We didn't get out to shop for Black Friday until late because we spent the afternoon at an enjoyable concert at the Kennedy Center. Our friend Fr. Steven managed to acquire some complimentary tickets to the National Symphony Orchestra Pops concert and was kind enough to share them with us. They were actually quite fine tickets; we had the back corner "box" on the parterre level, which is a sort of two-row balcony partitioned in groups of ten that encircles the rectangular orchestra section and has seats that are essentially on the same height level as the stage. The nice thing about the parterre is that we had actual free-standing, padded chairs and there was a padded rail in front of us on which we could lean during the concert.
Yesterday's concert was "Salute to the Silver Screen," with principal Pops conductor and renowned award-winning (Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Golden Globe, Pulitzer) composer Marvin Hamlisch on the podium and special guest soprano Broadway star Melissa Errico. It was a perfect concert for Ryan, who's a film major.
The show opened with Mr. Hamlisch seated at the piano, a pin spotlight on his face, as he played "As Time Goes By" from Casablanca, then segued into the orchestra playing the shrieking high A's of Psycho. They played "Tara's Theme" from Gone with the Wind and a musical medley of songs from Gene Kelly dancing movies that featured a percussionist who came up front to "play" a pair of tap shoes. Miss Errico came out to sing "Windmills of Your Mind," then a French song from a French movie accompanied only by a harp.
Throughout, Maestro Hamlisch provided his witty, educational commentary. At one point, he showed us a film clip of Burt Lancaster from The Swimmer as a movie composer would get it, without any music or sound effects, then asked the audience for ideas about how it should be scored. As the clip played a second time, Hamlisch played those ideas—the Olympics, William Tell, horse races, Chariots of Fire, etc.— on the piano.
A second-half playing of themes from The Godfather had Hamlisch asking various orchestra players to reprise their instrumental solos as he discussed composers' instrument selections, orchestral color, and the difference between "arrangement" and "orchestration."
Miss Errico returned, having changed from her first half strapless black dress to a claret velvet gown with a plunging decolletage neckline, to sing "The Sound of Music," and, from one of her signature roles, "I Could Have Danced All Night."
After playing many other things, they closed the concert with a medley of Hamlisch's songs from the movies Sophie's Choice, Ice Castles, The Way We Were, and The Sting, the maestro playing and conducting the last two from the piano. The audience's enthusiastic ovation was rewarded with an encore of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
In addition to all the splendid music, we got to see some interesting lighting design, as well. The pipes from a large organ are positioned in the back of the stage, and they used those pipes as a palette for stunning lighting effects.
The last performance of "Salute to the Silver Screen" is tonight at 8; don't miss it, if you like old movies!
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Movie review: Rent
It was disappointing. It was great. It was lame. It was good. It made me cry (twice). I hated it. I loved liked it.
Rent the movie has finally come out, a decade after Rent the musical opened on Broadway. Given Hollywood's penchant for tried and true story lines, I'm surprised it too them so long to make this movie.
Rent the Tony winning best musical, of course, is one of those unexpectedly bright flashes of light on the Great White Way that has spawned committed fans who see the show over and over and over in a way very few musicals have ever inspired. I think also that part of the fanatacism of "Rentheads" comes from the unexpected death of its young creator-composer Jonathan Larson shortly after the final dress rehearsal of the show. Of course, the regretable part of the ensuing reverence is that some of the "tweaking" of a new show that needs to be done between workshop performances and actually making it to Broadway was never done, since noone wanted to change the dead composer's work; consequently, the musical has its weaknesses, though it's a show I've always liked.
What's interesting about the story of Rent is that it is not something original, but it's an "updating" of the Puccini opera, La Boheme. The setting has shifted from bohemian Paris to the rundown lofts of 1990s downtown New York City, and the singers' names have been Americanized: Roger (Rodolfo), Mark (Marcello), Maureen (Musetta), Tom Collins (Colline), Angel Schanard (Schnaurd), and Benny (Benoît), with Mimi staying the same and with Marlene/Musetta getting a new lesbian love interest, JoAnne. Just like the opera characters, the musical characters are all starving artists struggling to survive, only the musical has some of the characters struggling with heroin addiction and half of the principal characters are HIV-positive, and noone has the operatic tuberculosis.
