Friday, July 11, 2008

Watch this film. Now!

It won the Best Short Film award at Cannes 2008. Roughly 6 minutes. Time very well spent.

http://en.zappinternet.com/video/nilSqaMboM/HISTORIA-DE-UN-LETRERO-

Deeply moving and thought-provoking.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Povero Maestro Jimmy...

Per several news sources, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra website, James Levine will have to miss the remainder of the Tanglewood Season (after he just conducted an apparently triumphant performance of Les Troyens a few days ago) due to a cyst in his kidney. Not dangerous, baruch Hashem, but very uncomfortable, so the kidney does need to be removed, and he will take 6 weeks to recover. He should be fine in time for the opening nights of the Met and the BSO in September.

This after the rotator cuff (shoulder) injury that felled him last (?) year. Working in worker's compensation I deal with a lot of rotator cuff tears - up there with lumbosacral (lower back) sprains and meniscal (knee) tears. It can be pretty serious - surgery, many months of physical therapy, and probably at least some loss of use of the arm (I have noticed Levine, admittedly never a "big gesture" conductor, does seem a bit more limited and stiff now). I hope he's OK with his kidney. You only absolutely need one, after all.

Wishing him a refuah shleimah. I don't suppose anyone knows his Hebrew name? Has it ever been made public?

Maybe if I'm really lucky, I'll "bump into" him again while I'm at the Berkshire Choral Festival, but he'll probably be recuperating in New York.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

New York Philharmonic at the bat in Staten Island (STUB)

Again, the E-mail sent to Brad Wilber until I can put up a more detailed review:

"Went to NY Philharmonic concert in a Staten Island ballpark last night - Xian Zhang conducting Mozart's Divertimento in D, Bach Double Violin Concerto (Sheryl Staples and Michele Kim - finally got to hear that live!) and Elgar Enigma Variations, where the audience applauded after virtually every variation even after being warned that they were being played without pause. Those who had cell phones (not me) could also vote for encores - we had a choice between the Russian Dance from the Nutcracker and an orchestral arrangement of "Summertime". No great surprise, the latter won. Fabulous (but way too loud) fireworks display afterwards, and I had a nice conversation on the ferry back with one of the Met's music librarians who was "on loan" to the Philharmonic and will also work Mostly Mozart. But I'm still waiting to hear Maestra Zhang in an acoustically "normal" concert environment."

Thursday, July 03, 2008

The "wrath" of Khan... (STUB)

... Genghis Khan, that is. And even though (to my embarassment), I wasn't the first to think of it, I couldn't resist the Star Trek reference.

Full review of Mongol will be here shortly. But it was wonderful how it painted this man usually demonized as a complete brute as a human being, and showed some of the depth and richness of Mongol culture. No mere "hordes" here. Apparently it's the first of a trilogy.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

How do you say !@$$#%$! in Japanese???

One of my major haunts, besides Lincoln Center, my synagogue, and the internet cafe where I write this blog and watch certain television shows on YouTube is the magnificent Film Forum, which shows lots of classic, silent (often with live piano accompaniment!) foreign, documentary, and "arthouse films". Membership there is $75/year, allowing you to see films that normally cost $11 for $6, and that includes double and occasionally even triple features. One of the best bargains in the city. However, in light of my less-than-ideal-but steadily-improving finances, I let my membership lapse last year because the upfront fee was a bit much. I also tended not to walk past the Film Forum on my way home from work or check their website because I didn't necessarily want to be tempted with what I couldn't afford (I missed War and Peace last November).

Well, I did check their website today, and found out, to my horror, that they were in the middle of a 7-week retrospective of the great Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai (Ran - where he's one of the greatest King Lears ever, Samurai Rebellion, Harakiri, Kagemusha, and many, many, others), the Japanese Lawrence Olivier (1), and not only did I miss some of my favorite films with him, and films I've never seen and wanted to, but ...

I MISSED NOT ONE, BUT TWO CHANCES TO MEET NAKADAI HIMSELF!!!!

Not only did Nakadai appear after a screening of Harakiri (one of my favorite of his films!) on June 20 [okay, that was the night of the Roberto/Angela concert, and I wouldn't miss them even for Nakadai-san (-sama?)], but Film Forum actually had an "evening" (live interview) with him on June 24 (the night I went to the Philharmonic in the Park, but that I would have been willing to miss!), and I didn't know about it! I also seemed to have missed every newspaper article about this - the New York Times, and frankly quite a few other papers, must have had an article on the retrospective, they always do for things like this!

