Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Much to do with nature this week. Despite a couple of mornings with white frost on everything, the garden continues to produce and we still have one begonia, all the pansies, petunias, verbena and a wide variety of common weeds flourishing on the property. Our rose bushes put out a couple of flowers last week. Several varieties of insects are going strong--NOT including mosquitoes, praise be! As we're in New Hampshire, albeit only about 20 miles north of the border with Massachusetts, we qualify as northern New England--and about five weeks overdue for a major killing frost. The weather looks to remain mild well into next week.
The seed tassels of the ornamental grasses are a flat light tan color until the sun hits them and they sparkle as if made of glass beads on thin wires.
We were given a breeding house for mason bees for Christmas last year. I hadn't heard of mason bees until receiving this gift and once I'd read the directions we weren't sure if we had any in the area. I hung it on the side of the house in the summer and last week I saw that at least one mason bee had found it.
The females lay their eggs in the long narrow tubes (bamboo in this particular model) and then seal the tube with material they chew into a sticky plaster. You can see a neatly sealed tube in the lower right, up against the frame. In the spring the new insects will break through the barrier and go off to fertilize our flower and vegetable gardens.
*******
How to decorate your house for the holidays with minimal effort, little expense and a considerable amount of reflected glory.
*******
Old scam, new wording, customary bad grammar and sentence construction:
attn.
From: claireoneill@f2s.com
Sent: Thu 11/05/09 3:05 AM
To:
A Rich iraqi killed left behind $24.5m and no next of kin, if interested, please contact me with the email informations below:
ming_yang704@web2mail.com
Regards,
Ming Yang.
*******
From the Boston Globe:
"Sondheim tells all
Legendary composer Stephen Sondheim told a sellout crowd in Sanders Theatre Saturday night that as far as he’s concerned, Tim Burton’s 2007 “Sweeney Todd’’ is the only successful film adaptation of his work. But what about the popular movie versions of “West Side Story,’’ “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,’’ and “Gypsy’’? The always-candid Sondheim said that while he enjoyed them, “I don’t think they’re very good.’’ By contrast, Sondheim said, Burton’s film starring Johnny Depp as the vengeful barber was “really conceived for what film does.’’ During an onstage conversation with New York Times columnist Frank Rich as part of the Celebrity Series of Boston, Sondheim also reminisced about crucial revisions he made to “Follies’’ and “Company’’ during their Boston tryouts in the early 1970s, and told entertaining stories about figures ranging from Elaine Stritch to Ingmar Bergman to Elizabeth Taylor."
Fritz and I were there with friends who share our admiration for Sondheim's work. Three of his stories were especially enjoyable. He spoke of the final number, "Rose's Turn," in the musical Gypsy, a capstone number written for Ethel Merman. He had originally ended it with Rose winding down and collapsing, her repeated cries of "for me . . . for me . . . for me" trailing off into sobs and silence.
There was no applause for the number at the out of town try-outs and the dialog that follows between Rose and her daughter Gypsy Rose Lee (Sondheim: "where daughter becomes mother and mother becomes the daughter") fell flat with the audience. The then-young Sondheim was advised by Broadway's legendary director George Abbot that the audience had to be able to applaud, HAD to give Merman an ovation so as to close out her breakdown and allow the transition to the newly negotiated relationship with the daughter she had formerly dominated so obsessively. Sondheim rewrote the end so that Rose trumpets out the "for me!!"s defiantly. There was huge applause--and the next audiences found the ending upbeat and the relationship resolved. Sondheim ended the story with,"I love writing nervous breakdowns--I understand them so well!"
A Little Night Music was the source of two stories. Hermione Gingold was cast as old Madame Armfeld only after she had shown in an audition that her career largely as a campy comedienne was not the only side of her talent. Sondheim and the producers saw a commanding and controlled Gingold and cast her immediately. However she still knew how to work a crowd.
After the show had opened in New York--the only Sondheim musical ever to get good critical reviews (as opposed to public acclaim) in its first production--legendary film maker Ingemar Bergman whose Smiles of a Summer Night had been the source for Night Music, visited New York to discuss a joint project with the composer. Sondheim said he was awed at meeting the articulate, incredibly intelligent and elegant Bergman who saw him the morning after seeing a performance. He observed that other than the basic plot there was no similarity whatsoever between the film and the musical; then he winked and said, "But that Gingold certainly does f**k the audience, doesn't she!"
The film version of Night Music was a legendary cinematic disaster for many reasons. Two of the women in the cast, Elizabeth Taylor and Diana Rigg (Sondheim: "a VERY sharp lady") shared a trailer on location. One morning Rigg was writing a letter and asked Taylor what the date was. Taylor didn't know offhand and began looking for a calendar. Rigg suggested she just look at a newspaper that was lying on a chair. Taylor picked it up, looked at it a moment and said, "Oh, we can't tell from this--it's yesterday's paper." The audience roared.
The seed tassels of the ornamental grasses are a flat light tan color until the sun hits them and they sparkle as if made of glass beads on thin wires.
We were given a breeding house for mason bees for Christmas last year. I hadn't heard of mason bees until receiving this gift and once I'd read the directions we weren't sure if we had any in the area. I hung it on the side of the house in the summer and last week I saw that at least one mason bee had found it.The females lay their eggs in the long narrow tubes (bamboo in this particular model) and then seal the tube with material they chew into a sticky plaster. You can see a neatly sealed tube in the lower right, up against the frame. In the spring the new insects will break through the barrier and go off to fertilize our flower and vegetable gardens.
*******
How to decorate your house for the holidays with minimal effort, little expense and a considerable amount of reflected glory.*******
Old scam, new wording, customary bad grammar and sentence construction:
attn.
From: claireoneill@f2s.com
Sent: Thu 11/05/09 3:05 AM
To:
A Rich iraqi killed left behind $24.5m and no next of kin, if interested, please contact me with the email informations below:
ming_yang704@web2mail.com
Regards,
Ming Yang.
*******
From the Boston Globe:
"Sondheim tells all
Legendary composer Stephen Sondheim told a sellout crowd in Sanders Theatre Saturday night that as far as he’s concerned, Tim Burton’s 2007 “Sweeney Todd’’ is the only successful film adaptation of his work. But what about the popular movie versions of “West Side Story,’’ “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,’’ and “Gypsy’’? The always-candid Sondheim said that while he enjoyed them, “I don’t think they’re very good.’’ By contrast, Sondheim said, Burton’s film starring Johnny Depp as the vengeful barber was “really conceived for what film does.’’ During an onstage conversation with New York Times columnist Frank Rich as part of the Celebrity Series of Boston, Sondheim also reminisced about crucial revisions he made to “Follies’’ and “Company’’ during their Boston tryouts in the early 1970s, and told entertaining stories about figures ranging from Elaine Stritch to Ingmar Bergman to Elizabeth Taylor."
Fritz and I were there with friends who share our admiration for Sondheim's work. Three of his stories were especially enjoyable. He spoke of the final number, "Rose's Turn," in the musical Gypsy, a capstone number written for Ethel Merman. He had originally ended it with Rose winding down and collapsing, her repeated cries of "for me . . . for me . . . for me" trailing off into sobs and silence.
