L'Amour de Loin

Ken Howard, Metropolitan Opera

"L'Amour de Loin", at the Metropolitan Opera, is supposed to be the 12th century tale of Jaufré, Prince of Blaye's heroic pursuit of unattainable love but the setting and the music led to more direct associations with the existential and metaphysical roots of it all. The whole thing was enacted on a vast ocean swell, flowing from the back of the huge Metropolitan Opera stage and down over the orchestra pit, with the principals on little undulating boats. From time to time the chorus poked up their heads, haloed in ripples, through the waves but their ceaseless chants came mostly from underwater. The score was one endlessly enchanting tune, like a gemelan orchestra, and tonight's audience was transfixed, maybe even mesmerized. The people sitting next to me are leaving for Rome tomorrow. They asked me if the Italians celebrate Christmas.

Brandon Jacobs - Jenkins at Juilliard

Richard Termine for The New YorkTimes

Appropriate

Juilliard Drama is doing Branden Jacobs - Jenkin's play, "Appropriate," possibly because he is the playwriting professor there. Its descent from every drama ever written about post mortem family gatherings is quite evident and the ending doesn't really work but the production was perfect. During the first interval the woman in front of me ordered coffee from the local Starbucks and insisted that it was delivered to her seat.

John Kander at Lincoln Center

Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

Last night I joined a group of 50 Mary Martin and Paul Lynde lookalikes to sit at the feet (literally) of
John Kander and chat to him about his dealings with Fred Ebb, Hal Prince, Liza Minelli, Joel Grey and everyone else you've ever heard of. The facilitator, a giggling fan, lost the plot, leaving the incisive audience to skewer Mr. Kander, correcting his facts, reminding him of details and telling him where he had gone wrong. He seemed to enjoy this enormously. He said that Liza Minelli, at the height of her stardom, saved "Chicago" in its first run when Gwen Verdon went off sick. She learned the part in a week, played it for two months, and amazed the audiences who could not believe their ears when the stage manager announced the sub each night, because it was never advertised.

Mark Morris at B.A.M.

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

The Hard Nut at Brooklyn Academy of Music

Mark Morris'version of the Nutcracker, The Hard Nut, opened at Brooklyn Academy of Music today so I raced there to see it. It's very calming in the middle of the silly season to see a suburban holiday party go so awry, with the sinister neighbour unleashing his handsome, youthful, alter ego on the innocent little girl before they cavort through a psychic wonderland of obsession and betrayal. Mark Morris himself appeared as the suburban Dad managing the drinks trolley while his garish guests raced each other off and drank to oblivion. The entire production was entirely gender non-confirming, with women lifting, men en pointe and androgenous snow fairies; the suburban maid was a superbly-muscled drag queen. It was amazing to see little children in the audience, but it will probably do them a lot of good in the long run.

Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim's Last Collaboration

www.rollingstone.com

The Best Worse Thing That Could Ever Have Happened

 

A film by Lonnie Price

 

Film Society of Lincoln Center

It's almost unbelievable, but the original cast of "Merrily We Roll Along", AND Stephen Sondheim AND Hal Prince appear in this documentary about the experience of originating the show in 1981 only to have it be a total flop and close after 16 performances. For some of the cast, it was the end of their acting careers and they never returned to the stage, and Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim never worked together again. But as was said at the time, just because the public didn't get it then, doesn't mean they wouldn't get it later, and they did. It's been a cult hit for decades. There's a touching moment when the cast members talk about recording the album the morning after the show closed, saying that they sang in defiance, and had never sung so well.

Frans Helmerson at Juilliard

www.piatigorskyfestival.usc.edu/artists/

I went to Frans Helmerson's cello masterclass at Juilliard tonight and sat for three hours, transfixed by him, as he tutored James Jeonghwan Kim, Xinchi Wang and Mariko Wyrick, all brilliant graduate students, in Schumann, Rachmaninoff and Poulenc. The famous Carlos Avila accompanied. All in a day's work for them, and for Juilliard, and they let us in to gape, in fact they welcomed us. It was amazing. So, now I feel very unaccomplished and wish I had practised more.

La Boheme

Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

Cecil B. De Mille at the Met

What a spectacular "La Bohème" at the Met tonight, like Cecil B. De Mille, with intimacy. The
eighty German tourists sitting in the cheap seats, as was I, will remember nothing about it except the rowdy argument they had in German, from the prelude in the garret to the final curtain on Mimi’s rosy corpse. I think that must be what they do at the opera in Germany. Their complete indifference to the performance was probably sophisticated. It reminded me of that bit in "Amadeus" when Mozart is at the vaudeville watching the rowdy parodies of his own music, and he conceives the idea of writing "The Magic Flute." Anyway it didn’t really matter. It was marvelous.

Francoise Grossen at M.A.D.

