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MET Orchestra Plays Carnegie Hall

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 27 June 2023 20:42; Written by Jack Angstreich

Soprano Angel Blue and mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel performing with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on June 22, 2023. Photo: Evan Zimmerman / Met Opera

At Carnegie Hall on the night of Thursday, June 15th, I had the enormous pleasure of attending a magnificent concert presented by the extraordinary MET Orchestra—along with the fabulous MET Chorus, led by Donald Palumbo—under the brilliant direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

The conductor spoke briefly before the music began to dedicate the performance to the ensembles’ members or staff that lost their lives as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The event opened superbly with an unforgettable account of the beautiful and haunting Oraison—heardhere in its New York premiere—by the contemporary Cuban-Canadian composer, Luis Ernesto Peña Laguna. The program note by Claudio Ricignuolo reports:

In 2021, the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal commissioned Peña to write a choral work in tribute to the victims of COVID-19 and intended to be programmed with Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem. In composing Oraison, Peña was inspired by the poem “Danse humaine,” written for the occasion by French author Jean-A. Massard (b. 2000). As the composer explains:

There’s a word that’s very present in my composition, and that word is gestes (“gestures”). It’s a word that resonates with me when I think about the pandemic and how Canada and specifically Quebec managed it. The composition ends just like it begins … a way of representing each wave, how the pandemic is cyclic and still not over. The use of several languages (Latin, French, English, and Spanish) speaks to the fact that COVID has affected the entire planet.

The pinnacle of the evening, however, was achieved with a stunning realization of the awesome German Requiem of Johannes Brahms—which was hilariously misdescribed by the arch-Wagnerite music critic and playwright George Bernard Shaw who said it “could only have come from the establishment of a first-class undertaker”—featuring two outstanding soloists: soprano Lisette Oropesa, a luminary of the Metropolitan Opera—she was replacing Nadine Sierra who had to withdraw due to illness—and baritone Quinn Kelsey. The artists were rewarded with a tremendous reception.

Nézet-Séguin and the ensemble returned to this venue exactly one week later for another terrific concert which began thrillingly with an energetic performance of Leonard Bernstein’s ingenious Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, which were selected and orchestrated by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal. Also impressive was the world premiere of contemporary composer Matthew Aucoin’s powerfulHeath(King LearSketches), which uncannily recalled the mainstream of twentieth-century music. Here I reproduce in toto his eloquent program note on the work:

The heath, in Shakespeare’s King Lear, is the bare, windswept place, devoid of civilization and human comforts, where Lear, the Fool, and others end up after Lear’s eldest two daughters—to whom he has unwisely bequeathed his kingdom—have systematically stripped him of the last shreds of his authority. It is on the heath that Lear loses touch with reality, or at least with the world of unchecked privilege that he has inhabited for his whole life, and enters a state somewhere between madness and prophecy, a kind of lucid nightmare.

But the heath is more than a mere geological site; it is the psychological bedrock of the entire play.King Lear expresses a bottomlessly bleak vision of human nature, one in which laws, customs, and hierarchies—what we call “norms” in the contemporary world—are a flimsy safeguard against devouring animal appetites. When Lear lets his guard down for an instant and makes a major decision for sentimental reasons rather than according to the dictates of realpolitik, the wolves that surround him instantly show their fangs.

So, even though my orchestral piece does not directly enact the play’s heath scenes, Heath felt like the only possible title. This play’s inner landscape is a rocky, barren place, one in which every human luxury is ultimately burned away to reveal the hard stone underneath: “the thing itself,” as Lear puts it.

Heath is divided into four sections, played continuously with no break. The first and longest, “The Divided Kingdom,” embodies the atmosphere of the play’s first scenes: the uneasy sense of rituals failing to serve their purpose, of political life unraveling into chaos. The second section, “The Fool,” is full of darting, quicksilver music inspired by the Fool’s mockery of Lear. The brief third section, “I have no way ...”, is inspired by the blinded Gloucester’s slow, sad progress across the landscape. And the final movement, “With a Dead March,” embodies the accumulated tragedies of the play’s final scenes.