There was no applause for the number at the out of town try-outs and the dialog that follows between Rose and her daughter Gypsy Rose Lee (Sondheim: "where daughter becomes mother and mother becomes the daughter") fell flat with the audience. The then-young Sondheim was advised by Broadway's legendary director George Abbot that the audience had to be able to applaud, HAD to give Merman an ovation so as to close out her breakdown and allow the transition to the newly negotiated relationship with the daughter she had formerly dominated so obsessively. Sondheim rewrote the end so that Rose trumpets out the "for me!!"s defiantly. There was huge applause--and the next audiences found the ending upbeat and the relationship resolved. Sondheim ended the story with,"I love writing nervous breakdowns--I understand them so well!"
A Little Night Music was the source of two stories. Hermione Gingold was cast as old Madame Armfeld only after she had shown in an audition that her career largely as a campy comedienne was not the only side of her talent. Sondheim and the producers saw a commanding and controlled Gingold and cast her immediately. However she still knew how to work a crowd.
After the show had opened in New York--the only Sondheim musical ever to get good critical reviews (as opposed to public acclaim) in its first production--legendary film maker Ingemar Bergman whose Smiles of a Summer Night had been the source for Night Music, visited New York to discuss a joint project with the composer. Sondheim said he was awed at meeting the articulate, incredibly intelligent and elegant Bergman who saw him the morning after seeing a performance. He observed that other than the basic plot there was no similarity whatsoever between the film and the musical; then he winked and said, "But that Gingold certainly does f**k the audience, doesn't she!"
The film version of Night Music was a legendary cinematic disaster for many reasons. Two of the women in the cast, Elizabeth Taylor and Diana Rigg (Sondheim: "a VERY sharp lady") shared a trailer on location. One morning Rigg was writing a letter and asked Taylor what the date was. Taylor didn't know offhand and began looking for a calendar. Rigg suggested she just look at a newspaper that was lying on a chair. Taylor picked it up, looked at it a moment and said, "Oh, we can't tell from this--it's yesterday's paper." The audience roared.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
OK, BAD BLOGGER! Ten days between posts. It's been busy, including all of last weekend in New York City at Lincoln Center hearing Hugo Weisgall's Esther and Mozart's Don Giovanni open the New York City Opera's comeback season in reassuringly strong condition. It isn't a slam dunk in the current economy, but NYCO's chances of survival would seem to be much greater in the wake of one very good and one superb showing during the opening weekend.
Esther had premiered at City Opera in 1993 and was hailed by critics as a great score. It is written in Weisgall's personal take on the atonal or twelve-tone style. I found the orchestra writing far more interesting than the vocal writing; on the other hand, the simpler vocal line seemed to invite comprehensibility of the text, on which the cast lavished great care as I caught just about every word.
Musically Esther is Atonalism-Lite, approachable and often beautiful as in two magnificent choral episodes. However, most of it doesn't begin to have the profile of operas like Berg's Lulu to say nothing of Zimmermann's titanic Die Soldaten. It's possible that some mainstream opera lovers might just get into atonalism via Esther just because it is more gentle than those greater operas.
The much discused (in the press and on opera blogs) scene where Giovanni and Leporello each wears only the jacket or the pants of a slick designer suit clearly shows the manner in which each compliments and completes the other. Master and servant engage in at least one palindromic conversation and each shadows the other’s fears and thoughts throughout the opera–in a manner common to 18th century plays and libretti in which aristocrats and their servants are often entwined in complex relationships. The top half/bottom half suit costuming (reversed on stage when they impersonate each other for Elvira’s benefit) fits this relationship exactly.
Esther had premiered at City Opera in 1993 and was hailed by critics as a great score. It is written in Weisgall's personal take on the atonal or twelve-tone style. I found the orchestra writing far more interesting than the vocal writing; on the other hand, the simpler vocal line seemed to invite comprehensibility of the text, on which the cast lavished great care as I caught just about every word. Which was a somewhat mixed blessing, given the somewhat simplistic, old-fashioned libretto. Characters introduced themselves to the audience–”Ian Haman, King Xerses’ Chief Minister. I have a wife and many sons to guarantee continuity of leadership”--a good deal of that sort of thing. But I thought the libretto much more interesting for its premise than for its language; the Persian Holocaust that never happened was an obvious stand-in for the Nazi Holocaust that did. The difference is Esther’s growth and development to the point where she's willing to give up her fantasy life as Queen of Persia into which she has been thrust, and put her life on the line to protect those marked for extermination, whereas very few in Germany stood up to try and stop the horror.
Musically Esther is Atonalism-Lite, approachable and often beautiful as in two magnificent choral episodes. However, most of it doesn't begin to have the profile of operas like Berg's Lulu to say nothing of Zimmermann's titanic Die Soldaten. It's possible that some mainstream opera lovers might just get into atonalism via Esther just because it is more gentle than those greater operas.The production was ideally flexible and swift moving as befits an opera written with cinematic overlap of scenes. The cast sang it superbly, particularly the great Lauren Flanagan who had premiered the opera 16 years ago and seems in as strong voice as ever. But given the quality of the libretto, it might have been sung in ancient Akkadian or Chaldean rather than the English we did get.
The next day, Don Giovanni turned into one of the greatest theatrical realizations of an opera I have been fortunate to see. I watched director Christopher Alden's psychologically revelatory production intensively and found that virtually every choice was firmly based in Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto.
The much discused (in the press and on opera blogs) scene where Giovanni and Leporello each wears only the jacket or the pants of a slick designer suit clearly shows the manner in which each compliments and completes the other. Master and servant engage in at least one palindromic conversation and each shadows the other’s fears and thoughts throughout the opera–in a manner common to 18th century plays and libretti in which aristocrats and their servants are often entwined in complex relationships. The top half/bottom half suit costuming (reversed on stage when they impersonate each other for Elvira’s benefit) fits this relationship exactly. Other ideas work thematically through the score The splash of blood left on the wall when Giovanni shockingly slammed the Commendatore’s head against it remained for the whole performance–something he had to confront for the rest of the evening. Da Ponte sets it up in a dialog with Leporello when he says that his servant can speak to him about anything, anything EXCEPT the murder of the Commendatore, something that clearly bothers him greatly in a way his serial seductions and abandonments do not.
Aldon has taken a stand on what really happened between the Don and Anna–we see the seduction, to which she initially responds positively, only eventually to realize this isn’t something she should be doing. There is a huge critical legacy of comment that consciously or unconsciously, she wants him back but in a more conflicted way than Donna Elvira does.
I found the directing very true to the psychology of the characters. La ci darem la mano, normally a stylized seduction, turned into a passionate make-out session and the audience got the joke later when Zerlina told her fiance Masetto that the Don hadn’t even touched her fingertip. Again there’s a long critical tradition that Zerlina is, as music reviewer Conrad L. Osborne once put it, a much sharper little cookie than she’s generally given credit for.
The main thing that rang true was the finale, where Alden shows that being dragged down to hell supernaturally isn’t what the Don really fears most–it is his own death. For a man without a soul, that would be the big fear and I think Alden nailed it.
