October 2013
Bard Music Festival, 2013: Igor Stravinsky and his World, Part I
Every year, the Bard Summer Music Festival enjoys excellent attendance, including some, like Saint-Saëns, in 2012, that even surprised the organizers. I think it also came a something of a surprise that this year's Stravinsky Festival was a sell-out for most events, to the point that the lobby of Olin Hall was filled with long lines of nervous visitors, hoping to get their hands on a return. Why did Stravinsky, the forbidding dandy, who had no interest whatsoever in providing comfort for his audiences, turn out to be such a draw? Was it the popular film about his love life? Robert Craft's recent, highly dubious "outing" of him, which created a flurry in the newspapers? The hit play, Nikolai and the Others, at Lincoln Center? Or is it simply hip to like Stravinsky these days?
An Interview with James Bagwell, Music Director of the Collegiate Chorale, Soon to Lead them in a Concert Performance of Boito’s Mefistofele
The Collegiate Chorale, as part of their famously diverse season, will present a single concert performance of Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele at Carnegie Hall on November 6, 2013 at 8 pm.
In this concert production, the Collegiate Chorale will feature Eric Owens, one of the most intelligent and impressive singers of the present day, in the role of Mefistofele, with Arturo Chacón-Cruz, as Faust and Julianna Di Giacomo as Margherita. Mefistofele is no less a vehicle for the chorus, stressing as it does large-scale ensembles, with colorful evocations of devilry and witchcraft, angelic hosts, and solid fugues.
Joanna Gabler, “Emigrés – Where is Home?” at Gallery Ehva, Provincetown: October 25-November 5, 2013 – Opening Friday, October 25, 6-8 pm
Joanna Gabler, “Emigrés – Where is Home?” at Gallery Ehva, Provincetown: October 25-November 5, 2013 – Opening Friday, October 25, 6-8 pm.
74 Shank Painter Road
Provincetown, MA 02657
(508) 487-0011
On view in the Gallery Ehva in Proveincetown is …
Houghton Revisited: The Walpole Masterpieces from Catherine the Great’s Hermitage, at Houghton Hall, Kings Lynn, Norfolk, 17 May to 24 November 2013
One of the great country houses and emblematic of Palladian architecture, Houghton Hall will figure in any survey of the history of English taste. It was built between 1722-1735 and represents an inflection point in the evolution of stately homes, away from the aggravated grandeur of the Baroque towards a more restrained, Neo-classical style. More palatial than the typical country “seat”, Houghton’s fame is linked to that of its first owner, Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), who was also the first prime minister of England in the modern sense of the term, as well as the former home of a fabled picture collection. Sir Robert intended that his collection be an inalienable part of Houghton, but the extravagance of the Walpole family meant that it was sold to the Russian Empress Catherine the Great in 1779. The sale caused an outcry in England, but the paintings became the cornerstone of the great Russian institution known as the State Hermitage Museum. Now, almost miraculously, some sixty paintings from this historic collection have returned to Houghton for six months, enabling visitors to see the interiors as Sir Robert Walpole intended.
Zauber-less Flute: the Boston Lyric Opera’s late Mozart
I’ve always thought it was a terrible idea to stage opera overtures. The music is there to help set the mood for what’s to follow, to allow you to open the magic casements of your imagination and picture for yourself what’s going to happen later—and for the only time to concentrate completely on the music itself. But these days, it’s almost impossible to see any opera performance that doesn’t have a staged overture, and all too often the staging has nothing to do with the music we’re hearing (last season’s Boston Lyric Opera Flying Dutchman was one of the worst offenders in this regard). But it turns out there’s something even worse than staging an overture, and it happened at the Lyric’s new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute, at the Shubert Theatre, closed October 13).
Pablo Heras-Casado Conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Lully, Adès and Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony, Leila Josefowicz plays the Stravinsky Concerto
In the rather too large historical canon of unnecessary musical deaths, I've always been sorry that Jean-Baptiste Lully stabbed himself in the foot with his conducting staff during a concert. He was at the height of his powers, and the resulting infection killed him. Lully's music conveys an innate danceable grace that most Baroque music lacks — and a very human sense of sentiment — a sweet nostalgia rather like Mendelssohn's, in fact. Pablo Heras-Casado's program last Friday at the SFS was deliberately laid out as a neoclassic feast.