The first half of the event closed exhilaratingly with a fully compelling version of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s marvelous Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. Interestingly, the composer later envisioned writing an opera adapted from the William Shakespeare play about which he said to his brother, Modest:

This shall be my definitive work. It’s odd how until now I hadn’t seen how I was truly destined to set this drama to music. Nothing could be better suited to my musical character. No kings, no marches, and none of the encumbrances of grand opera—just love, love, love.

After an intermission, the evening concluded memorably with a wonderful performance of Act IV of Giuseppe Verdi’s penultimate opera, Otello. An excellent slate of singers was led by the enchanting soprano Angel Blue—another luminary of the Metropolitan Opera—as Desdemona along with tenor Russell Thomas in the title role; the secondary cast included mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel as Emilia, tenor Errin Duane Brooks as Cassio, baritone Michael Chioldi as Iago, and the bassi Richard Bernstein and Adam Lau as Lodovico and Montano respectively. Especially enthusiastic applause for the artists elicited a splendid encore: Florence Price’s Adoration featuring the concertmaster, David Chan, as soloist.

Marco Ferreri Retrospective at Lincoln Center

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 26 June 2023 13:54; Written by Jack Angstreich

Tales of Ordinary Madness

From June 9th through the 22nd, Film at Lincoln Center presented “Marco Ferreri: Beyond the Absurd,” a major retrospective of the films of that director. Below I survey the fiction features in the series that were shown in 35-millimeter.

The bleak The Seed of Man from 1969 is one of the strongest films by Ferreri that I’ve seen and visually is one of the most striking. The Film at Lincoln Center program note provides the following description:

Dora (Anne Wiazemsky) and Cino (Marzio Margine) are the survivors of a plague that has eradicated almost all of humankind. In a post-apocalyptic world, they need to decide whether they should have a child or refuse to repopulate a toxic planet. Cino collects objects from the ancient world and wants to force his consort to give birth. But Dora, faced with the potential to carry a child, refuses to perpetuate a sick humanity.

The popular Annie Girardot has a small but engaging role in the film.

Dillinger Is Dead—which was acclaimed by Cahiers du cinéma—from the same year, is a pessimistic and enigmatic work, a very strange one from an especially eccentric filmmaker, deploying a functional, even inelegant, style. In a useful article for The Criterion Collection, Michael Joshua Rowin has written the following about the film: “Dillinger’s trajectory may seem simple—a gas mask designer played by Michel Piccoli (Glauco, although his name appears only in the script) returns home after work, cooks himself dinner, discovers a gun, and shoots his wife in the head—but the film’s refusal of clear-cut logic, its contradictory symbols, and its moral ambiguity open it to endless interpretation.” He adds:

In a 2007 interview with Cahiers du cinéma, the actor described how Ferreri’s hands-off direction forced him to come up with his own ideas for the lead role inDillinger:“Ferreri didn’t direct me for a second during the shoot; he would simply give spatial indications. It was up to me to play this solitary person, this solitude, this eternal child or this childlike rebirth of ‘mature’ man, between despair, suicide, simple insomnia, dream.”

In his entry on Ferreri in Cinema: A Critical Dictionary, edited by Richard Roud, Edgardo Cozarinsky remarks appositely upon the film: “A certain disregard for finish, and frequently careless mise-en-scène, nevertheless contribute to the atonal quality of the most gruesome situations, most notably in Dillinger è Morto (Dillinger Is Dead, 1969).” Piccoli, one of the subtlest of French actors—he collaborated with Ferreri six times—is a brilliant practitioner of the verbal but gives a largely wordless performance. The incredibly alluring Anita Pallenberg here as elsewhere is an object of intense erotic fascination. (The film also features Girardot in another indelible supporting role.) Dillinger Is Dead was screened in a superb print from Janus Films which preserved its extraordinary color photography.

