Spectacle
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
- Photo by Ken Howard/ Metropolitan Opera
- Richard Croft as Gandhi
The Met Live in HD, live in theaters Nov. 19
Rebroadcast 6:30 p.m. Dec. 7
Regal Brier Creek, North Hills, Crossroads
Philip Glass is one of those artists who make you work for the satisfaction that is ultimately to be found in his music. His 1980 opera Satyagraha is no exception. Although it is based on Mahatma Gandhi’s early adult years in South Africa, where Gandhi developed his techniques for non-violent protest, the opera is highly abstracted, and lacks a narrative through-line even though the scenes are chronologically arranged. Unless you know a great deal about Gandhi, the basis of his ideas, Indian theologies and the history of the British Empire in India and Africa, you must rely on the program to make sense of the scenes.
The vocal text (by Constance DeJong) is unlikely to help: It is in Sanskrit. Satyagraha also includes, like all of Glass’ work, innumerable passages of repeated note sequences that make you nearly crazy before resolving themselves and kicking you to a higher plane of consciousness.
The Metropolitan Opera has just completed a run of performances of Satyagraha, including a matinee for the Nov. 19 live broadcast, using the inventive 2008 staging by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch that includes quirky, surprisingly emotive, design and fabulous large scale puppetry by The Skills Ensemble.
Visually the work seduces and thrills. The movement is magisterial, mythic, infused with changing energies by the colors of light, props and costumes. You don’t really have to “make sense” of the scenes: Just go with the flow of energy. “Satyagraha” means “truth-force,” and the truth is in the music as well as the visual and kinetic aspects of the opera.
Could there be a better composer than Glass to musically tell the story of Gandhi, who spent a lifetime making slow structural change? In Gandhi’s life and work (as in the South Africa of the apartheid era, when Glass was writing), there was a lot of repetition before social shift could occur; the patterns of Glass’ music mirror this.
The sounds are beautiful, but stamina is required for the journey. There is of course more to the cast, but it is Richard Croft as Gandhi who’s unforgettable. He and orchestra conductor Dante Anzolini, with his deep experience with Glass’ work, seem to have been on just the same wavelength, because the mesh of orchestral and vocal sound was particularly tight during Croft’s many long solos. The staging involves projected texts (minimal) and, in the cinema version, subtitles, but they can’t detract from the mystical quality of the sound of the Sanskrit words sung in resonant tones over and over. You emerge from the theater at the end as if returning from a long meditation session.
If you plan to attend the encore performance, you may want to check out this Met Opera page beforehand. The cast sheet and synopsis are here.
Here's a slideshow trailer for the opera:
Friday, December 2, 2011
Khan artistry: Why you should visit the NC Museum of Natural Sciences' exhibit on the Mongolian warlord
One of those icons is Mongolian warrior/leader Genghis Khan, about whom the museum just happens to have an exhibit. It opened a couple weekends back, and we were invited to visit. The museum hopes you’ll show up tonight for the free movie, but also that you might wanna plunk down cash to see artifacts from Khan’s time.
If you still need convincing, here are five reasons you should check out the exhibit (with help from Albert Ervin, the museum’s special exhibits coordinator).
1. The exhibit has a lot of cool stuff.
The exhibit itself is a traveling museum devoted to both Khan’s legacy and Mongolian culture. You get weaponry both real (like a Mongol cavalry saber) and replicated (like a triple-action crossbow). But the exhibit also has about 200 artifacts belonging to Mongolia, ranging from clothing to bowls to musical instruments, all encased for your viewing pleasure. Ervin says many of these artifacts come from other empires and dynasties Khan conquered.
“His empire was twice the size of the Roman Empire, at its greatest extent,” he says. “So, he accumulated cultural artifacts from the people around him. [Khan] brought people from China and Europe sort of together along the Silk Road.”
2. It gives a well-rounded view of Khan.
Sure, Khan killed a lot of people (as Marc Maximov drolly pointed out in his 8 Days a Week writeup for the Indy), and this exhibit shows the armor, weaponry and tactics he used on the battlefield.