Okay, I didn't miss Ran (2), and they are showing all three parts/ten hours of The Human Condition, and there are one or two other things I want to see - now I'm going to renew my membership and make absolutely sure it stays up to date! But I never met Toshiro Mifune, I never met Takashi Shimura (they're both dead) - I had hoped to meet at least one of the triumvirate of Great Japanese Actors! And I certainly never met Akira Kurosawa! Nakadai is now 75 (and still acting, apparently). What the hell are the chances of him ever leaving Japan again?

GAAAAAAAAAH!

(Not quite "samurai" enough. Maybe I should find some "smiley" on the internet of a Japanese swordsman hacking away and put it here. That would be a better description of how I feel.)

I've decided to see Mongol tonight - it's a big, sweeping epic about the rise of Genghis Khan. But that's a poor substitute for meeting Nakadai!

(1) Although he looks like a Japanese Elvis!

(2) The only reason the film isn't in my permanent collection is that there is some debate about the quality of the DVD transfer.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

About time! And how about some more maestras at the Met?

Among the many things I'm looking forward to next season at the Met, rather high on the list is Orfeo et Euridice starring Stephanie Blythe and Danielle de Niese in the title roles. While I rather enjoyed Heidi Grant Murphy's portrayal of Amor the last time I saw the opera (she looked so cute in her costume!), I'm more excited by her alternate, the immensely charming Chinese soprano Ying Huang (a mostly Mozart specialist and a fine English-language Pamina for her Met debut). Ms. Huang's performances will be the only two of the run not conducted by James Levine (who, as much as I love him, isn't necessarily the best conductor for this repertory). Thanks to my indefatigable best friend Brad Wilber, who runs the Met Futures page, I have just learned that these performances will be conducted by Kazem Abdullah, who I believe is, finally, the first African-American ever to conduct at the Met (1).

Maestro Abdullah has been on the Met roster for about two years now (you don't miss a name like that in the program! although I had assumed at first that he was Middle Eastern) as an assistant conductor, and last season he worked on Die Zauberflöte and Iphigenie en Tauride. I first heard of him "in earnest" last year when I was at the Berkshire Choral Festival and I read an article in one of the area papers about him (I've been trying to find the article online without success) because he was conducting an opera - Cosi fan Tutte, again subbing for Levine. He is a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center which means, presumably, that he is one of Levine's protegés. He began his career as a clarinetist (2) and won several awards as an instrumentalist, as well as a humanitarian award for creating a gay and lesbian jazz ensemble called UMOJA!!. He studied conducting at the Peabody Conservatory under Gustav Meier, who happens to be the conducting teacher of my favorite maestro of our age, Antonio Pappano, and a student of Richard Strauss. There's some interesting stuff that comes up if you search the Web for Abdullah's name. He's had some concerts recently at the Oklahoma Arts Institute and the Indianapolis Symphony (with pianist Gabriela Montero). It would seem from the operas he's already conducted that, at least as an opera conductor, he tends to be a Mozart/early music specialist. I believe he has also worked with Mark Morris, who directs this production.

My main concern is since he is (I assume) in his early twenties that's pretty much babyhood for a conductor, and I'm not quite convinced he's experienced enough for such a huge gig. Then again, I'm sure Maestro Levine is a better judge of such things than I am. Also, since he is essentially Levine's understudy here, he will pretty much have to follow what Levine does with the orchestra and singers rather than being able to put his own unique stamp on things. And needless to say, there are going to more than the usual eyes on him, and I don't doubt at least some critics/commentators/bitchy bloggers are going to make not-so-subtle comments about "pandering to political correctness", or worse.

The only pictures I could find of him as a conductor on the Web were too small and unflattering to show. There is a "civillian" picture on his Facebook site (http://www.facebook.com/people/Kazem_Abdullah/652748831). I don't have a Facebook account and probably won't get one.

His performances will be on Wednesday, January 28 (my mother's 83rd birthday!) and Saturday (evening), January 31. I imagine with the buzz he'll get, the many Blythe-lovers out there (of which I am one) and that it's a popular production (Mark Morris probably has more fans than Blythe!), this will sell out fast!