The 1974 Don’t Touch the White Woman!, an attractively photographed, postmodern, burlesque Western—a commercial failure about which maybe the less said, the better—struck me as a major disappointment despite the spirited defense of it—in Film Comment—by the estimable critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and notwithstanding an impressive cast including a characteristically amusing Marcello Mastroianni as Colonel George Armstrong Custer; a gorgeous and charming Catherine Deneuve as his object of sexual and romantic interest; Piccoli as Buffalo Bill; Ugo Tognazzi as Custer’s traitorous, Indian scout; along with Philippe Noiret, Alain Cuny, Serge Reggiani, and Franco Fabrizi. Rosenbaum’s brief description is accurate: “Acts follow one another, not constructive links, and each is another hit-or-miss detail. The result is a number of loose improvisations on a given theme, but rarely (or only intermittently) a cohesive story.” More pictorial in style thanDillinger is Dead,the final Battle of Little Bighorn generates some long overdue narrative excitement. The film was screened in an excellent print from Cinecittà.

Film at Lincoln Center encapsulates the disturbing The Last Woman from 1976 as follows:

Gerard, left behind by a woman who joined the feminist movement, raises his baby alone. He meets Valerie, a young caregiver who will become the last woman, and probably his greatest love.

The film stars Gérard Depardieu, Zouzou, Piccoli again, Renato Salvatori, the immeasurably desirable Ornella Muti, and features a luminous Nathalie Baye in a brief appearance. Ferreri co-wrote the screenplay with the eminent Spanish writer Rafael Azcona—with whom he collaborated on his early films produced in Spain and who is also known for his outstanding screenplays for Luis Garcia Berlanga, Carlos Saura, among others. Some sequences and compositions interestingly recall Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert. It was screened in its Italian-language version.

The transgressive Bye Bye Monkey from 1978—which tied with Jerzy Skolimowski’s The Shout for the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival—is also bizarre. Film at Lincoln Center’s note says: “Gérard Lafayette finds a young monkey by the seashore, and decides to raise him as his own child.” A seemingly post-apocalyptic ambience accords well with Ferreri’s fatalism. The film is consistently visually compelling with an effective use of New York locations but the lack of narrative drive here is a recurring weakness across the director’sœuvre. Many distinguished contributors were involved in the production, such as editor Ruggero Mastroianni and Philippe Sarde, who composed the score. The director co-authored the script with Azcona and Gérard Brach, who is most famous for his unforgettable collaborations with Roman Polanski. The film stars Depardieu again and features memorable supporting performances by Marcello Mastroianni and Geraldine Fitzgerald along with James Coco, Mimsy Farmer—the subject of Lewis Klahr’s amazing experimental film, Her Fragrant Emulsion—and pornographic actress Gail Lawrence. It was screened in another exceptionally good print from Cinecittà.

The less ambitious and seemingly resolutely minor Seeking Asylum from 1979—it won the Special Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival—is another curiosity, a utopian vehicle for the gentle, endearing and Chaplinesque Roberto Benigni who co-wrote the screenplay with Ferreri and Brach. Film at Lincoln Center’s summary is apt:

Roberto is a most unorthodox yet talented kindergarten teacher—perhaps because he is still a child at heart. As he tries to help a boy who doesn’t speak, he falls in love with the mother of one of his pupils.

The film’s visual approach and episodic—even rambling and diffuse—nature recalls neorealism but it also often has the uncanniness of a dream or even science-fiction. The fine color photography was fully appreciable in the superb print from Cinecittà.

Also unsettling is the depressing Tales of Ordinary Madness from 1981 adapted from stories by Charles Bukowski and starring Ben Gazzara. Film at Lincoln Center provides the following description:

Writer Charles Serking refuses to become an academic by day, poet by night. A drunkard, selfish, and a bit of an anarchist, he wanders around Los Angeles. While doing so, he meets the beautiful and mysterious Cass (Ornella Muti).