But Ervin says that’s not the whole story.
“I think this exhibit does a good job of showing Genghis Khan as the warrior that he was, because he was that,” says Ervin. “You don’t conquer most of the known world unless you’re a warrior—at least, in his day and age.
"The other side of it is that Genghis Khan was also a statesman. And he had a lot of really—I guess we would call them progressive ideas for his day. He created what would be very similar to a democracy. People rose in the ranks of the hierarchy of his military and of his government based on merit, not based on who they were related to.”
3. The place reeks of incense.
When you first walk in, you’ll find that the exhibit has a very exotic, alluring odor. That comes from a machine, located above a small recreation of the palace Khan's grandson Kublai called home, that blows the scent of incense all over the place. Ervin says that idea came from the exhibit organizers.
“I guess they just felt that it would put people in the mood of a Chinese palace,” he says. (It put me in the mood of an Erykah Badu concert when I took a whiff. But I’m sure your mood may be much different.)
4. This exhibit features a dead person’s bones!
Unfortunately, they're not Khan’s. No one knows where he’s buried. But someone did find the tomb of an unnamed Mongolian princess (they refer to her as “Princess Mummy,” but I like to call her “Karen”), and the bones of said princess are on display at the exhibit.
Says Ervin, “Based on the things that were found in the tomb with her, we can sort of extrapolate about how Genghis Khan may have lived or how he might have been buried.”
5. YOU’LL LEARN SOMETHING!!!!
You might even find it—dare I say—fascinating. “What I think is the cool part of this exhibit is that people will learn that Genghis Khan wasn’t just this ruthless barbarian,” says Ervin.
“He had that other side of him that made a lot of progressive changes in his empire and the people that he conquered. So, his empire wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did if all he was was just going out and killing people.”
Thursday, December 1, 2011
- Summit Entertainment
- A couple for the ages. And ages and ages.
Let me state at the outset that I thoroughly enjoyed the latest Twilight movie. This is not Jean-Luc Godard. Werewolves take their shirts off. Pale vampires make ethereal beauties swoon. There’s a wedding and a honeymoon in Rio. And a demon baby. The franchise is critic-proof.
Debating the relative artistic merits of the film is as meaningless as reproaching Transformers movies for having too many robots. In spite of the guilty pleasure of the franchise, I do find the deeply conservative politics underlying the romance troubling.
Bella Swan, as embodied by the modestly talented Kristen Stewart, lives for love. She has no interests or passions besides the one she conceives for the mysterious new boy in school. He’s firmly abstinence-only, on account of his uncontrollable urges. The only solution is for her to be married at the age of 18. (If there is one character I truly feel sorry for, it’s her perennially clueless father, who is coerced into consent.)
So, there’s a wedding. Hot vampire sex finally commences—but kept within the constraints of the PG-13 rating. But, of course, the wages of sin and duty are pregnancy and, in short order, death. Bella wants to keep her baby even as it devours her from within. Ruby-eyed Bella will be reborn, subject to thousands of years of Edward’s devotion, or if you like, suffocating, controlling behavior.
Stephanie Meyer, the author of the Twilight series, is a Mormon mother of three. For me, the dominant ethos of the books and movies is not romance but an agenda evoking the restrictive worldview of the LDS church. The Cullen clan is a vampire mother church that will keep Bella within its cult, smothering it with what its calls love, and what I would call hell.
The experience of attending a film screening is like going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I will admit to howling in concert with the wolves under the full moon. My daughter attended a midnight screening in Manhattan, where half the audience seemed to be rich girls from the Upper East Side, and the other half African Americans from farther uptown. These seemingly disparate demographic groups met at five screens at 86th Street, in a space where teen-girl fantasy—and irony—was allowed free rein, in a community not mediated by either adults or Facebook.