This film is definitely a movie of the musical, rather than a movie based on the musical. I suppose all the Rentheads wouldn't have tolerated a lot of changes to the musical's script, though I think the additions to dialogue for the movie were definitely improvements and moving recitative to spoken dialogue helps non-musical movie audiences relate better. The movie also got the opportuntity to add some new visual material, including a wonderful dream dance sequence supplementing "The Tango Maureen." On the downside, though, a few scenes used stage blocking, which lessened the reality of those moments, particularly during the big dance number "La Vie Boheme." The new on-location scenes were great visual additions, though, since the musical had limited itself to a simple, spare tenement set.
After last year's stage-to-screen debaucle with Andrew Lloyd-Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, where unfortunate casting decisions were made to use actors who very simply could not sing, I was worried about what would happen to the edgy music of Rent. Rent's producers were lucky, though, and succeeded in casting six of the eight original Broadway cast members, thus guaranteeing the musical success of the film. The replacement Mimi was fine and the replacement JoAnne was fabulous. The problem, though, is that a decade has elapsed since the musical opened on Broadway, and time has not been kind to the actors. These characters are supposed to be young twenty-somethings (Mimi is supposed to be a teenager), but the original cast members are all now well in to their mid-thirties. On top of that, Collins is played by Jesse L. Martin who has become famous for his role in the Law and Order television series, and it was hard for me to divorce him from his cop personna.
His fans will scream when I say this, but I've never been a fan of Adam ("Roger") Pascal's singing; he tries to "belt," or squat on his voice, when a purer, more lyrical tenor sound would better fit the role; nevertheless, it's the voice we're used to hearing on all the CDs. Pascal in particular had difficulty acting and lip syncing to the soundtrack; perhaps it something only another professional singer would notice, but in some of the songs he's singing very hard and emotionally, but I didn't see the corresponding expression and throat movement on his face during the scene.
I haven't heard yet how opening weekend box office numbers are. We went to a late afternoon matinee yesterday, which was the opening day of the movie's release, and our theater was only about half full. It's a good movie, though, and you should definitely put it on your list of films to see. You needn't be a fan of the musical to be able to full enjoy the movie; Ryan hadn't ever seen the musical, and he enjoyed the movie a lot. So, go see it!
Rent the movie has finally come out, a decade after Rent the musical opened on Broadway. Given Hollywood's penchant for tried and true story lines, I'm surprised it too them so long to make this movie.
Rent the Tony winning best musical, of course, is one of those unexpectedly bright flashes of light on the Great White Way that has spawned committed fans who see the show over and over and over in a way very few musicals have ever inspired. I think also that part of the fanatacism of "Rentheads" comes from the unexpected death of its young creator-composer Jonathan Larson shortly after the final dress rehearsal of the show. Of course, the regretable part of the ensuing reverence is that some of the "tweaking" of a new show that needs to be done between workshop performances and actually making it to Broadway was never done, since noone wanted to change the dead composer's work; consequently, the musical has its weaknesses, though it's a show I've always liked.
What's interesting about the story of Rent is that it is not something original, but it's an "updating" of the Puccini opera, La Boheme. The setting has shifted from bohemian Paris to the rundown lofts of 1990s downtown New York City, and the singers' names have been Americanized: Roger (Rodolfo), Mark (Marcello), Maureen (Musetta), Tom Collins (Colline), Angel Schanard (Schnaurd), and Benny (Benoît), with Mimi staying the same and with Marlene/Musetta getting a new lesbian love interest, JoAnne. Just like the opera characters, the musical characters are all starving artists struggling to survive, only the musical has some of the characters struggling with heroin addiction and half of the principal characters are HIV-positive, and noone has the operatic tuberculosis.
This film is definitely a movie of the musical, rather than a movie based on the musical. I suppose all the Rentheads wouldn't have tolerated a lot of changes to the musical's script, though I think the additions to dialogue for the movie were definitely improvements and moving recitative to spoken dialogue helps non-musical movie audiences relate better. The movie also got the opportuntity to add some new visual material, including a wonderful dream dance sequence supplementing "The Tango Maureen." On the downside, though, a few scenes used stage blocking, which lessened the reality of those moments, particularly during the big dance number "La Vie Boheme." The new on-location scenes were great visual additions, though, since the musical had limited itself to a simple, spare tenement set.
After last year's stage-to-screen debaucle with Andrew Lloyd-Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, where unfortunate casting decisions were made to use actors who very simply could not sing, I was worried about what would happen to the edgy music of Rent. Rent's producers were lucky, though, and succeeded in casting six of the eight original Broadway cast members, thus guaranteeing the musical success of the film. The replacement Mimi was fine and the replacement JoAnne was fabulous. The problem, though, is that a decade has elapsed since the musical opened on Broadway, and time has not been kind to the actors. These characters are supposed to be young twenty-somethings (Mimi is supposed to be a teenager), but the original cast members are all now well in to their mid-thirties. On top of that, Collins is played by Jesse L. Martin who has become famous for his role in the Law and Order television series, and it was hard for me to divorce him from his cop personna.