Susan Tyrrell appears briefly in a notable role. Sergio Amidei, famous as a scriptwriter for Robert Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica, collaborated with Ferreri on the screenplay. The film is enhanced by the work of one of the greatest cinematographers, Tonino Delli Colli, who shot unforgettable works by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sergio Leone, Polanski, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini. But despite these and other promising elements, my impression on seeing this again is that Barbet Schroeder’s film from a Bukowski script,Barflyfrom 1987, seems like a more enduring treatment of similar material.

The atmospheric The Future Is Woman from 1984, also shot by Delli Colli, is one of Ferreri’s most satisfactory achievements, especially on a formal level. Film at Lincoln Center summarizes it thus: “A love triangle: a woman nostalgic for silent films (Hanna Schygulla), a man obsessed with saving trees (Niels Arestrup), and a lost pregnant young woman (Ornella Muti).” It was screened in the most beautiful print in the entire series.

Also a minor work was, despite some odd elements, the much more conventionalThe House of Smilesfrom 1991, which features a wonderful lead performance by Ingrid Thulin. The Film at Lincoln Centerprécisreads as follows:

Adelina (Ingrid Thulin), once crowned a beauty queen, has lost her teeth in the nursing home. She falls in love with Andrea (Dado Ruspoli), another patient. Their mutual desire shocks all of the home’s young nurses and employees.

The film won the Golden Bear at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival. It was shown in a good print from Cinecittà.

Diary of a Maniac from 1993, Ferreri’s last fiction feature, is another curiosity. The Film at Lincoln Center capsule provides the following description:

Benito (Jerry Calà), a middle-aged, half-broke salesman, writes in his diary all the details of his mediocre everyday life, including every subtle alteration of his physical state and his stormy worn-out romance with Luigia (Sabrina Ferilli). He is certain that his diary could become a literary masterpiece one day.

June '23 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 22 June 2023 00:51; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Release of the Week

Munch

(Juno Films)

The complicated, tragic life and singular artistry of master Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is dramatized by director Henrik M. Dahlsbakken through an intriguing structure: four actors play Munch at ages 21, 29, 45 and 80, with the 29-year-old artist wandering through modern-day Berlin and the elderly Munch played by Anne V. Krigsvoll in unconvincing makeup and wig that make her look more like Frank Lloyd Wright.

It’s nicely filmed and well-acted by the Munchian quartet—although Thea Lambrechts Vaulen, as journalist Milly Thaulow, with whom the 21-year-old Munch has an affair one summer, is the movie’s liveliest presence—but it ultimately amounts to mere snapshots of a life. Peter Watkins’ masterly 1974 epic, Edvard Munch, is still the film that vividly delves into the artist’s many-faceted creativity.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

John Wick—Chapter 4

(Lionsgate)

It’s the last go-round for Keanu Reeves’ zen-like hitman who must survive the latest attacks from all corners, including a blind assassin who comes out of retirement as well as the Marquis, a member of the High table who ends up dueling him.

Director Chad Stahelski keeps the pace frenetic, but at nearly three hours, an exhaustion factor creeps in despite such dazzling Paris set pieces as a spectacularly ludicrous shootout on the Arc de Triomphe roundabout and the final showdown in front of the Sacre Coeur. Through it all, Reeves’ stoicism makes Clint Eastwood’s western heroes seem positively manic. There’s a superb UHD transfer; extras include featurettes and interviews.

Time Bandits

(Criterion)

Terry Gilliam’s first solo extravaganza behind the camera—his co-directing debut with fellow Monty Python alum Terry Jones was the best-forgotten 1977 Jabberwocky—is this delightfully demented 1981 fantasy about a young boy and group of dwarves who fall through holes in time, meeting characters like Napoleon (Ian Holm) and Agamemnon (Sean Connery).

Gilliam’s imaginative movie is a wondrous prelude to his even more extravagant Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Criterion's 4K transfer is especially luminous; extras comprise a commentary, critical featurette, 1998 Gilliam interview and 1981 Shelley Duvall appearance on Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow talk show.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

The Covenant

(Warner Bros)

Based on true stories of Afghan interpreters being left behind in mortal danger after U.S. forces’ botched 2021 retreat, Guy Ritchie’s drama chronicles the relationship between U.S. Army Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhall) and his interpreter/translator Ahmed (Dar Salim), who saves Kinley’s life during an ambush but who hides from the Taliban with his wife and young child after the Americans leave. Recovering stateside, Kinley returns to get Ahmed and family out of danger.