The world of Harry Potter is much more appealing to me. It’s much easier to identify with the primal fight of the Boy Who Lived against the evil of He Who Must Not Be Named. Bella, the Girl Who Lived, doesn’t endure in order to save the world from evil, but, more frighteningly, to keep her unruly desires firmly within the family.
Friday, November 25, 2011
- Ken Howard/ Metropolitan Opera
- Jay Hunter Morris in the title role
The Met Live in HD
Regal Brier Creek Stadium 14
All my life, I’ve been hearing—words and music—the epic story of Siegfried, the hero of the eponymous third section of Richard Wagner’s four-part opera inspired by Norse mythology, Der Ring des Nibelungen, or the Ring Cycle. I had my mother’s childhood books on the Ring (published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild in 1939), and my father liked to tell the story to his children, because his father had told it to him. Yet in all these years, I’d never seen Siegfried, never experienced the full force of the operatic work, in which the visual component must attempt to equal the power of the aural.
Siegfried premiered in Bayreuth, Germany in 1876 during the first performance of the entire cycle, which immediately ignited the passions of operagoers. Those who love Wagnerian opera really love it; those who don’t (for reasons both aesthetic and philosophical) can be quite disdainful. But however you feel about its worldview, you cannot doubt that the Ring is the Gesamtkunstwerk—total work of art—that Wagner asserted it to be. In each section (all can stand alone), the music and lyrics (Wagner wrote both), the instruments and singing, the dramatic action, the sets, costumes and lighting all add up to a great wholeness. The four parts together create a staggering totality.
They cannot be experienced consecutively all at once: There are not enough hours in the day. In fact, unless you are able to travel to the annual festival in Bayreuth, the opportunities to see any part of the Ring live are few and far between. A new staging by any major opera company is a notable event. Not only does any staging cost as much as the vast hoard of gold in dragon Fafner’s cave, at any given time there may be only three or four singers available who are capable of fulfilling the demanding roles.
Siegfried runs well over five hours with intermissions, with the tenor Siegfried onstage and singing an incredible amount of that time. There are just not that many men young enough, heroic enough and strong enough; who know the part, are sensitive to the complex music and whose voices’ can hold up through that much singing. The dissatisfied young Siegfried has to grow up before our eyes, break away from the evil dwarf who has raised him, re-forge the great sword of his slain father, kill the dragon, take the magic ring and helmet, journey through a forest and cross a ring of fire to discover and awaken to womanhood the spellbound Valkyrie Brünnhilde—at which time he must summon his most delicate and beautiful vocalizations.
Or, his “prettiest singin’,” as The Metropolitan Opera’s surprise new Siegfried called it in an interview segment during the Met’s Live in HD presentation of the Opera’s new Siegfried on Nov. 5. Jay Hunter Morris is a strapping youngish tenor from Paris, Texas (it’s next wide spot west of Texarkana, in the Red River valley just south of the Oklahoma line—about 100 miles southwest of the birthplace of my mother’s mother, she who inculcated the love of opera in her daughter with the little illustrated books), and I am pretty sure his natural accent is one never before heard backstage at the Met. Certainly his path to stardom on that stage is unique. His scenic route to success recently included stops in New York’s Central Park, where he hawked rollerblades, and at an athletic club back home in Paris, where his jobs was handing out the towels.
Not that he was inexperienced when the Met called him in just days before the opening (tenor Gary Lehman had withdrawn due to illness). He has sung a wide repertoire, and had sung Siegfried in the San Francisco Opera’s new production earlier this year, receiving good reviews. But to be cannoned in to Robert Lepage’s high-tech production (with its sometimes-effective 45-ton machinery of moving slabs, its video projections and 3-D animated bird) with a cast of already-famous first-class singers—just in time for the dress rehearsals! What an amazing twist of fate and bucket of luck. He got to be a hero and to play the hero, while having his biggest dream come true, and the energy released by all that glowed brighter than the magic ring.