He and the company also assembled a cast of mostly young singers, six of the seven making their company debuts. They not only made a close and well-balanced ensemble but were good Mozartians and excellent actors.
As to the renovated New york State Theater's acoustics, I sat for both Esther and Don Giovanni in the third ring dead center. The sets for the two operas were polar opposites: Esther’s soft curtains and gauzes versus Don Giovanni’s tall, solid walls. In Esther, there seemed to be a point about halfway upstage where sound definitely began to be swallowed up. Boston-based baritone James Maddelena was clearly and at times forcefully audible downstage, but his other appearances upstage, while not INaudible, were definitely less present and vivid.
The Don Giovanni set with sounding boards all over the place supported voices better on every part of the stage. Actually, in both operas, I felt that vocal sound had more vibrance and impact than formerly. Given the way theaters and acousticians work, my sense is that there will be some adjustments and that designers may be encouraged to include some solid surfaces in everything they put on stage as the company works out the kinks. NYCO's general manager has stated publicly, after all, that what has just been completed is only Phase One. On the whole, though, I think the changes are all in the right direction and that we may have both a company and a theater back.
*******
Back in the 1960 when Senator John F. Kennedy was running for office, he included this enlightened statement on the separation of church and state in a speech he gave to reassure America that if he were elected president he would not be a pawn of the Vatican:
"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote. . . . I believe in an America . . . where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials. . . . That is the kind of America in which I believe. . . . Whatever issue may come before me as president - on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject - I will make my decision in accordance with . . . what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates."
Now, almost 50 years later, radically conservative protestant denominations and the catholic church are uniting to strong arm politicians and voters to vote according to their particular dogmatic teachings. JFK's nephew Patrick is under intense pressure from the Rhode Island catholic bishop to oppose the health care proposal because, as it stands, it will fund abortion.
I fully expect Patrick Kennedy to stand fast as his late father did many years ago when the Boston archdiocease attempted to influence one of his campaigns for re-election to the Senate. Boston's neighborhoods were flooded with scurrilous broadsides ordering Catholics to vote Teddy out of office on the grounds he was a bad Catholic for supporting a woman's right to choose. He won in a landslide, of course.
It is long past time that this idiocy ended.
*******
I was back to the opera in Boston last night for Boston Lyric Opera's production of Georges Bizet's Carmen. I have heard critics claim that Carmen is such a strong and resilient work that it can survive virtually anything that's done to it. And I do think that Carmen did manage to survive last night but it was no thanks to whomever on the production and musical teams decided to hack away parts of the score in every act, eliminating several numbers entirely (including one of Carmen's big ones in act 2 and a superb chorus in act 3) and disfiguring many others throughout the opera in a way that destroyed the shape and structure of scenes, acts, and eventually the whole opera.
Despite a rather good cast, an effective unit set, fine costumes and an intelligent enough directing job by Nicholas Muni (who may, however, have been deeply involved in the slashing), decent conducting by Keith Lockhart (who was most definitely involved), the 75 to 80% of mangled score that was left showed no honor to Bizet or his work. Boston Lyric clearly should have advertised this offering to the public as Extended Excerpts from Bizet's Carmen.
The cuts were as follows:
Act 1
-the entire children's chorus scene
-the chorus of men waiting for Carmen and the girls in the plaza
-the middle of the La fumée chorus
-the middle of the Jose/Michaela duet
-the middle of the chorus of rioting women
-a snipet of Carmen's Habanera reprise at the end of the act
Act 2
-Carmen's Chanson Boheme (!), all of it. Unbelievable.
-the middle section of the quintet
-a chunk of the Carmen/Jose duet
-three chunks out of the finale
Act 3
-Frasquita and Mercedes telling their fortunes (which sets up Carmen telling her's)
-the entire "Quant au douanier" chorus
Act 4
-the first half of the opening chorus
-Frasquita and Mercedes' warning to Carmen about Don José
It got to the point that I was more shocked when they performed a number WITHOUT cuts than with them.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
All about design
I've been gathering photo material on some recent design that's related to theater, and certainly very theatrical.
The new Winspear Opera house recently opened in Dallas; it has gotten very good reviews for its acoustics and seems to be loved by the city for its architectural design.
In this economic crisis, with arts organizations going under and many projects on hold, it's refreshing to see a new theater opening. Of course, thanks to a major philanthropic gift by Margot and Bill Winspear, the funding was in place before the crash, bank failures, housing slide, bailouts and the rest of the disaster--but psychologically, it feels good to see this kind of project come to fruition now. Sadly Bill Winspear died during the construction and never lived to see the result of his generosity.
Chief Architect Spencer de Gray of Foster & Partners covered the plaza in front of the glass-walled grand lobby with a louvered canopy that shades the interior from the burning Texas sun, and also allows the exterior space to be used for various public activities whether generated by the theater or not.
I was a little concerned when I first saw the architectural rendering of the auditorium. It bears a a striking--and worrisome--resemblance to the New York State Theater in New York's Lincoln Center, a theater notorious for its bad acoustics and poor backstage spaces. But when the Winspear opened, its sound was praised and comment was made that the acoustic favored voices coming from the stage slightly over the orchestra. The exact opposite was true in New York, where the State Theater has just been torn apart inside with the hope of finally correcting its acoustic problems (I'll find out if they succeeded this weekend when I attend the first two productions of the New York City Opera's new season).
The front curtain was designed by artist Guillermo Kuitca who's been working in patterns created out of fragmenting and restructuring theater seating plans. The design on the Winspear's new curtain is an abstract of its own seating plan.
An apparently very good but not incandescent performance of Verdi's Otello (from Shakespeare's play--there's no th sound in Italian) opened the new theater and allowed the building itself to be the star of the occasion.
*******
Those who've been reading me for a while know I like to revisit the work of fashion, and sometimes interior designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana occasionally to see what they're up to. Their work, especially their advertising, is controversial and sometimes well over the top. They're Italian!
Italians for centuries--for millenia--have known how to use the arts and spectacle in particular to make their major social, religious and political statements. Given the scale of the arts in Italy, culminating in Italian opera that is a synthesis of all the visual and performing arts, matters of taste play a secondary role, or may even be irrelevant, in the face of the size and passion of the gesture. I'm Italian, by the way. Well, Italian on my father's side, English on my mother's side. It is an odd mix and I wonder sometimes if I'm reserved and polite about my passions or passionate about my manners and reserve. In actual fact, I'm pretty sure the ratio is at least 2/3 Italian and 1/3 English in my personality.
Anyway, the other day I discovered in my studio some pages from an issue of Vogue dating to about a year ago that I feared I had lost. They contained an article not on Dolce & Gabbana fashion but their lifestyle (long partners in business and private life, they have split romantically but still share a great deal of their daily lives). Vogue focused on their palatial home on the island of Portofino. I had wanted to show the photos before but couldn't locate the pages and internet pictures that did exist were of very poor fidelity to the impact of the spaces. The Vogue pages appear below after some of their recent advertising spreads, a couple of which were met with serious protest:
Combining the imagery of the Crucifixion, the lethal injection couches of modern prison execution, and some serious homoeroticism.