For a Ritchie film, this is surprisingly not that frantically ham-fisted; he ratchets up the tension well, even though Christopher Benstead’s music too obviously underscores some sequences. Still, this effective film contains a sympathetic portrayal by Salim. The film looks excellent on Blu; it’s too bad that there are no contextual extras of any kind.

A Question of Silence

(Cult Epics)

Dutch writer-director Marlene Gorris’ provocative 1982 drama about Janine, a criminal psychiatrist investigating the brutal random murder of a shopkeeper by three women who are strangers, finds its center in her attempts to understand what happened and why.

As Janine concludes that the patriarchy is partly to blame and puts her controversial thesis before the court, Gorris’ sharp feminist tract is humanized by a terrific Cox Habbema, who gives a remarkable performance as Janine, arguing with the patriarchal pillars (including her lawyer husband) or tries to uncover the women’s motivations. The film looks fine if a bit battered on Blu; extras include an audio commentary and archival interviews with Gorris and Habbema.

The Tulsa King—Complete 1st Season

(Paramount)

Talk about “high-concept” programming: Sylvester Stallone plays a New York made man who, out of prison after serving a 25-year sentence, is sent by his mob boss to set up shop in Tulsa, where he’s immediately seen as a fish out of water by the locals, who happen to include an available (and willing) woman whose part of the local ATF.

It’s as one-note as it sounds, but Stallone and a surfeit of fine supporting actors, from Andrea Savage and Dana Delaney to Jay Will and Annabella Sciorra, assure that the first season has “guilty pleasure” written all over it. But can it continue in season two? There’s a fine hi-def transfer; extras are making-ofs and interviews.

DVD Releases of the Week

How to Be a Good Wife

(Icarus Films)

In Martin Provost’s at times subversive comedy, Juliette Binoche is her usual commanding self as the head of a French girls’ school in 1968 teaching her charges how to please husbands and be devoted, dutiful wives as the world goes to hell, both personally and politically, around her.

Provost belabors his point about conservatives dealing with a progressive new world, and dropping in a concluding song-and-dance number is dubious. But happily, alongside Binoche, there’s excellent acting by Yolande Moreau as the sister-in-law, Noémie Lvovsky as the head nun and Marie Zabukovec and Anamaria Vartolomei as a couple of rebellious students.

Moko Jumbie

(Indiepix)

It’s too bad that this engaging 2017 romantic comedy, made by Brooklyn-based Vashti Anderson in Trinidad and Tobago, has been overshadowed by the tragedy that befell its leading lady, local actress Vanna Girod, who drowned in January 2022 while with her family at a Tobago resort.

As Asha, a young woman who returns to visit family and falls for a local young man of a questionable reputation, Girod has a shining presence that makes this familiar “opposites attract” romance a beguiling 90 minutes. Extras are Anderson’s commentary and her 2005 short, Jeffrey’s Calypso.

A Radiant Girl

(Film Movement)

For her writing/directing debut, French actress Sandrine Kiberlain introduces Irene, a 19-year-old Jewish woman in 1942 Paris who wants to become a stage actress, seemingly oblivious to what is happening around her in the Nazi-occupied capital.

Through the lovely and nuanced presence of Rebecca Marder as Irene, Kiberlain understatedly explores the fateful dichotomy between the heroine’s joy in her personal life—she falls in love for the first time as well as getting to realize her dream of acting—and the everyday occurrences that are slowly constricting the lives of French Jews. This low-key drama concludes with a simple cut to black that is horrifying in its implications. The lone extra is a Q&A with Kiberlain and Marder.