I’m not capable of judging the finer points of the singing, especially at the remove of broadcast. I thought it was wonderful. Some reviewers have noted that Morris’ voice is not that big, but that is probably why I found him pleasantly un-bellicose (except of course when he’s slaying man and beast). Dramatically, he was excellent, with natural gestures and magnetism off the chart. When Siegfried finally gets to Brünnhilde, the chemistry between Morris and voluptuous soprano Deborah Voigt pales the digital flames all around them as they sing together. Whew.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Rakish but satisfying Don Giovanni at Met in HD. Up this weekend: Wagner's Siegfried
- Marty Sohl/ Metropolitan Opera
- Mojca Erdmann as Zerlina and Mariusz Kwiecien as the title character in the Met's new production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni."
Metropolitan Opera
Simulcast @Brier Creek Stadium 14, Saturday, Oct. 29
Rebroadcast: Wednesday, Nov. 16
The digital revolution has made many wonderful things possible, but culturally speaking, one of the grandest is the live-in-high-definition broadcast of opera from the world’s major opera houses. The leader in bringing the enormous multi-art undertaking that is grand opera is New York’s Metropolitan Opera, with its Live in HD programming, now nearing its fifth anniversary. The most recent broadcast, on Oct. 29 (all live broadcasts to theaters occur on Saturdays), is a new staging of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The recorded show will repeat (or encore, as they say) on Nov. 16 at 6:30 p.m. and local opera lovers can choose between Brier Stadium 14 or North Hills Stadium 14.
And this weekend, Wagnerites will be converging on the cinemas for the live broadcast of Siegfried, the third installment in the Ring cycle. (I'll be there, readers, for all six hours of it.)
But we're here to discuss Don Giovanni—aka Don Juan—the antihero few can resist. A swaggering, lusty liar, seducer, betrayer and murderer, his only positive quality is the unmitigated zest with which he undertakes his loveless misdeeds. The Met is presenting a new staging by Michael Grandage; the music is conducted by newly-named principal conductor Fabio Luisi, who also plays the harpsichord flourishes preceding the recitatives. The music was not as sprightly as I prefer my Mozart, but it well supported the singers.
The strong cast, led by Mariusz Kwiecien as Don Giovanni, sings beautifully, although generally the singers seemed somewhat distant from the passions of the story. Kwiecien has sung the role many times on many stages, and often his delivery seemed rote. The most enjoyable aspect of his characterization were his conversations and asides with his servant, Leporello, the highly amusing and smooth-voiced Luca Pisaroni, who makes a marvelous low accomplice, festooned with the last shreds of conscience.
- Marty Sohl/ Metropolitan Opera
- Mojca Erdmann
The sparkle so essential to Mozart is supplied here by Mojca Erdmann as Zerlina. Her character is about as moral as a kitten, but also as sweet. She goes right along with the Don when he seduces her moments before her own wedding to the hapless Masetto, but she is so bubbly and adorable, so playful in a voice so pure, that we forgive her humanity, and by extension, Don Giovanni’s, too.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
- Double Negative/ Marvel Entertainment
Yes, there’s a really good chance Wilmington locals will see Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson and other A-listers who will return to film the third chapter in Marvel’s chief superhero franchise, which will be directed by Shane Black (who directed Downey in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang).
Needless to say, local fanboys, like Raleigh film blogger and comics aficionado Isaac Weeks, are curious to find out what the movie will be about.
“There’s always the rumor/hope that they might do the adaptation of the ‘Demon in a Bottle’ storyline,” Weeks said, referring to the Iron Man comic’s famed subplot from the ’70s where Tony Stark became a raging alcoholic.
“He drank a little bit in [Iron Man 2]. That’s as close as they’re gonna get to it in a movie, you know. They’re not gonna base a $100 million-budgeted, Hollywood film on a superhero being a drunk.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, Marvel considered filming in Los Angeles (where the first two were shot), Michigan and New Mexico. But executives were enticed by North Carolina’s 25 percent tax credit. (California offers a 25 percent tax credit, but excludes big-budget flicks like Iron Man 3.) Not to mention that EUE/Screen Gems boasts one of the largest sound stages in the world with Stage 10, a 37,500 square-foot-space with a 60-by-60-by-10.5-foot water tank.