Francoise Grossen

Gigantism in Textiles

Tonight was "by donation" night at the Museum of Arts and Design so I went to see Lauren Kalman's full blown gold, diamond and pearl jewellery but ended up being fascinated by Francoise Grossen's textiles. They are gigantic and overwhelm everything else, including the jewellery. She says she frees fabrics from the two dimensional weave and instead creates these massive multi -dimensional, sculptures which seem to writhe and intimidate as soon as you look at them; they almost groan at you ... One of them resembles an organismic, pulsating Jackson Pollock.

Nutcracker at New York City Ballet

photo @Andrea Mohin

I had reservations about going last night to see the New York City Ballet's Balanchine Nutcracker, because I prefer Mark Morris' version where the adults get stonkered and fall down drunk behind the sofa while the neglected children sulk and vandalize the Christmas tree. But I succumbed to the NYCB's technical perfection, and all the sugar. Sterling Hyltin and Andrew Veyette did the (in)famous pas de deux with such perfection that it seemed unreal, and by the time the sleigh somehow took off into the sky, pulled by flying reindeer, I was moon - faced and staring in amazement along with the six year olds. Their parents played with their Iphones throughout, doing emails and even taking calls, and the child-weary ushers did nothing to stop them...

Aida at the Metropolitan Opera

More of Latonia Moore

Last night I went to see the great Ekaterina Gubanova sing Amneris in the Metropolitan Opera’s Aida, but I ended up being astounded by Latonia Moore. Back in March she stepped in with one day’s notice when Violetta Urmana got sick. Even though Latonia Moore was originally the understudy, the program note says she has recently sung the role at Zurich, Sydney, Covent Garden, Bergen, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, San Diego, Dallas and Tokyo. So no wonder she is good. Aida is her THING.

Brian Sebert at Bruno Walter Auditorium

Simultaenous Tap Dancing

This evening Brian Sebert, who is the dance critic for the New York Times, promoted his new book about the history of tap dancing by giving a lecture on the subject at the Bruno Walter Theater. He not only discussed the greatest tap dancers of all time, but also, being a trained dancer, demonstrated their signature steps himself. This was the first lecture I have been to which was delivered by someone who was, simultaneously, tap dancing, and I hope it is not the last.

"Flight" at Juilliard

The refugee awaits his detention in Juilliard's production of Jonathan Dove's "Flight." I'd never seen it before. It was as hilarious as it was tragic and topical and the huge orchestra was as absorbing as the people on the stage. Two old fogeys in front of me talked all the way through three acts and two intervals but the backs of their heads had that look which made me think there was little point in telling them to be quiet.

"Curtain Up" at NY Library of Performing Arts

Martha Swope / © The New York Public Library

The Last 40 Years of Theatre in New York and London

Having pushed my way through the barriers which encircle Trump and his nefarious cohorts in downtown Manhattan, I got to see this exhibition which celebrates UK/USA stage collaborations, so quite a crowd of show tune literati were in attendance to dance along to "A Chorus Line"... There was a free screening of the movie "Amadeus," too, which was incredibly long and incredibly good and had Cynthia Nixon in it as a traumatized maid servant. That was something.

Kinky Boots, Al Hirschfield Theatre, Broadway

Award Winning Musicals in Five Steps

How to write an award winning Broadway musical in 5 steps by Harvey Weinstein: (1) Convince yourself there's a story in a shoe factory making sexy boots. (2) Lard it up with emotional metaphors in which love rhymes with heaven above and soul rhymes with dark hole. (3) Throw this at the audience with all the subtlety of a cow in a catapult. (4) When that doesn't work, bring on the drag queens! (5) Yay! That works!

Summer Music in Winter at Juilliard

Sean Shepherd

Sean Shepherd

@shepseanshep

This evening the Juilliard ensemble played summer music to observe the start of the cold season: Samuel Barber, Sean Shepherd and Brahams. It was quite evocative. Shepherd's program note said he had written his Octet in France just before the weather turned and he had to cling to a tree to avoid being blown over by the Mistral. When he took his bow I could see why, because he is only four feet tall.

A Chorus Line

“A Chorus Line” original cast reunion at the Library for Performing Arts

 

I had a ticket to the Juilliard Dance Repertory and then heard that on the same night the original cast of “A Chorus Line” was going to talk about it at the Library for Performing Arts so I had to go to both. Don Pippin, the arranger, was sitting at a Steinway as Priscilla Lopez and Bayoork Lee reminisced about the famous all night auditions (which were like group psychotherapy), while they looked through the transcripts which turned into the script. Now and again they would literally burst into song and even, a couple of times, into a dance routine. When Priscilla Lopez came across the original draft of “Nothing,” the song about her experience at High School, she just stood up and sang it. It was enthralling. A woman kept saying hello to me. She turned out to be my neighbour but I did not recognize her because when she is at home she is a man.

Don Pippin and Priscilla Lopez at NYLPA

Check out the events calendar of the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts