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Film and the Arts
On Broadway—'Misery' with Bruce Willis; 'Allegiance' with George Takei
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 22 November 2015 22:40
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Misery
Written by William Goldman; directed by Will Frears
Performances through February 14, 2016
Allegiance
Music & lyrics by Jay Kuo; Marc Acito, Jay Kuo and Lorenzo Thione
Directed by Stafford Arima; choreographed by Andrew Palmero
Performances through September 25, 2016
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| Laurie Metcalf and Bruce Willis in Misery (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Misery began as a trashily effective Stephen King novel, followed by a trashily effective Rob Reiner movie, which won an Oscar for Kathy Bates as the ultimate deranged fan, Annie Wilkes, who first saves the life of her favorite author, Paul Sheldon, then takes her revenge after reading his latest novel and discovering he killed off her favorite character, Misery Chastain.
It's a clever enough conceit, as some of King's story ideas are, even if—after devouring his novels as a gullible teenager—I realized how excess verbiage and an aw-shucks style made his books unreadable once I became aware of good writing. William Goldman—who also wrote the script for the Reiner movie—has streamlined the story further for the stage, distilling the cast to three: Paul, Annie and Buster, the local sheriff who finally pays for his inopportune visits.
In a trashily effective—if not especially taut—90 minutes, Miseryonstage provides the same thrills of its earlier incarnations, although why this version is necessary is another question. It serves as a vehicle of sorts for Bruce Willis as Paul, who spends most of his time either prone in bed or in a wheelchair, hunt-and-peck typing out a new novel. Willis barks out his crude lines credibly enough and even gets in a few profanity-laced insults at the woman Paul comes to loathe after initially thanking her for digging him out of his car in a blizzard.
But the play, movie and novel all belong to Annie, and onstage Laurie Metcalf gives a persuasive and just enough over-the-top portrayal of a self-sufficient woman who just happens to be crazy. Metcalf happily doesn't ape what Bates did in the movie, making Annie more pathetically than evilly monstrous in her desperate attempts to "keep" her beloved author.
Will Frears directs efficiently on David Korins' revolving set, which cleverly shows off Annie's house from the bedroom where much of the action takes place to her kitchen and outside porch. Despite its lack of forward momentum, this Misery gets the job done.
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| Lea Salonga and George Takei in Allegiance (photo: Matthew Murphy) |
A painfully earnest venture, the new musical Allegiance covers the same ground as Alan Parker's film Come See the Paradise: that horrible moment in American history when, after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government rounded up Japanese-Americans and sent them to internment camps. Such worthy subject matter needs exploring, but both the 1990 film and the musical are marred by contrived storytelling and slathered-on sentimentality.
Through clunky expository dialogue that over-elaborates about everything—there's discussion of the term "gaman," which someone actually explains to another character (but really us) that "it means 'to carry on'"—implausibly soap-operaish plot turns (including the fatal shooting of our hero Sammy's pregnant fiancée Hannah) and perfunctory songs that alternate between soaring ballads and soaring anthems, Allegiance dramatically wrong-foots it at nearly every turn.
What helps improve things are the staging and performances. Stafford Arima's directing and Andrew Palermo's choreography move the large cast about fluidly, making even a problematic sequence as soldier Sammy leading his unit into a suicide mission in Italy work, with Howell Binkley's boldly impressive lighting putting us in the midst of the carnage; similarly, Binkley and Palermo visually illuminate a wordless sequence about the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
Telly Leung is an engaging and charismatic Sammy and Lea Salonga makes a belated (and welcome) return to Broadway by showing off her beautiful, clear-as-crystal voice as Sammy's sister Kei, while Star Trek actor George Takei—on whose family's experiences the show is based—is immensely likable as both the kids' grandfather Ojii-Chan and the older Sammy. Also making strong impressions (despite having little to work with) are Katie Rose Clarke as the idealized nurse Hannah and Christopheren Nomura as Sammy and Kei’s stern father Tatsuo.
Based on a gut-wrenching subject that current events keep relevant,Allegiance relies on a first-rate cast and production to provide its emotional force.