His fans will scream when I say this, but I've never been a fan of Adam ("Roger") Pascal's singing; he tries to "belt," or squat on his voice, when a purer, more lyrical tenor sound would better fit the role; nevertheless, it's the voice we're used to hearing on all the CDs. Pascal in particular had difficulty acting and lip syncing to the soundtrack; perhaps it something only another professional singer would notice, but in some of the songs he's singing very hard and emotionally, but I didn't see the corresponding expression and throat movement on his face during the scene.
I haven't heard yet how opening weekend box office numbers are. We went to a late afternoon matinee yesterday, which was the opening day of the movie's release, and our theater was only about half full. It's a good movie, though, and you should definitely put it on your list of films to see. You needn't be a fan of the musical to be able to full enjoy the movie; Ryan hadn't ever seen the musical, and he enjoyed the movie a lot. So, go see it!
Sunday, November 6, 2005
Opera on the Mall with dogs
What a beautiful Indian summer afternoon for an opera on the Mall!
Around 10,000 people sat on blankets, rugs, lawn chairs, and even the grass on the National Mall and some 2,500 paying patrons watched in the Opera House at the Kennedy Center this afternoon when the Washington National Opera presented a matinee and simulcast performance of Gershwin's opera, Porgy and Bess as a part of WNO's 50th anniversary season. The Mall screen was set up about half way between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, between the Hirschorn Museum and the National Archives.
Not only were thousands of people watching, but there were quite a number of dogs in the audience! I've never taken Trevor to the opera (although I did have him as an actor in a musical once), so I'm sure he'll be barking his opinion when he sees this blog entry.
The mall crowd was a mix of young and old, black and white, families and singles, and everyone was in a great mood; many people brought picnic baskets of foods from fast food chicken to Whole Foods deli items to gourmet items prepared at home. I was pleasantly surprised at how engaged in the performance all those hundreds of small children were.
The show, slated for 2 p.m., started 8 minutes late. We got to hear a taped greeting from international opera star and conductor Placido Domingo, who is WNO's general director, then the board president of WNO greeted the audience at the Kennedy Center and the Mall crowd via simulcast, who introduced His Honor the Mayor of Washington for his greetings.
Finally, the music started. They were using four or five cameras at the Kennedy Center and mixing the feed there. One camera was in the back of the orchestra pit and gave the mall audience a very unusual glimpse of the conductor working with the pit musicians and showed some of the staging "secrets" like numbers posted along the pit wall to help the singers on stage find their places. The opening number of the opera is the well known song, "Summertime," sung by Laquita Mitchell as Clara, who was absolutely wonderful. I hope to see a lot of her in the future.
It was difficult to judge the sets and lighting from the broadcast. The show is set in a black tenement in Catfish Row, South Carolina, so the set appeared to be a multi-story structure of one room apartments for the various characters. Set pieces and props were brought in and removed by the chorus and supers as needed. Throughout the show, the acting and staging of the subsidiary characters and chorus was impressive, and my only complaint was that the two fight scenes were obviously fake "stage fighting," something which might not have been apparent in the opera house, but which read clearly in the camera closeups.
About 20 minutes into the show, D.C. native Gordon Hawkins as Porgy makes his entrance, followed eventually by Bess (sung by Indira Mahajan) and Crown (sung by Terry Cook). Porgy gets to sing "I Got Plenty O' Nuttin' " and then later he and Bess sing the duet "Bess, You Is My Woman Now." Hawkins was a strong singer and had a good stage presence, but I don't think he drew out enough audience sympathy for his role as the good crippled man. Mahajan's entrance threw me at first. I thought she looked Hispanic, rather than black, which was a bit of a non sequitur, since the Gershwin estate is adamant about the cast being all Africans (other than the detective, policeman, and their three officers) before they'll give permission for the show to be done. At intermission, I got a program, and saw Mahajan's name and thought then that she might be East Indian; I Googled her when I got home, though, and read that she's done a number of Porgy and Besses and has won several prizes for African-American singers, so I guess she's either light skinned or perhaps mixed blood. Ethnicity aside, she acted her role to the hilt, and I can imagine her in one of her other big roles, Musetta in La Boheme.