Aaron Syrett, director of the North Carolina Film Office, confirms that both the incentives and the sound stages played a role in Marvel’s decision.
“It’s a large film which requires a lot of infrastructure and large sound stages,” Syrett says. “I guess all those things added up for us in the end.”
But EUE/ Screen Gems, which has had such projects ranging from Blue Velvet to Dawson’s Creek memorably shoot at its studios over the decades, has been home to several high-profile projects as of late, building its rep as a studio where bigger-scale productions are welcome. The much-anticipated screen adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ young-adult novel The Hunger Games and the Dwayne Johnson vehicle Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (the sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth), are two projects that have filmed at the EUE/Screen Gems stages.
Wilmington-based camera operator Bo Webb feels this will bring more big-budget business to the state.
“I think it’s going to be great,” says Webb, whose credits include The Notebook, Eastbound and Down and One Tree Hill. “Right now, a lot of the shows like that end up in New Mexico, because of their soundstages there and because of their film incentive. So, I think it’ll help us be more competitive.”
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Despite some rain and colder weather, the four-day event called SPARKcon, the sixth-annual celebration of Raleigh's creativity, was well-attended and included a number of great showcases for local and independent artists.
SPARKCon is organized around various “Sparks,” collaborative groupings of artists around a theme. These range from groups like danceSPARK and theaterSPARK to geekSPARK (technology) or wheelSPARK (skateboarding). One of the most fun aspects of SPARKcon is wandering into a building off of Fayetteville Street and coming across a SPARK you didn't know about while witnessing a demonstration of something new and innovative.
GeekSPARK probably tops the list in that regard. Their independent video game exhibition allowed one to play the latest apps and games from local developers on XBoxes and iPads. Many of these games were also featured at the recent Game On Raleigh. Some were silly fun, such as Ninja Hamster Attack from Nakai Entertainment, and some were really addicting puzzles like Cylinder, a 3D Tetris-like game from Mighty Rabbit Studios.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Exclusive rehearsal footage from THE SERPENT'S EGG, the new musical puppet pageant by PAPERHAND PUPPET INTERVENTION. For more info on the show, read our preview from the Aug. 3 INDY.
THE SERPENT'S EGG runs Fridays through Sundays through Sept. 5 at UNC's Forest Theatre, and Sept. 9-11 at the N.C. Museum of Art. A musical pre-show begins at 6:20 p.m. The performance starts at 7. Admission is a suggested donation of $12/adults and $8/children at the door, but the company stresses that no one is ever turned away for lack of funds.
Friday, April 29, 2011
- steveo.com
But now that he’s 36 years old and three years sober, the Jackass crew’s rowdiest, most extreme daredevil has became more serene and cautious these days. (Viewers of the last, cinematic Jackass outing, Jackass 3D, may have noticed how he sat out the more dangerous stunts, but still took in gross ones like drinking a fat guy’s sweat.) But the man is still crazy enough to take on some risk-taking feats, like performing stand-up. This weekend, Steve-O will be the headliner at Goodnights Comedy Club, the latest stop on his “Entirely Too Much Information Tour.”
The Indy spoke with the self-described “distraction therapist” (and former Dancing with the Stars contestant) about his new persona as a stand-up comedian.
The last time you were on tour, nearly a decade ago with “Don’t Try This At Home: The Tour,” it was more of you just doing crazy, hazardous, usually drug and alcohol-induced things onstage. Now that you’re on the wagon, what’s different about this show?
I’ll tell you how it’s the same and how it’s different. Back then, when I was doing that old tour, I promoted each show by promising that I would be drunk and on drugs or your money back. And there was really a lot of emphasis on how wasted I could be, and I’d come out onstage with breaking beers on my head and chugging hard liquor from a bottle. And I would do a lot of drunken rambling and I would do a lot of crazy stunts as well. And, now, I’ve been clean and sober for some time. And what I’ve done with this tour is to replace the rambling with stand-up comedy, and kept the crazy stunts.