Well, now that that barrier has been broken (although, unfortunately, I think it will be quite a long time before there are any other African-American conductors at the Met, or even before Abdullah himself is a regular there - in general, the assistant conductors don't make the "big leap forward"), is it possible that we might finally start getting a few more maestre (the correct Italian, unlike in the post's title)to go along with the near army of maestri? Since Peter Gelb is actually married to a conductor (Kerri-Lyn Wilson, who has conducted opera in Italy and I think a few other places), I'm sure he'd have no objection to the idea, although I presume it is primarily still Maestro Levine who makes those decisions. Marin Alsop, at this point, is probably the "starriest" name they could get, but I haven't heard of her doing much opera, although I think she did conduct Rigoletto for the ENO a few years back. More likely is that she'll do a contemporary opera, possibly a revival of Doctor Atomic or maybe Nixon in China. I would also very much like to see Xian Zhang, now a regular with the New York Philharmonic (although I have yet to hear her at Avery Fisher Hall, or, for that matter, in any setting which isn't acoustically compromised - and I'm so angry that I missed her Alexander Nevsky last year!) who started as an opera conductor in Beijing and has also conducted at the Cincinatti Opera. And what about Anne Manson, who regularly gets rave reviews for her work both at Julliard and on the West Coast? And those are just the names I know - I'm sure the Met scouts know of many other people I've never heard of!

I also want to put in a word for a female conductor who I think has been terribly maligned by many opera fans and critics - Maestra Simone Young, now, I believe, the artistic director of the Hamburg Opera. Her Met debut received almost universally bad reviews (with, of course, some not very well disguised sexism), and I think the only reason that she wasn't actually drawn and quartered was they were too busy doing that to Roberto Alagna, who debuted the same night. I will concede that she wasn't a great Puccini conductor (she herself has said that she finds La Boheme the most difficult opera she's ever conducted, and she's right, it's not an easy opera!), but I didn't find anything horribly wrong with her Les Contes Hoffman, or on the Cav/Pag broadcast I heard her conduct. She is principally a conductor of German opera, especially Wagner, and what little of that I have heard her conduct - mostly on Johan Botha's Wagner album - is absolutely wonderful. Of course, in the late 1990s, you weren't going to hear Wagner conducted by anyone other than Levine, or possibly then-hot German maestro Christian Thielemann, but if they were going to have her there, they should have played to her strengths, and given her operas she presumably wanted to do. Even still, well, there have been far worse conductors at the Met who have never gotten the critical drubbing she did - but they were Italian and male! (3) So, maybe bring her in for a Der Fliegender Hollander or something, and still let Levine have his Ring Cycle. And even considering Gelb is getting some big star conductors at last, once Levine leaves there won't be that many people who will be able to do Wagner!

Oh, has the Met ever done an opera by a female composer? It occurred to me that with Gelb's appetite for new music and the general reverence held by the opera world for Karita Mattila, might we possibly get a work by Kaija Saariaho, who often writes for her? I was also thinking of Ethel Smythe's The Wreckers, but that's probably too obscure. And another opera I missed hearing due to lack of money - the American Symphony Orchestra did it a few months ago. She's probably most famous for writing "March of the Women", which featured in the BBC series about the British suffragist movement Shoulder to Shoulder.


(1) I find it very odd that James De Priest didn't, considering that he's Marian Anderson's nephew, but whether his lack of conducting opera was his idea or the fact he just wasn't hired for it I have no idea. I think Dean Dixon might have conducted a Met-in-The-Parks, but I'm not sure. I tend to think of him as being in the 1940s, even considering how long lived conductors tend to be. It might have been a Philharmonic-in-the-Parks.

(2) That's a very interesting instrument for a conductor to take up - perhaps he didn't decide to conduct until after his clarinet studies? The impression I get is that the overwhelming majority of conductors are primarily pianists, although there are a number of violinists as well. Zubin Mehta is really the odd-man-out as a double bassist. Of course, Abdullah must be a pianist as well if he does standard assistant conductor things like coach singers. Actually, I think you have to pass a piano test if you want to graduate with any music degree, no matter what instrument (or voice) is your primary means of musical expression.

(3) To be fair to that particular conductor, he has said on a number of occasions that he really doesn't like conducting Italian opera but everyone asks him to do it because he's Italian and he can't really turn down work - the same situation, it seems, as Young at the Met. And despite some hacks that have appeared at the Met, I have nothing against Italian male conductors in general - Maurizio Benini is pretty good for comedy and bel canto stuff, if not ideal for Rigoletto, I think very highly of Marco Armiliato, and Fabio Luisi, is, well, just fab!