The ads above and, especially, below were both criticised as suggesting that rape is fashionable and aceptable. I'm not certain I think the scenario of either picture is to be interpreted only in terms of hostility and non-consensual sex. D&G ads frequently play with viewer perception and invite a number of interpretations, eroticism of one sort or another being the one constant. Domination and voyeurism can definitely be seen, but the final "meaning" of these images seems to me to be in the eye of the beholder.
The most spectacular room in the Portofino mansion is a guest room where everything is plated in gold. D&G's interiors are fully theatrical in scale and they'd work splendidly on stage (click the following three pictures to enlarge for detail). Filtered through gold wire mesh curtains, the effect of natural light is significant enough here, but lighting this with theater lighting instruments would be an incredibly plum assignment.
The caption reads: "Dolce and Gabbana's visual education was honed watching episodes of the disco era's kitch, opulent soap operas Dallas, Dynasty, and their favorite, Falcon Crest." Of course.
The opposite wall of the golden guest room.
This little area with its oversized pattern reminds me strongly of a 1968 English movie starring Shirley MacLaine, Richard Attenborough, Barry Humphries (on his way to becoming Dame Edna Everage), Patricia Routledge, and John Cleese (not a bad cast). The movie's art directior exploited to the max the liberated, uninhibited scale of design typical of London in the late 60s and early 70s.
I really love these guys.
The new Winspear Opera house recently opened in Dallas; it has gotten very good reviews for its acoustics and seems to be loved by the city for its architectural design.
In this economic crisis, with arts organizations going under and many projects on hold, it's refreshing to see a new theater opening. Of course, thanks to a major philanthropic gift by Margot and Bill Winspear, the funding was in place before the crash, bank failures, housing slide, bailouts and the rest of the disaster--but psychologically, it feels good to see this kind of project come to fruition now. Sadly Bill Winspear died during the construction and never lived to see the result of his generosity.
Chief Architect Spencer de Gray of Foster & Partners covered the plaza in front of the glass-walled grand lobby with a louvered canopy that shades the interior from the burning Texas sun, and also allows the exterior space to be used for various public activities whether generated by the theater or not.
I was a little concerned when I first saw the architectural rendering of the auditorium. It bears a a striking--and worrisome--resemblance to the New York State Theater in New York's Lincoln Center, a theater notorious for its bad acoustics and poor backstage spaces. But when the Winspear opened, its sound was praised and comment was made that the acoustic favored voices coming from the stage slightly over the orchestra. The exact opposite was true in New York, where the State Theater has just been torn apart inside with the hope of finally correcting its acoustic problems (I'll find out if they succeeded this weekend when I attend the first two productions of the New York City Opera's new season).
The front curtain was designed by artist Guillermo Kuitca who's been working in patterns created out of fragmenting and restructuring theater seating plans. The design on the Winspear's new curtain is an abstract of its own seating plan.An apparently very good but not incandescent performance of Verdi's Otello (from Shakespeare's play--there's no th sound in Italian) opened the new theater and allowed the building itself to be the star of the occasion.
*******
Those who've been reading me for a while know I like to revisit the work of fashion, and sometimes interior designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana occasionally to see what they're up to. Their work, especially their advertising, is controversial and sometimes well over the top. They're Italian!
Italians for centuries--for millenia--have known how to use the arts and spectacle in particular to make their major social, religious and political statements. Given the scale of the arts in Italy, culminating in Italian opera that is a synthesis of all the visual and performing arts, matters of taste play a secondary role, or may even be irrelevant, in the face of the size and passion of the gesture. I'm Italian, by the way. Well, Italian on my father's side, English on my mother's side. It is an odd mix and I wonder sometimes if I'm reserved and polite about my passions or passionate about my manners and reserve. In actual fact, I'm pretty sure the ratio is at least 2/3 Italian and 1/3 English in my personality.
Anyway, the other day I discovered in my studio some pages from an issue of Vogue dating to about a year ago that I feared I had lost. They contained an article not on Dolce & Gabbana fashion but their lifestyle (long partners in business and private life, they have split romantically but still share a great deal of their daily lives). Vogue focused on their palatial home on the island of Portofino. I had wanted to show the photos before but couldn't locate the pages and internet pictures that did exist were of very poor fidelity to the impact of the spaces. The Vogue pages appear below after some of their recent advertising spreads, a couple of which were met with serious protest:
Combining the imagery of the Crucifixion, the lethal injection couches of modern prison execution, and some serious homoeroticism.
The ads above and, especially, below were both criticised as suggesting that rape is fashionable and aceptable. I'm not certain I think the scenario of either picture is to be interpreted only in terms of hostility and non-consensual sex. D&G ads frequently play with viewer perception and invite a number of interpretations, eroticism of one sort or another being the one constant. Domination and voyeurism can definitely be seen, but the final "meaning" of these images seems to me to be in the eye of the beholder.
The most spectacular room in the Portofino mansion is a guest room where everything is plated in gold. D&G's interiors are fully theatrical in scale and they'd work splendidly on stage (click the following three pictures to enlarge for detail). Filtered through gold wire mesh curtains, the effect of natural light is significant enough here, but lighting this with theater lighting instruments would be an incredibly plum assignment.
The caption reads: "Dolce and Gabbana's visual education was honed watching episodes of the disco era's kitch, opulent soap operas Dallas, Dynasty, and their favorite, Falcon Crest." Of course.
The opposite wall of the golden guest room.
This little area with its oversized pattern reminds me strongly of a 1968 English movie starring Shirley MacLaine, Richard Attenborough, Barry Humphries (on his way to becoming Dame Edna Everage), Patricia Routledge, and John Cleese (not a bad cast). The movie's art directior exploited to the max the liberated, uninhibited scale of design typical of London in the late 60s and early 70s.I really love these guys.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
The weather here has regressed to September temperatures—it’s 67 degrees as I write this at 6pm on a day when there was so little sun that our electricity production was a paltry 1.19 kilowatts. There are a considerable number of insects still out and about, although the mosquitoes seem to be gone, which brings joy to my heart. Working outside this last week and weekend has been a pleasure.
I’ve had two good-sized construction projects going on. One that was finished and installed yesterday was a cold frame for one of the vegetable garden terraces up on the hillside. We want to get our seeds started as early in the spring as possible, but Fritz also wanted it for this fall. He’d done a late planting of lettuce and swiss chard and was sure that with a cold frame to protect them, we could harvest fresh greens through December.
So here it is, but it isn’t protecting anything from the cold as there is no cold. The frame’s glass cover is chocked open to ventilate the young chards and lettuces from being roasted by too much heat!
The other project, a small shelter/cover for the propane tank’s filling valve (that got completely snow and ice choked last winter) should be finished some time Monday afternoon.