CD Release of the Week

Rautavaara/Martinů—Piano Concertos Nos. 3

(BIS)

This enticing disc pairs the third piano concertos by two masters—Finland’s Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016) and Czechoslovakia’s Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959)—works separated by a half-century in composition but that are highly expressive, vibrant, even complementary. At least that’s how they sound when played so eloquently by soloist Olli Mustonen, accompanied by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under the sensitive baton of conductor Dalia Stasevska.

Rautavaara’s 1999 concerto, subtitled Gift of Dreams, shimmers in an array of musical colors, and Martinů’s 1948 third, which has a foot in both Romantic and modern styles, is eclectic in the best sense.

Guitarist Gary Lucas Explores Virtuosity at The Loft In City Winery

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 21 June 2023 13:43; Written by Brad Balfour

Gary Lucas with Feifei Yang
Sunday, May 28th 2023
The Loft at City Winery25 11th Ave. (at 15th St.)

After critically acclaimed guitarist Gary Lucas sent out a notice of a gig in The Loft at City Winery — “From Captain Beefheart to Buckley and Beyond” — I perked up. When it comes to the notion of a virtuoso, Lucas fits that idea perfectly. He can do slide guitar immaculately, play around with foot pedals or knobs to create a desired effect and he has incredibly facile fingering skills. He applies all his technical skills to a broad range of styles, yet doesn’t make it seem like three different guitarists at work.

With his intuitive skills finely honed and at peak performance, Lucas makes all the various styles in his wheelhouse mesh seamlessly. So I promptly arranged to go to the show. What an evening it turned out to be. It began with the screening of rare clips and the video for “Ice Cream for Crow.” Then Lucas ruminated about various touch points in his career, launching into “Lady of Shalott”— a lush piece combining acoustic guitar and voice.

Combining moments of kinetics and contemplation, Lucas defies labels and expectations — and so does his show. While some of the music he makes could be described as Americana — depending on the guitar he slings on — other tunes range from bluesy (his dark original “Dance of Destiny”) to avant garde. Of course, having worked with such a boundary-busting band leader as Captain Beefheart, Lucas stands apart from most musicians. No one has tested accompanists like the late master of undefinable sounds. As Lucas described, Beefheart would put his musicians through rigors that no other band leader ever did. For all of the other complicated things on which Lucas has dibs — such as composing music for film and television, scoring classic silent films like “The Golem” and playing with various avant-garde artists — his stage performance alternates between dramatic and contemplative. These seamless shifts are evident in his covers of Nino Rota’s Theme from Fellini’s “La Strada” and Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s “God Only Knows.”

After his term as Beefheart’s guitarist and manager, Lucas turned to forming his remarkable band, Gods and Monsters. Along the way, the late singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley became a part of the timeline, further demonstrating Lucas’ elasticity as both player and performer. In fact, as Gary described on stage, he was introduced to Jeff when Lucas was asked by late concept producer Hal Willner to work on a Tim Buckley tribute.
Tim, dad to Jeff, died way too young (at 28) but established a remarkable catalog. Lucas did a song and got a relationship with Jeff as part of the bargain. That turned into a collaboration which prompted a great song like “Grace” (co-composed with Lucas) and a moment when Buckley fronted Lucas’ band. Though that didn’t last long enough, it added a unique turn to Gary’s musical efforts.

All this combined to make for an evening rich in music ranging across all kinds of creative panoramas. Joined by singer/erhu player Feifei Yang, this evening’s show included versions out of Buckley’s catalog — “Grace” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Added to those were two Beefheart compositions, an original song or two from across Lucas’ landscape, and a Chinese pop tune from the ‘30s (as sung in Mandarin by Yang).

Ever clad in his signature fedora, Lucas shouldered most of the evening solo. But when Yang accompanied him, the tone changed and offered a joyful touch to an intimate and engaging evening. Hopefully there will be another occasion soon to be surprised by the veteran performer’s song choices and stylizations.

Reviews

MET Orchestra Plays Carnegie Hall

Marco Ferreri Retrospective at Lincoln Center

June '23 Digital Week II

Guitarist Gary Lucas Explores Virtuosity at The Loft In City Winery

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