Back in the spring of 2008, New York opera-lovers were aflutter over Juan Diego Flórez’s nine spectacular high Cs in “Ah, mes amis (Pour mon âme)” from La Fille Du Régiment at the Metropolitan Opera, with Natalie Dessay, whose Marie wasn’t exactly chopped liver. And guess what? You can hear them again during the Met’s free summer HD festival which begins on August 29 with that Donizetti opera.
Just like an ongoing television series set for a new season, it’s always useful to re-run the previous season, to get in the mood and to reacquaint yourself with your favorite heroes and villains. The mood in the city is a little less upbeat than in spring of 2008, when the economy’s unraveling was less in full swing. The Met opens its season on September 21 with Karita Mattila in Tosca, but for the city’s recently downsized and underemployed workers, the HD broadcasts may be one of the Met’s most opera affordable options this year. Certainly the weather was splendid on July 14, when the New York Philharmonic performed in Central Park, but you have to wonder if such employment factors are what attracted the unusually large crowd. read more
Two titans of dance gone within a month. First Pina Bausch, and now Merce Cunningham at the age of 90. The effect of their deaths paralleled the nature of their work. Pina’s was surprising, traumatic, emotionally wrenching. Merce’s was, if not exactly expected, and just as sad, then logical—a final step into a dark pool after a long, slow wade.
Merce created a large body of work, a giant living organism that expanded and sometimes morphed into varying iterations, depending on place and time, as with the series of Events. His use of chance operations is well documented and became a kind of sideshow at high-profile performances such as Split Sides at BAM in 2003, with live music by Radiohead and Sigur Ros, in which Cunningham rolled dice in an onstage ritual to determine the musical order. read more
It seems like it’s been raining forever in New York, but recently, the showers stopped long enough for me to try out the city’s latest amenity: The High Line park running along Tenth Avenue. Rising 30 feet into the air, the park has been created out of an old railway trestle built in the 1930s to carry freight from the old Pennsylvania Yards on West 34th Street to the Meatpacking district laying 1.45 miles to the south. In its current configuration, the park, which takes its cues from a similar project in Paris called the Promenade Plantée, extends nine blocks, from Gansevoort Street to West 17th street; eventually, it will continue north as West 30th Street, if not all the way to Javits Center.
I must confess here that my visit was motivated by more than just civic curiosity. In the 1980s, I used to work near the High Line, back when it was an abandoned stretch of rusting steel, sheltering transexual hookers as they plied their trade to motorists heading for the Lincoln Tunnel. I’d often stop to admire its poetry of riveted steel, wondering what the view from up there must be like. Later, in the early ’90s, news that then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani wanted to tear the High Line down was quit upsetting to me, as I’d assumed something of a proprietary interest in it. I was just as relieved a few years later when a group of concerned citizens, inspired in part by photographer Joel Sternfeld’s wonderful book, Walking The High Line, rallied to save the structure, and convince the newly elected mayor, Michael Bloomberg to transform it into its current form. read more
Zakir Hussain, considered by many to be the world’s foremost player of the Indian tabla drums, has spent a big chunk of time in New York this spring, thanks to a wide-ranging performance and education series run by Carnegie Hall. Perhaps the most public part of his visit involved a set of Carnegie concerts from April 26 to 29 with collaborators like banjo player Bela Fleck and bassist Edgar Meyer—who are planning to release a recording, Triple Concerto for Banjo, Double Bass, and Tabla, this fall—as well as saxophonist Charles Lloyd, santoor player Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, vocalist Shankar Mahadevan, and percussionists Steve Smith and Giovanni Hidalgo.
Behind the scenes, though, Hussain’s educational activities have been equally interesting. read more
The next few months on the New York stage are going to be hot! I’d even venture that they’re going to be hottt! Just look at this lineup: Jane Fonda, Kathleen Turner, Susan Sarandon, Will Ferrell, Jeremy Irons, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Gyllenhaal—and for the thespian freaks huddling over in the corner, we have Janet McTeer, Simon Russell Beale, Sinéad Cusack, Denis O’Hare, Lili Taylor, Geoffrey Rush. Yes, they’re all going to shine at the theater in the coming months. In what? Oh, who cares about that!
As much as theater in America likes to think of itself as a somehow “purer” artform than film, it shares with its screen relative a general disregard for the director as auteur. Above-ground plays and movies are both advertised on the strength of their cast—and if it’s a no-name cast, then on the fact that it’s by Shakespeare or Chekhov. I know I’m making a gross generalization here, but generally speaking, New Yorkers don’t get excited by the announcement of a transgressive director’s new project or rumors about a radical reimagining of a classic work. Oh sure, word of mouth often leads to lines around the block for an innovative production with no glittery names attached—in the past few months, this happened to the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Soho Rep’s production of Sarah Kane’s harrowing Blasted and Les Freres Corbusier’s video-game-inspired musical extravaganza Dance Dance Revolution. But when it comes to advance buzz, it’s all about the actors—and so it is with what we’re expecting from 2009 so far. read more
During the opera season, I always look forward to one annual ritual that comes as regularly as back-to-school shopping in August or gridlock-alert days in November and December. I’m referring, of course, to the December season-opening gala at La Scala, which is preceded by the inevitable work stoppages and strike threats, only to be averted at the last minute. It’s not only opening night, of course—there was last summer’s strike, for instance, which shut down three performances of La Bohème at La Scala—but it is typically opening night when one or several unions stage protests by walking off the job.
This year was almost an exact repeat of last year, when a November strike, scuttled a couple performances of Verdi’s Requiem and workers also threatened to strike the opening-night performance of Tristan und Isolde, led by Daniel Barenboim. (The show went on.) I am happy to report that, despite generally pessimistic reports of funding difficulties for Italian opera, as of December 2, this year follows the pattern of previous Decembers at La Scala, and the December 7 Don Carlo will go on, at least according to a December 2 Bloomberg news report from Milan.
It turns out there would have been ramifications for New Yorkers, if this Don Carlo had been derailed. New York is one of several U.S. cities where live high-definition theater screenings of Don Carlo are about to take place. read more
Most of us don’t have the opportunity to be in Beijing for the Olympics, but Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet’s new work – The Copier, by Jill Johnson – might satisfy the interests of at least a few fans. The company’s dancers are essentially world-class athletes, capable of doing things most of us can’t even dream of. Like Olympians, they train and perform at an unbelievable level, their technique and musculature superb. These are easily observed as you can sit or stand very close as they hurtle at you or lock a pose mere inches away.
The Copier is part of Cedar Lake’s Installation Series, an innovative (for New York), less formal type of performance where the audience members are not seated in fixed positions, but may roam around the T-shaped platform stage, or sit on the floor or small risers. read more
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