*******
I need to put an addendum onto my story about the Levi’s ad with Levi’s claiming to have Walt Whitman’s actual voice accompanying images of young men and women wearing Jeans, frolicking outdoors in jeans and not much else, etc. It turns out there is a second ad in the series that has not had anyway near as much play here as the Pioneers! O, Pioneers ad. The second ad which I have yet to see but which Fritz did catch one day, is called America and does use the disputed but quite possibly authentic Edison cylinder that claims to have Whitman’s voice, about which I wrote in my last post. So, while Levi’s flat-out claim to have Whitman’s voice may be a bit tenuous, they actually do have a possible Whitman recording on at least one of their ads. Levi’s sound restoration by the way, while unable to eliminate all the antique cylinder surface noise, was able to bring the voice forward more clearly and understandably than any of the internet transcriptions.
*******
Last weekend we had the considerable pleasure of entertaining Good friends from the Intermezzo, New England Chamber Opera for whom I am the resident designer. They came on Sunday which was one of those glorious New England autumn days pf crystalline air and brilliant sunlight igniting the color of the maples, birches sumacs and other trees and bushes.
The front entry was dressed for the holiday season. We began with by showing everybody around the house. I broke out the champagne to start dinner and to celebrate the company’s very strong past achievements, while looking ahead to new commissions and productions.
The menu was my current specialty, chicken tagine (here seen in preparation), with one of Fritz’s baby spinach, mandarin orange and sharp blue cheese salads. We finished with two of his signature maple syrup/hazelnut pies.
Working with Intermezzo has been the great pleasure of my later career, most particularly for the superb colleagues I get to work with and the shared vision of how to produce art through close collaboration.
*******
A couple of things to celebrate:
May 22 is now officially Harvey Milk Day in California.
The HIV travel ban has been lifted by President Obama.
Next week’s elections will tell us if we have anything more to celebrate or if we have more and more work to do.
I’ve had two good-sized construction projects going on. One that was finished and installed yesterday was a cold frame for one of the vegetable garden terraces up on the hillside. We want to get our seeds started as early in the spring as possible, but Fritz also wanted it for this fall. He’d done a late planting of lettuce and swiss chard and was sure that with a cold frame to protect them, we could harvest fresh greens through December.
So here it is, but it isn’t protecting anything from the cold as there is no cold. The frame’s glass cover is chocked open to ventilate the young chards and lettuces from being roasted by too much heat!
The other project, a small shelter/cover for the propane tank’s filling valve (that got completely snow and ice choked last winter) should be finished some time Monday afternoon.
*******
I need to put an addendum onto my story about the Levi’s ad with Levi’s claiming to have Walt Whitman’s actual voice accompanying images of young men and women wearing Jeans, frolicking outdoors in jeans and not much else, etc. It turns out there is a second ad in the series that has not had anyway near as much play here as the Pioneers! O, Pioneers ad. The second ad which I have yet to see but which Fritz did catch one day, is called America and does use the disputed but quite possibly authentic Edison cylinder that claims to have Whitman’s voice, about which I wrote in my last post. So, while Levi’s flat-out claim to have Whitman’s voice may be a bit tenuous, they actually do have a possible Whitman recording on at least one of their ads. Levi’s sound restoration by the way, while unable to eliminate all the antique cylinder surface noise, was able to bring the voice forward more clearly and understandably than any of the internet transcriptions.
*******
Last weekend we had the considerable pleasure of entertaining Good friends from the Intermezzo, New England Chamber Opera for whom I am the resident designer. They came on Sunday which was one of those glorious New England autumn days pf crystalline air and brilliant sunlight igniting the color of the maples, birches sumacs and other trees and bushes.
The front entry was dressed for the holiday season. We began with by showing everybody around the house. I broke out the champagne to start dinner and to celebrate the company’s very strong past achievements, while looking ahead to new commissions and productions.
The menu was my current specialty, chicken tagine (here seen in preparation), with one of Fritz’s baby spinach, mandarin orange and sharp blue cheese salads. We finished with two of his signature maple syrup/hazelnut pies.
Working with Intermezzo has been the great pleasure of my later career, most particularly for the superb colleagues I get to work with and the shared vision of how to produce art through close collaboration.
*******
A couple of things to celebrate:
May 22 is now officially Harvey Milk Day in California.
The HIV travel ban has been lifted by President Obama.
Next week’s elections will tell us if we have anything more to celebrate or if we have more and more work to do.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Is it Global Climate Change—or what the hell IS it? “It” is the fact that we are now two weeks and two days after the most likely date for a major killing frost here in southern New Hampshire, but around the house we’ve lost only our coleus. Everything else—impatiens, begonias, verbena, pansies, cosmos, petunias—are all out there blossoming like champs. More surprising, at least one of our day lilies has decided that it’s time to flower again:
From left: purple and yellow pansies, one pale cosmos, and a yellow day lily
In terms of autumn color, it’s OK, really very pretty, but the great flaming reds and brilliant oranges are in shorter supply this year than usual. Fritz’s huge sugar maples, usually the color leaders, are attractive but not more. Certainly, the bizarre late spring and early summer we had may have something to do with it. For us the first sign was a disappointing maple sugaring season that netted us only half the sap we’d gotten the year before.
Tuesday night we might have gotten hit with a serious frost, but in fact, the temperature stayed mild overnight. One thing I do know is that if the kind of temperature shift that’s hit the UK were to happen here, New England would be in big trouble economically. Temperatures in the north of England are now such that growing grapes is possible and the country has a new but burgeoning wine-making industry (Vins de Yorkshire?). Maple syrup and tourism to see the spectacular fall color are serious sources of income for New England, money whose loss would be a big blow to local economies.
Gossamer fungus in the big English garden
*******
I heard on the radio last night that Maine's Governor John Baldacci and one of the state's senators are urging voters to reject the challenge to same-sex marriage. The following from Bay Windows reports on a meeting in a supporter's home attended by the governor:
"In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions," the governor said before the small crowd. "I came to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage."
The gathering at Dobres’ home celebrated the kick-off of the No on 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign ’Get Out the Vote’ program, which reminds Mainers to vote Nov. 3.
After taking a moment to thank the campaign volunteers that have been working since late May -- when the marriage equality bill first came under fire from anti-gay and religious groups -- Baldacci explained his decision to sign the legislation.
"This is an emotional issue that touches deeply many of our most important ideals and traditions. There are good, earnest, and honest people on both sides of the question," he said. "I did not come to my decision lightly or in haste. My responsibility as governor is to uphold the Constitution and do, as best as possible, what is right. I believe that signing the legislation was the right thing to do."
State Senator Chris Rector, while unable to attend the event, also experienced a change of heart regarding marriage equality. "I voted for the marriage equality bill because it was clear that my constituents supported it," he said. "I also came to believe that it was the right thing to do for the state of Maine. The law should treat all Mainers equally; it’s that simple."
*******
There is a hotly contested issue growing over the recent, widely telecast Levis jeans ad that’s a video montage of images of young people set to a resonant, strong voice delivering excerpts from the poem Pioneers! O Pioneers by Walt Whitman. Word has circulated that the voice, very clearly reproduced, is actually the voice of Walt Whitman from an Edison recording on a wax cylinder in 1890. The Levis site, in fact, states flatly that it is Whitman’s voice, without providing any further documentation or supporting information. Is it?