Misery
Broadhurst Theatre, 235 West 44th Street, New York, NY
miserybroadway.comm
Allegiance
Longacre Theatre, 220 West 48th Street, New York, NY
allegianceonbroadway.com
November '15 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 18 November 2015 13:21
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Bat
A Bucket of Blood
(The Film Detective)
In 1959’s The Bat, an especially disjointed horror movie about a faceless man (the actor has a stocking over his head) who terrorizes women, Agnes Moorehead and Vincent Price help mitigate the fact that it’s forgettable in nearly every way.
Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood (also 1959), which follows a crazed artist whose bizarre and lethal new way of creating is exposed as murder, is so insane that even uniformly bad acting doesn't entirely bury it: the nutso premise helps keep it afloat for its brief 65-minute duration. The hi-def transfers are acceptable, nothing more.
(Anchor Bay)
A guy smarting over a breakup and a gal who missed the last train out of Grand Central Station meet cute(ly) and bond over a night together in Manhattan has more contrivance than would seem possible in a 90-minute drama.
Although his directing debut is far from auspicious, Chris Evans does well as the sax-playing good Samaritan, while Alice Eve gives an even more nuanced portrayal of the woman he helps out. The Blu-ray transfer looks terrific; lone extra is a brief Evans interview.
Black Sails—Complete 2nd Season
(Anchor Bay)
In the second season of this explosive high-seas guilty pleasure, the storylines and pirate intrigue both thicken while the women (played with zest by Jessica Parker Kennedy, Hannah New and Clare Paget) steal scenes pretty consistently from their male costars.
This season’s 10 episodes should satisfy those who like their pirate soap operas alternately intimate and epic. The series looks sumptuous on Blu-ray; extras comprise several featurettes.
Nazareth—No Means of Escape
(Eagle Rock)
To celebrate his 70th birthday, Eric Clapton performed at London's Royal Albert Hall in May by running through his five-decade career as the preeminent British blues guitar god. His incendiary guitar work on "Key to the Highway" and "Crossroads" remains peerless, but it's surprising that he still insists on digging out the dull acoustic version of "Layla" instead of the fiery original. But that's the only quibble with this memorable two-hour musical showcase.
Although not as well-known as Aerosmith or Guns'n'Roses—just two artists influenced by them—Scottish hard-rockers Nazareth have endured for four decades, despite member changes and other ups and downs, as this release's 50-minute retrospective documentary and new 75-minute concert show. "Love Hurts" and "Hair of the Dog" would be career highlights for any artist. Both releases look and sound spectacular in hi-def. Slowhand includes the entire concert on two CDs; Escape has additional interviews and an acoustic number.
(Warner Bros)
In the final film of his epic trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's first Middle Earth adventure, director Peter Jackson continues the drawn-out narrative he began with the Lord of the Rings trilogy: but The Hobbit is but one-third the size of Rings, so why stretch it out nearly as long, along with the extra 20 minutes added to the extended edition?
Whatever the reason, it all looks fantastic on Blu-ray, and fans will find much to admire. But the real motherlode is the two discs' worth of extras—nearly ten hours—of everything you'd want to know (and some things you didn't) about Jackson’s onscreen vision, along with a commentary and the final part of a New Zealand featurette.
Kurt Cobain—Montage of Heck
(Universal Music)
More than 20 years after his suspicious death, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain still exerts a strange hold on his many fans, as that legendary aura has only grown: and that’s sort of what director Brett Morgen punctures in his fastidious, evenhanded documentary that's built around Cobain’s own recordings and drawings, shown to touching effect along with well-used (because not overdone) animation.
Interviews with Kurt’s widow, family members and a former bandmate—Krist Novoselic, not Dave Grohl, who was apparently unavailable, to the film’s detriment—round out this defiantly unhagiographic portrait. On Blu, the film looks quite good; extras comprise bonus interviews.
(Warner Bros)
In this noisy reboot of the ‘60s TV espionage drama starring Robert Vaughn, director Guy Ritchie goes for the glitz, overwhelming a game cast—Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer and the usually spectacular Alicia Vikander—with so much inane plot twistiness, loudly thudding action sequences and colorful international locales that whatever might have made this an entertaining two hours has turned to mud.
Ritchie’s insistence on flashy gadgetry and visual gimmickry over coherent storytelling and better acting makes this pale in contrast to the original series. The film does look first-rate on Blu; extras are several featurettes.
Mr. Holmes
(Lionsgate)
In director Bill Condon's engaging fantasy, 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes' retirement is shaken by things beyond his control, especially his own fading memory: he attempts to find some semblance of peace before he completely loses command of his mental faculties.
Ian McKellen makes a fun Holmes, Laura Linney is her usual commanding self as his housekeeper, and Milo Parker is superb as her young son who finds the key to Holmes' final sleuthing days. The film's hi-def transfer is sharp and clear; extras are two very brief featurettes.
(Cohen Film Collection)
Alain Delon might have been a pretty face but he also could get down and dirty with the best of them, as in Jose Giovanni’s 1973 drama about an ex-con who, even while falling in love and starting anew, can never escape the cycle of violent crime, especially when a nosy detective ends up dead.
Veteran actors Jean Gabin and Michel Bouquet also give fully-realized performances, giving this familiar tale more authenticity. The restored film has received an immaculate transfer; lone extra is an audio commentary.
DVDs of the Week
Marie's Story
(Film Movement)
This unforgettable drama about a deaf and dumb French teenage girl could be the Gallic Miracle Worker, but shrewd director Jean-Pierre Ameris has instead made an enriching study of how two disparate and desperate people discover that they can spiritually feed each other, even with blindness, deafness and mortality at the forefront.
Ameris works miracles with deaf actress Ariana Riviore as Marie, whose onscreen forcefulness is complemented by Isabelle Carre who, as the nun who becomes Marie's Annie Sullivan, gives a bracing portrayal of grace and bravery. The movie looks and sounds glorious, its striking cinematography and sound (including sparingly-used solo cello music) underscoring this unique relationship. Extras are an interesting 26-minute making-of featurette and an Iranian short, Motherly, about a deaf woman.
(IFC)
A disturbing psychological study underlining the questionable methods of Stanford professor Philip Zimbardo, Kyle Patrick Alvarez's drama recounts Zimbardo's 1971 prison experiment, which attempted to see how quickly people act as dominating guard or cowering prisoner.
Although it makes pertinent points about people subjected to cruelty and torture—and the Abu Grahib scandal exploded in 2004, Zimbardo was brought up—the movie almost too unrelentingly explores its subject in two hours, which creep by so slowly as to become diminishing returns, despite excellent performances by a cast led by Billy Crudup's Zimbardo. Extras comprise a director commentary and featurettes.
A Tale of Two Thieves
(Virgil Films)
The 1963 great train robbery, which has entered crime lore as one of the most daring heists ever, still raises questions about exactly what happened and who was involved, and Chris Long's documentary places one of the men—Gordon Goody—squarely at its center. Goody, now in his mid-80s, discusses his own criminal career and part in the robbery.
Even at a mere 69 minutes, the movie feels padded, its robbery reenactments and archival footage of swinging London and interviews with other, marginal people complementing Goody's tale. It makes for an interesting but less than enthralling documentary about a rich subject.
Guillaume Lekeu—Complete Works
(Ricercar)
When he died at age 24 in 1894, Belgium's Guillaume Lekeu was already an accomplished composer, but the biggest tragedy of his early death from typhoid was that it snuffed out in its infancy the artistic career of someone who was already a prolific and important artist, as this eight-disc set of all of his extant works proves.
I was mainly familiar with Lekeu’s chamber music, and this set's string quartets, trios and sonatas comprise lengthy, yearning movements similar to the structure of the late, great Schubert quartets and quintets, with solo piano pieces and songs that are equally accomplished.
The orchestral music, which has hints of Wagner throughout, sounds less essential than the chamber work but still shows off a first-rate orchestrator and melodist. The performances by many different soloists and ensembles are first-rate on these discs, and the music is varied enough to, once again, let us bemoan what was lost when Lekeu died and exalt in what he did compose.
On Broadway—Keira Knightley's Debut in 'Thérèse Raquin'; Mike Bartlett's 'King Charles III'
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 16 November 2015 23:06
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Thérèse Raquin
Adapted by Helen Edmundson, based on Emile Zola's novel; directed by Evan Cabnet
Performances through January 3, 2016
King Charles III
Written by Mike Bartlett; directed by Rupert Goold
Performances through January 31, 2016
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| Keira Knightley and Matt Ryan in Thérèse Raquin (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Making her belated Broadway debut is an intense, trenchant Keira Knightley as the title character in Thérèse Raquin, an adaptation of Emile Zola's tragic 1871 novel (and 1873 play) about a stifled young wife who takes a lover, helps him kill her husband and is literally hounded to death by the husband's restless spirit.
Giving a typically fierce and intelligent portrayal of the drab, spinsterish woman craving for physical intimacy with someone other than her loathsome husband Camille, Knightley throws caution to the wind embodying Thérèse, who literally jumps into the arms of Laurent, her husband's boyhood friend who conveniently appears one day, consummating an intense affair that leads to murder and madness.
Helen Edmundson's adaptation is unafraid to be melodramatic—Zola was a master at making melodrama thrillingly poetic—which creates a space for the characters to act as if they're in soap opera which in a way they are. Director Evan Cabnet cannily twists the screws ever more tightly and tautly, with Beowulf Borritt's arresting set—properly claustrophobic inside the family home and ironically spacious outdoors—preparing the couple to march inexorably to the ultimate comeuppance.
Aside from Knightley's controlled, incisive acting, Judith Light is at first funny then later most affecting as Camille's smothering mother: she's especially good in the extremely tense moments when she tries (but fails) to finger Thérèse and Laurent as Camille's killers after an incapacitating stroke. Gabriel Ebert perfectly shows off Camile's annoying cloddishness, while Matt Ryan, a charismatic Laurent, has such palpable chemistry with Knightley that the adulterers' sexual encounters are charged with the lustful energy that makes Thérèse Raquin such smoldering theater.
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| Lydia Wilson and Tim Pigott-Smith in King Charles III (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Mike Bartlett, author of King Charles III, made a provocative splash with his play Cock a few seasons ago: the New York Times defiantly still refuses to print its title (they nonsensically call it Cockfight Play). His latest, a big hit in London and proving to be the same on Broadway, is a speculative drama, or "future history" as he calls it, about the death of Queen Elizabeth and the ascension of Prince Charles to the throne: a good enough subject about which a lucid and lacerating political drama could be written.
But Bartlett wants more, so he makes his play faux-Shakespeare: rhyming couplets, blank verse, ghostly apparitions, Prince Hal in the form of Harry, Lady Macbeth in the form of Kate. Such gimmickry does his play a disservice by leaning so heavily on the Bard: there's a moment when Kate alludes to King Lear by saying "For nothing comes from nothing said," and at the performance I attended, a woman behind me excitedly whispered to her companion, "I know where that's from!" Don't we all, dear lady.
After taking the throne, King Charles wants to become more hands-on running the monarchy and gets involved in defeating a bill that makes freedom of the press a thing of the past. However, the prime minister, the opposition leader and Charles' own son William—next in line to the throne—want him to stand down and allow the political process to play out without royal interference. This disagreement, soon embroiling the new king in abdication talk, is the crux of the little conflict the play has, which is probably why Bartlett dives fully into Shakespeare allusions that give gravitas to what, in essence, is basically (to take a cue from Bartlett and steal from the master) much ado about nothing.
Director Rupert Goold gives King Charles III a high gloss that adds Shakespearean elements of its own: but his often effective pageantry doesn't prop up the ginned-up national crisis at the play's center. The second act, in which very little happens dramatically and is often excruciating to sit through, also isn't helped by Jocelyn Pook's music, which lands somewhere between excruciating Philip Glass minimalism and hollow choral writing.
Goold and Bartlett have trouble fitting the subplot about restless Prince Harry and his commoner girlfriend Jess into the main storyline, so much so that Richard Goulding's Harry and Tafline Steen's Jess seem to be in a completely different play: in this, King Charles III falls far short of Shakespeare's miraculous ability to juggle multiple plots and slip effortlessly between high tragedy and low comedy.
Happily, the cast, which avoids easy caricature, is smashingly good, with Goulding (Harry) and Steen (Jess) joining formidable costars Oliver Chris (William), Lydia Wilson (Kate) and Margot Leicester (Camilla), with Goulding and Leicester actually looking like their real-life counterparts. If the worthy Tim Pigott-Smith is only intermittently overwhelming as he speaks Charles' soliloquies, it's because Bartlett's words aren't nearly as pregnant or penetrating as Shakespeare's. That's an impossibility for pretty much every writer, but since Bartlett himself has made the comparison, it must be pointed out, to his play's detriment.
