaction. Moreover, that one is not alone in being alone.
A saving grace of Covid is the plethora of internet arts, sciences, literature, thought. Before the Oscars, on Sunday afternoon for $15, there was a one-off live-stream from Amsterdam of The Things That Pass, Ivo van Hove’s staging based on a 1906 Dutch novel by Louis Couperus. Angst isn't the word for this! As if Ibsen met Eugene O'Neill via Rilke then plummeted down a mineshaft. A family harboring horrible secrets. With his stark masterful staging Ivo von Hove created over two hours of mesmeric slow moving darkness. All very strangely cathartic for an audience.
The Goodman Theatre (Chicago) have been free streaming the last month or so, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure now (until May 9). For someone like me who's not exactly enamored of the traditional 'well-made play', Noah Haidle's somewhat surreal Smokefall was refreshing. No horrible secrets here. Simply an unearthing, enabling family ghosts of the past and future a cleaner air in which forever to wander.
Very wary and reluctant to single anyone out on this website. Even myself! And it's MY website!:) It's all luck, chance, talent. Some of the most beautiful creatures in this world just don't ever make it to the finishing line.
You know who you are, but she came in the very last audition of the day for Jack O' Brien's Carousel on Broadway. Not without substantial B'Way cred, but: she was it. Totally it! Then there she was up on stage with one of the greatest opera singers of the world, Renée Fleming.
Caught the tail end of a virtual author discussion tonight. Not until a book was written: turned out the sister didn't know that her brother was also beaten by their father. And the brother assumed that his sister was always the privileged one. Simple case in point. Nothing, of course, is or was ever simple. Why was the musical A Chorus Line so successful? Nobody had heard truths like that on a Broadway stage since, perhaps, West Side Story.
Truth is never one-sided hence the success of Kurosawa's Rashomon. And everyone on the planet has a story. So we are back to Do-Re-Mi.
[as a post script: remember reading a proof copy from a great/positive arts journo Jackie Wullschlage: Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller. …love turn away….
..