Edison cylinder technology was well established by 1890, two years before Whitman’s death. When newly recorded and for several playings afterwards, the sound quality of Thomas Edison’s wax cylinders in terms of volume and fidelity to the voices recorded on them, was notably superior to the sound reproduction on the flat shellac 78 + or – RPM discs that came along later. However the harder shellac discs kept their sound quality much longer than the softer wax cylinders, multiple playing of which caused the sound quality to decay as wax was gradually worn away.
Returning to the voice on the ad, it is extremely bright and clear in sound. Given modern digital technology, this is not necessarily surprising. Restoration of ancient discs and cylinders had produced some startling quiet and vibrantly present voice reproductions as long as the originals are in relatively new condition. However, there are only one, possibly two recordings of Whitman’s voice, and documentation is slim and partially speculative for those.
The old poet himself never mentioned that he had been recorded in any surviving correspondence or other writing. Letters of Edison’s confirm only that recording Whitman had been proposed and that the great inventor liked the idea—Edison developed a mania for recording major public figures of his day and would certainly have been interested in the revered poet. But there isn’t even a surviving cylinder—the reputed voice of Whitman comes from an old audio tape found in a reputable library that identifies it as Whitman speaking lines from his own, rather obscure poem titled “America.”
The voice is partially obscured by crackling and other noise typical of a worn cylinder, which experts say is not faked, but genuine. The voice has inflections and an accent consistent for a man of Whitman’s upbringing and from where he was born and raised. He does not read smoothly, but with brief pauses between many words, in a tenor voice—all of which experts say agrees with written descriptions of what Whitman sounded like when reading his own work. These are important points, as Edison sometimes hired actors to record presidential speeches and other material. The voice on the tape made from the now-vanished cylinder does not sound like a trained actor, and particularly not like an actor from the late nineteenth century with the amply documented voice training and delivery that was the norm on stage at that time.
The voice on the Levis ad does not sound like the voice from the cylinder. It is more baritone than tenor, reads quickly and surely and “dramatically”, without pauses breaking the lines, and has an accent that might actually be closer to those old, elocutionary actors of the 19th and early 20th centuries than the voice reading the poem America. It has also been suggested that the very obscurity of the poem favors Whitman actually being the reader, as someone attempting a fraud would probably have chosen a Whitman selection that was much more well-known.
In any event, the only claim ever made that Whitman recorded does not mention the poem Pioneers! O, Pioneers. You can hear the four lines of America from the cylinder by Googling: Walt Whitman wax cylinder; there are several sites that reproduce it. Don’t be fooled by the many Whitman selections on YouTube that feature computer animated images of the poet made to seem to be speaking his poems as read by actors and media celebrities such as Garrison Keillor. These are identified as modern work visually but the speakers are not always so identified.
As to the voice on the Levis ad, there's no chance it could be Walt Whitman.
*******
This from James Jorden's opera site Parterre Box:
Nico Muhly to premiere new opera at ENO
Charlotte Higgins
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 October 2009
The musical toast of New York, 28-year-old American composer Nico Muhly - who has worked with Björk and Antony Hegarty, and is a protegé of Philip Glass - is to premiere his opera, Two Boys, at English National Opera in 2011. About a young boy who takes on the personality of a middle-aged woman on the internet, its subject is, he says, "violent sexuality".
We look forward to this event keenly, not least because a recent pair of premieres at the Barbican earned him such very, very bad reviews. Our own Andrew Clements remarked that though Muhly was "flavour of the month" in New York, the pieces "gave no hint of what all the fuss might be about"; for the Telegraph, meanwhile, they were like "slow, painful death". But what we already love about Muhly is his splendidly game urge to fight back. On his blog, he writes: "I have never seen 'flavour of the month' spelled in that way and am secretly thrilled to be dismissed in such a fashioun [sic]"; he also refers to "cunty English reviews". At this rate, he'll be in for some more, so I look forward to the prose equivalent of composer/critic naked mud wrestling the year after next.
British critics are notoriously unfair and prejudiced against non-Brits singing, directing, designing, conducting and composing for opera houses in the U.K. They frequently end reviews complaining of “another useless import from the States” or “surely there are British singers far better for this role” or suchlike sentiments. Particularly after being described as “cunty,” I suspect they’ll show up at Nico’s premiere with knives sharpened and drawn
From left: purple and yellow pansies, one pale cosmos, and a yellow day lilyIn terms of autumn color, it’s OK, really very pretty, but the great flaming reds and brilliant oranges are in shorter supply this year than usual. Fritz’s huge sugar maples, usually the color leaders, are attractive but not more. Certainly, the bizarre late spring and early summer we had may have something to do with it. For us the first sign was a disappointing maple sugaring season that netted us only half the sap we’d gotten the year before.
Tuesday night we might have gotten hit with a serious frost, but in fact, the temperature stayed mild overnight. One thing I do know is that if the kind of temperature shift that’s hit the UK were to happen here, New England would be in big trouble economically. Temperatures in the north of England are now such that growing grapes is possible and the country has a new but burgeoning wine-making industry (Vins de Yorkshire?). Maple syrup and tourism to see the spectacular fall color are serious sources of income for New England, money whose loss would be a big blow to local economies.
Gossamer fungus in the big English garden*******
I heard on the radio last night that Maine's Governor John Baldacci and one of the state's senators are urging voters to reject the challenge to same-sex marriage. The following from Bay Windows reports on a meeting in a supporter's home attended by the governor:
"In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions," the governor said before the small crowd. "I came to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage."
The gathering at Dobres’ home celebrated the kick-off of the No on 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign ’Get Out the Vote’ program, which reminds Mainers to vote Nov. 3.
After taking a moment to thank the campaign volunteers that have been working since late May -- when the marriage equality bill first came under fire from anti-gay and religious groups -- Baldacci explained his decision to sign the legislation.
"This is an emotional issue that touches deeply many of our most important ideals and traditions. There are good, earnest, and honest people on both sides of the question," he said. "I did not come to my decision lightly or in haste. My responsibility as governor is to uphold the Constitution and do, as best as possible, what is right. I believe that signing the legislation was the right thing to do."
State Senator Chris Rector, while unable to attend the event, also experienced a change of heart regarding marriage equality. "I voted for the marriage equality bill because it was clear that my constituents supported it," he said. "I also came to believe that it was the right thing to do for the state of Maine. The law should treat all Mainers equally; it’s that simple."
*******
There is a hotly contested issue growing over the recent, widely telecast Levis jeans ad that’s a video montage of images of young people set to a resonant, strong voice delivering excerpts from the poem Pioneers! O Pioneers by Walt Whitman. Word has circulated that the voice, very clearly reproduced, is actually the voice of Walt Whitman from an Edison recording on a wax cylinder in 1890. The Levis site, in fact, states flatly that it is Whitman’s voice, without providing any further documentation or supporting information. Is it?
Edison cylinder technology was well established by 1890, two years before Whitman’s death. When newly recorded and for several playings afterwards, the sound quality of Thomas Edison’s wax cylinders in terms of volume and fidelity to the voices recorded on them, was notably superior to the sound reproduction on the flat shellac 78 + or – RPM discs that came along later. However the harder shellac discs kept their sound quality much longer than the softer wax cylinders, multiple playing of which caused the sound quality to decay as wax was gradually worn away.
Returning to the voice on the ad, it is extremely bright and clear in sound. Given modern digital technology, this is not necessarily surprising. Restoration of ancient discs and cylinders had produced some startling quiet and vibrantly present voice reproductions as long as the originals are in relatively new condition. However, there are only one, possibly two recordings of Whitman’s voice, and documentation is slim and partially speculative for those.
The old poet himself never mentioned that he had been recorded in any surviving correspondence or other writing. Letters of Edison’s confirm only that recording Whitman had been proposed and that the great inventor liked the idea—Edison developed a mania for recording major public figures of his day and would certainly have been interested in the revered poet. But there isn’t even a surviving cylinder—the reputed voice of Whitman comes from an old audio tape found in a reputable library that identifies it as Whitman speaking lines from his own, rather obscure poem titled “America.”
The voice is partially obscured by crackling and other noise typical of a worn cylinder, which experts say is not faked, but genuine. The voice has inflections and an accent consistent for a man of Whitman’s upbringing and from where he was born and raised. He does not read smoothly, but with brief pauses between many words, in a tenor voice—all of which experts say agrees with written descriptions of what Whitman sounded like when reading his own work. These are important points, as Edison sometimes hired actors to record presidential speeches and other material. The voice on the tape made from the now-vanished cylinder does not sound like a trained actor, and particularly not like an actor from the late nineteenth century with the amply documented voice training and delivery that was the norm on stage at that time.
The voice on the Levis ad does not sound like the voice from the cylinder. It is more baritone than tenor, reads quickly and surely and “dramatically”, without pauses breaking the lines, and has an accent that might actually be closer to those old, elocutionary actors of the 19th and early 20th centuries than the voice reading the poem America. It has also been suggested that the very obscurity of the poem favors Whitman actually being the reader, as someone attempting a fraud would probably have chosen a Whitman selection that was much more well-known.
In any event, the only claim ever made that Whitman recorded does not mention the poem Pioneers! O, Pioneers. You can hear the four lines of America from the cylinder by Googling: Walt Whitman wax cylinder; there are several sites that reproduce it. Don’t be fooled by the many Whitman selections on YouTube that feature computer animated images of the poet made to seem to be speaking his poems as read by actors and media celebrities such as Garrison Keillor. These are identified as modern work visually but the speakers are not always so identified.
As to the voice on the Levis ad, there's no chance it could be Walt Whitman.
*******
This from James Jorden's opera site Parterre Box:
Nico Muhly to premiere new opera at ENOCharlotte Higgins
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 October 2009
The musical toast of New York, 28-year-old American composer Nico Muhly - who has worked with Björk and Antony Hegarty, and is a protegé of Philip Glass - is to premiere his opera, Two Boys, at English National Opera in 2011. About a young boy who takes on the personality of a middle-aged woman on the internet, its subject is, he says, "violent sexuality".
We look forward to this event keenly, not least because a recent pair of premieres at the Barbican earned him such very, very bad reviews. Our own Andrew Clements remarked that though Muhly was "flavour of the month" in New York, the pieces "gave no hint of what all the fuss might be about"; for the Telegraph, meanwhile, they were like "slow, painful death". But what we already love about Muhly is his splendidly game urge to fight back. On his blog, he writes: "I have never seen 'flavour of the month' spelled in that way and am secretly thrilled to be dismissed in such a fashioun [sic]"; he also refers to "cunty English reviews". At this rate, he'll be in for some more, so I look forward to the prose equivalent of composer/critic naked mud wrestling the year after next.
British critics are notoriously unfair and prejudiced against non-Brits singing, directing, designing, conducting and composing for opera houses in the U.K. They frequently end reviews complaining of “another useless import from the States” or “surely there are British singers far better for this role” or suchlike sentiments. Particularly after being described as “cunty,” I suspect they’ll show up at Nico’s premiere with knives sharpened and drawn
Friday, October 23, 2009
The Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH put on a very strong program last night, spanning two of the performing arts and growing out of the local theater and film scene. The focus was the gay-themed two-character play Just Say Love by local playwright David Mauriello that he and director Bill Humphries have turned into an intriguing and very beautiful movie.
Some of you may remember that a couple of years ago I spoke of a valuable Portsmouth theater group called The Players' Ring that produces its own material and also makes its venue available to other theater companies from the general area. One of The Players' Ring productions, Just Say Love, received exceptionally strong notices.
Beginning with the chance encounter between a gay man (Matthew Jaeger, above)
and a straight, latent bisexual man Robert Mammana), the play explores issues of physical desire, love, spirituality and their interaction in relationships. Key is Mammana's character's inability to express affection physically or verbally to another man, although sexual contact is no problem as long as he remains mostly clothed and all emotion is kept firmly beyond arm's length. The great central scene of the film begins with his finally undressing/allowing himself to be undressed, leading to what one audience member later described as an "erotic ballet" between the two men. Without a single genital shot but luminously lit, filmed and performed, the two make love very beautifully which leads to further complications and the final resolution.
The style in whch the film was shot is interesting. Humphries and Mauriello both had an aversion to the fixed camera documentation of stage plays that is so common, and that generally flattens them out beyond salvation. They chose to expand the set of the stage production extensively but to keep its theatrical form rather than redesigning it as a movie set. To both of them, it was important that the material's origin as a stage play be honored and retained. But within the stage setting, the camera moved in and probed the actors and the physical world within which they lived in the manner of a movie. The result was a successful fusion of the two media. Jaeger and Mammana, film actors with extensive stage experience, replaced the cast of the original stage production. Filming was done at a production facility in Tilton, New Hampshire. Just Say Love has been shown at film festivals in the U.S., receiving positive press and some awards. It's currently invited to be shown at film festivals in Spain and Italy.
The program began with brief statements by the Director of The Players' Ring that included her thanks to the City of Portsmouth for its continuing and expanding support of the company. We were shown the trailer for Summer Blink, a second film from a New Hampshire play, followed by Author/Producer Mauriello's remarks. There was then a performance of the song written for the closing credits, its effect somewhat compromised by a too heavy bass setting and bad enunciation by the singer. Co-producer and Director Humphries then explained the techniques he had used to put the material on screen and a short scene from the stage script was performed. The movie itself was shown and there was a question and answer session to close the evening.
Just Say Love was shown in Rochester, NY recently and will be shown in about a month in Chicago.
Altogether, it was a great program, well attended and appreciated by its audience. There will probably be more of these locally produced plays onto the screen in future at the Music Hall--I'm looking forward to them.
Some of you may remember that a couple of years ago I spoke of a valuable Portsmouth theater group called The Players' Ring that produces its own material and also makes its venue available to other theater companies from the general area. One of The Players' Ring productions, Just Say Love, received exceptionally strong notices.