Thérèse Raquin
Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street, New York, NY
roundabouttheatre.org
King Charles III
Music Box Theatre, 239 West 45th Street, New York, NY
kingcharlesiiibroadway.com
November '15 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 11 November 2015 00:13
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
A.D.—The Bible Continues
(Fox)
With their sequel to The Bible, which proceeded from the Creation to the aftermath of Christ's resurrection, Roma Downey and Mark Burnett produce another multi-part mini-series, now starting with Jesus's crucifixion to the apostles' martyrdom.
The exceptional production values don't fully compensate for the mixed bag of actors, which runs the gamut from scenery-chewers to stiff zombies. A.D. makes an unpersuasive case for reviving sword-and-sandals spectaculars, even wasting such veterans as Greta Scacchi and Joanne Whalley. The hi-def transfer is spectacular; extras are several featurettes.
(Magnolia)
A televised meeting of the minds came during the 1968 presidential campaign when Gore Vidal and Bill Buckley—liberal and conservative intellectuals, respectively—squared off for a series of convention debates which ended up degenerating into nasty name-calling.
Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon's engaging documentary shows it wasn't their best moment but still made for riveting television. In a breezy 90 minutes, their lengthy and estimable careers in politics, the arts and celebrity punditry are illustrated alongside plenty of invaluable archival footage, while talking heads from Dick Cavett to the late Christopher Hitchens give the measure of both men and their era. The film looks good on Blu; extras are a directors' interview and added interviews.
The End of the Tour
(Lionsgate)
David Foster Wallace, who killed himself in 2008, has become the Kurt Cobain of authors, a genius whose early death robbed the world of his insightful writing; this adaptation of David Lipsky's memoir about his time with Wallace for a Rolling Stone magazine profile plays into that narrative but also humanizes him, thanks to playwright Donald Margulies' smart, resonant script.
Jason Segal and Jesse Eisenberg effectively portray both Davids—Wallace and Lipsky, respectively—and director James Ponsoldt drolly peeks behind the myth's curtain to show the real man. The film has a superb hi-def transfer; extras are a commentary by Ponsoldt, Margulies and Segal; interview with composer Danny Elfman; making-of featurette; and deleted scenes.
The Marquise of O
(Film Movement Classics)
Director Eric Rohmer's 1984 Full Moon in Paris presents yet another of his scatterbrained heroines who juggles men before deciding whom to choose. As usual with Rohmer, it's excessively talky without being particularly insightful, and low-key without any particular subtlety. Most interesting is an early appearance by that fine actor Fabrice Luchini.
By contrast, Rohmer's 1976 The Marquise of O, a German-language adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's classic short story, is a winner in nearly every way, especially in its “stagebound” visuals and Edith Clever’s touching portrayal of the cluelessly pregnant heroine. Too bad Bruno Ganz is so disastrously uncharming as her insistent wooer: such great filmmaking doesn't need such a black hole at its center. Both movies look better than ever in new hi-def transfers; extras are archival interviews with actors and with Rohmer.
Home Fires
(PBS)
Even though there's a strong sense of deja vu in this six-part mini-series about women left behind during the early months of World War II in England—wives, widows, spinsters, all doing their part, as best they can, toward the war effort—the far stronger sense of place and showing how war affects so many different people in different ways is palpable.
Of course, the large and accomplished cast, led by Francesca Annis, Samantha Bond, Ruth Gemmell and Clare Calbraith, makes this impossible to look away from, even when one feels that one has already seen it, or at least something like it. The Blu-ray transfer is excellent.
(Deutsche Grammophon)
Rusalka
(Decca)
These Met Live in HD broadcasts start with Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth, the least of his Shakespearean adaptations (Otello and Falstaff easily outclass this); but it has flavorful music, especially in Lady Macbeth's unsettling sleepwalking scene, performed here by the fearless Russian soprano Anna Netrebko as she does everything: grabbing it by the throat. She's the best thing in an otherwise proficient, uninspired staging.
Far better is Renee Fleming's signature role as the water nymph in Antonin Dvorak’s Rusalka, in which the most famous American soprano sings one of opera’s greatest hits, "Song of the Moon," in her lusciously creamy voice. Dvorak's beguiling and tuneful opera receives a stellar production. Both operas look and sound perfect in hi-def. Short backstage interviews are extras.