One of the interesting things about the score for this opera is that supporting cast members get a lot of the best songs and scenes, such as Clara's "Summertime," We also heard some outstanding performances this afternoon from the big voiced Angela Simpson in her powerful portrayal of Serena and Jermaine Smith as the wonderfully slimy Sportin' Life. Sportin' Life gets to sing the only other well-known song of the show, "It Ain't Necessarily So," near the end of the first act, and he had to do a lot of vigorous dancing during the show, including one number where he ended up on the floor in a split.
To accommodate the unusual situation on the Mall, there was a 25 minute intermission. This allowed people to use the row of 20 porta-potties along Constitution Avenue and the indoor facilities at one of the many Smithsonian museums in the area, and to visit the already in-place snack bars and vendors all up and down the Mall for the usual museum tourists. I was surprised we didn't have a lot of families leave at intermission, since the opera libretto is very adult: lots of drug use, sexually charged scenes, cursing, and adult themes.
During intermission we got to shift around a little bit. Most everyone was polite and cordial this afternoon, but about half an hour in to the show, some late-50-something woman in a Clinton-Gore '96 hat and her husband wandered in and sat initially on the ground, but eventually she got up in a folding chair, blocking the sight lines for a bunch of people who'd been sitting on the ground for an hour. During the show she squirmed around, dug through her bag, took off her shoes and played with cotton between her toes, took her jacket on and off, and took her pullover on and off to the horror of those around her as she held her arms up for the sweater removal process to reveal her sleeveless shell and the long, long hair under her arms!
The second act is interesting in that there are no well-known songs, since they were all sung in the first act. Clara and Bess each get a reprise of "Summertime," and Porgy has some "Plenty O' Nuttin' " reprise phrases, but most of the rest of the act is new and dramatic. This isn't one of those "and they lived happily ever after" operas.
At the end, the performers were warmly received by the people on the Mall. We were applauding then, as well as throughout the show, but I don't think the singers at the Kennedy Center were aware of it. It's a shame, since the Mall audience was more spontaneous and applauded for more things It was also neat seeing people on the Mall who'd probably never been to an opera before; many of them brought their black church experience with them and raised their arms at glorious moments, called out to the actors, laughed, and commented out loud about what was happening. The Kennedy Center crowd seemed much more restrained in comparison! The opera, which started about 2:10, was over at dusk, about 5:20.
Clara, Serena, and Porgy got the most cheers from the Mall audience during curtain calls and conductor Wayne Marshall was very warmly received by the Kennedy Center audience. The Washington National Opera Orchestra played the jazzy, heavily syncopated score superbly and the African-American members of the Washington National Opera Chorus supplemented with some 30 supernumeraries acted convincingly, and I was especially impressed by all the child actors.
It was a wonderful afternoon to be in the Nation's Capital.
Saturday, November 5, 2005
FREE OPERA!!!
Who's going to be in D.C. tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon?
Washington National Opera is going to have a free simulcast performance of the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess on the Mall near the Capitol tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. Who wants to go with me?
The main performance will be going on at the Kennedy Center Opera House, where ticket prices (which are sold out anyway) range from $100 to $290. However, the simulcast will be FREE for those who want to brave the November weather (upper 60s to low 70s, slight chance of rain) and watch the opera on an 18' x 32' LED video screen.
Porgy and Bess is probably the best known American opera, featuring lots of jazzy and bluesy melodies and memorable tunes even non-operaphiles will recognize such as "Summertime," "It Ain't Necessarily So," and "Bess, You Is My Woman Now." It's not often performed live in its entirety though, so this is a rare treat.
So, I'm thinking about maybe putting together some blankets and a picnic basket......anybody interested in going? Call, email, or comment ASAP, ok?
Washington National Opera is going to have a free simulcast performance of the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess on the Mall near the Capitol tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. Who wants to go with me?
The main performance will be going on at the Kennedy Center Opera House, where ticket prices (which are sold out anyway) range from $100 to $290. However, the simulcast will be FREE for those who want to brave the November weather (upper 60s to low 70s, slight chance of rain) and watch the opera on an 18' x 32' LED video screen.
Porgy and Bess is probably the best known American opera, featuring lots of jazzy and bluesy melodies and memorable tunes even non-operaphiles will recognize such as "Summertime," "It Ain't Necessarily So," and "Bess, You Is My Woman Now." It's not often performed live in its entirety though, so this is a rare treat.
So, I'm thinking about maybe putting together some blankets and a picnic basket......anybody interested in going? Call, email, or comment ASAP, ok?
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