Beginning with the chance encounter between a gay man (Matthew Jaeger, above)
and a straight, latent bisexual man Robert Mammana), the play explores issues of physical desire, love, spirituality and their interaction in relationships. Key is Mammana's character's inability to express affection physically or verbally to another man, although sexual contact is no problem as long as he remains mostly clothed and all emotion is kept firmly beyond arm's length. The great central scene of the film begins with his finally undressing/allowing himself to be undressed, leading to what one audience member later described as an "erotic ballet" between the two men. Without a single genital shot but luminously lit, filmed and performed, the two make love very beautifully which leads to further complications and the final resolution.The style in whch the film was shot is interesting. Humphries and Mauriello both had an aversion to the fixed camera documentation of stage plays that is so common, and that generally flattens them out beyond salvation. They chose to expand the set of the stage production extensively but to keep its theatrical form rather than redesigning it as a movie set. To both of them, it was important that the material's origin as a stage play be honored and retained. But within the stage setting, the camera moved in and probed the actors and the physical world within which they lived in the manner of a movie. The result was a successful fusion of the two media. Jaeger and Mammana, film actors with extensive stage experience, replaced the cast of the original stage production. Filming was done at a production facility in Tilton, New Hampshire. Just Say Love has been shown at film festivals in the U.S., receiving positive press and some awards. It's currently invited to be shown at film festivals in Spain and Italy.
The program began with brief statements by the Director of The Players' Ring that included her thanks to the City of Portsmouth for its continuing and expanding support of the company. We were shown the trailer for Summer Blink, a second film from a New Hampshire play, followed by Author/Producer Mauriello's remarks. There was then a performance of the song written for the closing credits, its effect somewhat compromised by a too heavy bass setting and bad enunciation by the singer. Co-producer and Director Humphries then explained the techniques he had used to put the material on screen and a short scene from the stage script was performed. The movie itself was shown and there was a question and answer session to close the evening.
Just Say Love was shown in Rochester, NY recently and will be shown in about a month in Chicago.
Altogether, it was a great program, well attended and appreciated by its audience. There will probably be more of these locally produced plays onto the screen in future at the Music Hall--I'm looking forward to them.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Just over a week--I didn't intend to let the blog stay idle so long. I plead a run of good weather that's had me outside every day doing as much of my outdoor project list as possible while the weather remains benign.
The weekend of the 9th through 11th, we hosted a workshop/retreat presented by the Body Electric School. There were 17 in all, both presenters and participants, for whom we cooked and tidied up. We believe totally in what Body Electric does and are always delighted to have them with us. Fritz first brought them here some time in the early 90s. It was a very good group, with whom we had a lot of fun. Just about everyone went home after the event ended Sunday evening, although three stayed until Monday morning--and one man stayed until Wednesday, spending a memorable Monday and Tuesday night with us. And yes, that means what you think it does.
We received another delivery of trees and bushes to plant early last week, including three dwarf peach trees (the trees are dwarf, the peaches regulation size), an andromeda, a big rose-colored dogwood, three clethera (I now have a plethora of clethera), a viburnum, and a dozen rhododendrons of various varieties and sizes from dwarf to anything goes. We dug and dug and got them all into the ground before the rains came on Sunday.
*******
I had my annual physical this morning. I'm very fortunate in my doctor and the HMO of which he's a member. I'd gone in to have blood taken last week so that he'd had all the test results in when we sat down to talk.
The visit didn't begin well. I'd just about gotten my clothing off when the alarms sounded, a mechanized voice announced an (unidentified) emergency in the building and told us all to evacuate. I got dressed again as quickly as possible and headed for the stairwell. We stood out in the cold for fifteen or twenty minutes, some people with IV drips in their arms, watching the fire and police vehicles arrive before the all clear was given and we were allowed back inside.
My doctor said the blood test numbers were my best ever. I got my (regular) flu shot. They don't have the swine flu vaccine in yet; he told me he's of two minds about it but that I could have it if I chose. We'll see.
Then it was time for the proctology exam. He always gives a nice one but there was a delay while he fished around unsuccessfully in several drawers for a tube of lube. He kept saying this is so embarrassing but I told him that as a gay man, I'd had several experiences where I was all set to go but the other guy couldn't find the lube. We both laughed and he stopped being so upset.
One of the best parts of my visits to him is that when the business is finished, he stays for five or ten minutes to ask about my current projects and talk about art, architecture and design with me. It's a really pleasant way to end the exam.
*******
A couple of bits of humor that have come our way recently:
A SPANISH Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.
'House' for instance, is feminine: 'la casa.'
'Pencil,' however, is masculine: 'el lapiz.'
A student asked, 'What gender is 'computer'?'
Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether 'computer' should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.
The men's group decided that 'computer' should definitely be of the feminine gender ('la computadora'), because:
1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine ('el computador'), because:
1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.
The women won.
*******
From a friend of Fritz's:
The weekend of the 9th through 11th, we hosted a workshop/retreat presented by the Body Electric School. There were 17 in all, both presenters and participants, for whom we cooked and tidied up. We believe totally in what Body Electric does and are always delighted to have them with us. Fritz first brought them here some time in the early 90s. It was a very good group, with whom we had a lot of fun. Just about everyone went home after the event ended Sunday evening, although three stayed until Monday morning--and one man stayed until Wednesday, spending a memorable Monday and Tuesday night with us. And yes, that means what you think it does.
We received another delivery of trees and bushes to plant early last week, including three dwarf peach trees (the trees are dwarf, the peaches regulation size), an andromeda, a big rose-colored dogwood, three clethera (I now have a plethora of clethera), a viburnum, and a dozen rhododendrons of various varieties and sizes from dwarf to anything goes. We dug and dug and got them all into the ground before the rains came on Sunday.
*******
I had my annual physical this morning. I'm very fortunate in my doctor and the HMO of which he's a member. I'd gone in to have blood taken last week so that he'd had all the test results in when we sat down to talk.
The visit didn't begin well. I'd just about gotten my clothing off when the alarms sounded, a mechanized voice announced an (unidentified) emergency in the building and told us all to evacuate. I got dressed again as quickly as possible and headed for the stairwell. We stood out in the cold for fifteen or twenty minutes, some people with IV drips in their arms, watching the fire and police vehicles arrive before the all clear was given and we were allowed back inside.
My doctor said the blood test numbers were my best ever. I got my (regular) flu shot. They don't have the swine flu vaccine in yet; he told me he's of two minds about it but that I could have it if I chose. We'll see.
Then it was time for the proctology exam. He always gives a nice one but there was a delay while he fished around unsuccessfully in several drawers for a tube of lube. He kept saying this is so embarrassing but I told him that as a gay man, I'd had several experiences where I was all set to go but the other guy couldn't find the lube. We both laughed and he stopped being so upset.
One of the best parts of my visits to him is that when the business is finished, he stays for five or ten minutes to ask about my current projects and talk about art, architecture and design with me. It's a really pleasant way to end the exam.
*******
A couple of bits of humor that have come our way recently:
A SPANISH Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.
'House' for instance, is feminine: 'la casa.'
'Pencil,' however, is masculine: 'el lapiz.'
A student asked, 'What gender is 'computer'?'
Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether 'computer' should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.
The men's group decided that 'computer' should definitely be of the feminine gender ('la computadora'), because:
1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine ('el computador'), because:
1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.
The women won.
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From a friend of Fritz's:
How Twins are Made