Toy Story That Time Forgot
(Disney/Pixar)
This latest Toy Story sequel might seem like a Disney money grab—it's only a 22-minute short that could easily have been an extra on a repackaging of the other films—but the short itself is funny and even poignant, and I enjoyed it cutting to the chase without an extra hour of often repetitive padding that the full-length movies abound in.
In any case, the gang's all here—the voices are Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, etc.—for some throwaway fun. The film looks terrific on Blu; extras comprise featurettes, deleted scenes and a commentary.
A Borrowed Identity
(Strand)
In Eran Riklis's adaptation of Sayed Kashua's novel Dancing Arabs, the complicated relationships between Israeli Arabs and Jews are unsparingly shown through the eyes of Eyad, an Arab student attending a high-class Jerusalem high school who falls for the sweet Jewish girl Naomi.
Through the persuasive performances of Tawfeek Barhom and Daniel Kitsis as the teens, Riklis expertly charts a sometimes comic, sometime tragic trajectory of two young people who, whether they admit it or not, have the weight of their families' history on their backs.
A French Village—Complete 1st Season
(MHZ)
In the first season of this overstuffed but absorbing French TV drama, a small French village's denizens deal with their country's surrender and subsequent Nazi takeover: watching men, women and children resist, collaborate or—as often likely—do both as the Germans infiltrate their homes and very lives makes for 12 episodes of captivating can't-miss TV.
The rich and harmonious ensemble—led by the glorious Audrey Fleurot, who played an ambitious public defender in the great French serial Spiral, as the wife of the town's lone doctor and acting mayor—is flawless: equally memorable are Nade Dieu and Marie Kremer as women caught in the occupation’s many traps. Here's hoping MHz releases the next several seasons soon.
(Warner Archive)
Based on a French farce by Georges Feydeau, this desperate 1968 attempt to find frolicsome comedy amid slamming doors, misunderstandings and adulterous escapades doesn't provide much froth, despite comic veterans like Alec Guinness and Robert Morley and even glamorous Gina Lollobrigida, obviously game for much more than she's allowed to do.
It's too bad that director-producer Peter Glenville has taken lavish costumes, sets and a fool-proof plot and turns it into 98 minutes of franticness in search of laughs.
CDs of the Week
Maurice Ravel—Complete Piano Works
(Honens)
Ravel—Piano Concertos
(Deutsche Grammophon)
Ravel—L'Enfant et les sortilèges/Shéhérazade
(Decca)
If any French composer embodied savoir faire, it was Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), whose elegant, civilized music can be heard in all its glory on three enchanting new recordings. On his two-disc traversal of Ravel's solo piano works, German pianist Hinrich Alpers plays with scrupulous restraint while giving these mostly short but still major works the breathing room they deserve, from the exquisite set of tone poems, Miroirs, to the lively Valses nobles et sentimentales. As a bonus, Alpers fleetly performs memorial works by Ravel contemporaries Casella and Honegger, along with four newly commissioned ones by current composers.
Ravel's two dazzling piano concertos are given buoyant readings by soloist Yuja Wang, with Lionel Bringuier conducting the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich. Alongside Ravel’s masterpieces, Wang plays the F sharp major Ballade by Ravel's teacher Gabriel Fauré, which has the elegance of his pupil’s music as well as its refinement, which Wang's illuminating interpretation brings to the fore.
Maestro Seiji Ozawa, who recently turned 80, leads the Saito Kinen Orchestra in very fine renditions of two wonderful Ravel works: the one-act opera L'Enfant et les Sortilèges and orchestral song cycle Shéhérazade. Ozawa's affection for the composer is never in doubt, but it's his main singers who are most impressive: Susan Graham catches the exotic nuances of Shéhérazade, while Isabel Leonard—a guarantee of quality whatever she sings—makes an irresistible child in L'Enfant.
(Albany Records)
An occasionally playful and intelligent opera about Gertrude Stein, Ricky Ian Gordon’s 27 floats along well enough, but only infrequently catches in its music the culture shock that stamped Stein's Paris and the artists in her circle.
Stephanie Blythe makes a grand Gertrude and Elizabeth Futral a beautiful-sounding Alice B. Toklas, Stein's long-time partner: Alice's aria after Gertrude's death is the musical highlight. Michael Christie crisply conducts members of the St. Louis Symphony in this world premiere; too bad there’s no DVD or Blu-ray to highlight what looks like, from the CD booklet photos, 27's far from negligible visual component.
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