And, you know, it’s so rewarding for me. What makes me feel really good is, after my shows, generally someone comes up to me every night and says, “Hey man, your stand-up comedy is really good. You don’t have to hurt yourself anymore.” That really means a lot to hear that.
So, what do you talk about onstage?
Basically, what people are interested in is kind of the way that the notoriety of Jackass has afforded me. Like, how that’s changed my life, I think that’s what people are interested in hearing. And the fact is when you go from being unknown to being known, all of the sudden, you find that the women are a lot more attracted to you. And it’s really pretty hilarious how that’s the case. So, there’s a lot of, like, behind-the-scenes, sort of juicy stuff about my life as a jackass and my love life in particular.
And, you know, the fact is I’m a shameless son of a bitch and there’s nothing too personal to share with an audience. And that’s why it’s a really appropriate name for the tour, because I really just have some really ridiculous personal shit, you know. A lot of it revolves around, you know, the trials and tribulations of my life as a chronic premature ejaculator with a crooked dick, you know. [Laughs]
Steve-O performs tonight through Sunday at Goodnights Comedy Club, 861 W. Morgan St., in Raleigh. For info, call 828-LAFF or go online at www.goodnightscomedy.com.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
- Ken Howard/ Metropolitan Opera
- James Maddalena (left) and Janis Kelly (second from right) as Richard and Pat Nixon with dancer Haruno Yamazaki and Kanji Segawa
Metropolitan Opera
Rebroadcast @Regal Brier Creek, Regal North Hills
6:30 p.m., March 2; tickets here
The Metropolitan Opera’s HD re-broadcast of the most recent in its series of simulcasts is coming up tonight, and anyone interested in either contemporary music or global power politics may want to clear the evening’s calendar for the presentation of this wonderful new production of one of the 20th century’s great operas.
Nixon in China, with its thrilling score by John Adams (who conducts), libretto by poet Alice Goodman, choreography by Mark Morris and staging by Peter Sellars (whom many call a genius), is a rich experience.
Sellars also directed the broadcast, and his acumen and timing make the HD experience at least as satisfying as being there. The cameras allow you to see things you would not see from the best seat in the house, and under the control of the director who has brought the opera to life on many stages since its 1987 premiere (at the Houston Grand Opera), they glide and zoom and switch in flawless concord with the action and emotion.
It is hard to imagine now, but in 1987, we in the United States did not live amid a flood of items marked “Made in China.” It was still only a trickle. And in 1973, when then-President Richard M. Nixon made his state visit to Cold War enemy country, China and its products were alien and rare to us. Nixon’s visit opened the way to US-China trade, with results that no one foresaw, except perhaps Chairman Mao. The opera examines the significance of this highly theatrical political event, and questions, rather gently, whether or not it was a good thing.
Where is the drama, you may ask, how can there be enough dramatic tension to keep you riveted to your seat and make the time (nearly four hours) fly by?
First, it is in the music. Adams makes beautiful melodies and catches them in meshy layers of aural texture that shimmer with dozens of changes of tempo. The many rhythms and repetitions coil tighter and tighter on themselves, portentous of shift and change, driving the sense of historical importance, while the melodies and motifs remind us that these historical figures are humans, full of pride and hubris, fear and uncertainty, trickery and honor and hope.
The beautiful writing keeps both the frail humanity of the characters—so small on the world stage—and their historical indelibility ever before us, and the staging (and camera work) plays off individual action and massed movement in a highly dramatic manner.
Michael Pollan,
Amen, Amen, Amen!! Your comment was excellently put. Thanks so much for writing in! …
by jwaters on Carrboro Commune occupies CVS building (Orange County)
Gannamede,
The building DOES belong to them and all of us, or at least it should. The people's labor …
by jwaters on Carrboro Commune occupies CVS building (Orange County)