If you believe the adage that no publicity is bad publicity, then perhaps the Met’s opening-night Tosca Monday night was a success. By now, you’ve probably read about the prolonged booing that greeted Luc Bondy’s new production, which starred Karita Mattila as Tosca, Marcelo Alvarez as Cavaradossi, and George Gagnidze as Scarpia. Yes, in operaworld people get more than a little upset when you change the plot—the directorial equivalent of spitting on tradition. (You can read more about the brouhaha in HuffPo and the New York Times.)
I, however, was not in the house, surrounded by other lovers of opera and opera tradition, when this all transpired. Instead, when the evening began at 6:30, I was 20 blocks away in Times Square. I was curious to see what sort of reception Puccini might get in the noisy crossroads of the world. read more
When it comes to movie musicals, some directors are auteurs and others are doers. In the former category are the likes of Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen, who put their stamp on their material. Films by Minnelli, in particular, are so his and his alone that you cannot mistake his stamp—and even when he made a drama, it felt and look like a musical (cf. the overheated emotions and choreographed camera work of The Bad and the Beautiful and Some Came Running, or the balletic precision of the sublime Kay Kendall’s body language in The Reluctant Debutante).
In the latter category is Robert Wise, who made West Side Stories, The Sound of Music and Star!, among other films. Wise was a typical product of the old studio system; like directors such as Raoul Walsh, he was a master craftsman who could step up to a higher level of artistry when he connected with one of scripts that were sent his way. Was it the case with West Side Story? read more
Every year there are rumors that Coney Island as we know it is about to die, and every year the amusement park in Brooklyn gets a reprieve. This time, however, things do look grim: Astroland, which occupies three acres in the heart of Coney Island, closed for good earlier this month. It’s not all Coney Island, but it’s a good chunk of it. As is usually the case with New York, developers are involved and there’s talk of new condos (though in this climate, I’m not holding my breath as to how many people will want to fork out chunks of cash for “luxury” apartments at the far end of Brooklyn).
For now, Coney’s undomitable spirit lives on at the Coney Island Film Festival. The offerings at the eighth edition center on independent shorts that capture not so much Coney as a physical place (though there’s some of that, too) but as a mental one, from a documentary on carny women to a portrait of performance artist/rocker Kembra Pfahler.
The fest also includes a screening of Walter Hill’s 1979 movie The Warriors, in which the titular Coney gang (”Warriors? You guys are the big dudes, huh?”) spends a harrowing night trying to make it back to its home base after attending a gang meeting in the Bronx. The Warriors are trotted out every time people look for a movie about Coney Island, even though little of the movie actually takes place there. My two favorite films about Coney Island and what it once meant to the people of New York are Paul Fejos’s silent Lonesome (1928) and Ray Ashley, Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin’s Little Fugitive (1953). read more
A little more than a month after the riveting new animated short film Peter and the Wolf won an Academy Award® in the best animated short category, it airs on PBS during a month that Hugh Welchman, one the film’s producers, has called a “victory parade.”
Actually, the dates on Great Performances were booked before the film received the award. But as part of the heady follow-up from receiving the Oscar®, Welchman and his Oscar® statue have been in great demand, and are making the rounds—as well as occasionally setting off security alarms at the airport.
What’s it like to be the subject of this sudden notoriety? I spoke to Welchman on Monday from his London studio, Breakthru Films, where he described his whirlwind tour during the last month. He also talked about how he and Philharmonia Orchestra conductor Mark Stephenson came up with the idea for a modern interpretation of this Prokofiev piece that has served as an introduction to the orchestra for so many children; how he thinks videocassettes changed children’s listening habits; how director Suzie Templeton got arrested by the F.S.B. (the renamed K.G.B.) in Russia while researching the film; and upcoming plans for a Chopin film.
Jennifer Melick: So what has it been like for you since winning the Oscar® for Peter and the Wolf on February 24?
Hugh Welchman: It’s been completely crazy—lots of things to do. I had 3,000 e-mails to start with [laughs]. I had to go through all of those. Then obviously a lot of people connected with the project suddenly got in touch with me, and I had to do things like go over to Poland and go meet the minister of culture, because we made the film in Poland, and so had to do a kind of victory tour. Then off to Russia. Yeah, it’s been pretty crazy. read more
During the past year, one of the upbeat stories in the classical-music business has been the proliferation of opera in movie theaters.
The Metropolitan Opera, under its new general manager, Peter Gelb, jump-started this trend last season with its high-definition simulcasts, which have proved so successful that now other opera houses—including Royal Opera, Covent Garden; La Scala; San Francisco Opera—are jumping on the bandwagon.
Hearts in operaworld are aflutter. The rest of the world has finally caught on to the wonder and beauty of opera, by the simple virtue of its increased accessibility—and the $22 ticket price, far lower than a seat in most opera theaters. The reality, as reported in a Sunday 3/23 front-page article in The New York Times is a bit different. Cinema chains, looking for ways to stay profitable, have discovered that opera is a reliable modest source of income because opera-lovers will still pay money to go to the opera, even when theaters’ main source of revenue from moviegoers is dipping. If I had to guess, I’d say most of the people going to the cinema to hear opera not newcomers to our art form: they are the same people you see at the Metropolitan Opera or Lyric Opera of Chicago or San Francisco Opera. read more
subscribe to RSS feed
find SundayArts on Facebook
