Vienna Waltzes – New York City Ballet Click here to watch George Balanchine created this endlessly popular ballet in 1977 and for reasons that become obvious in the first minute, the New York City Ballet trots it out whenever they want to raise some money for their more problematic or ‘difficult’ productions or, in the case of this year, just to keep them afloat when they’ve been unable to give live performances. It’s instantly accessible even to an audience unfamiliar with ballet or Balanchine. Vienna Waltzes is a ballet of intimate encounters, wistful missed connections, and the shared rhythms of this most social of dance forms. From its initial performance, this ballet with its cast of more than 50 dancers, has been the NYCB’s ultimate crowd-pleaser. The ballet is, of course, romantic, but it is also very funny in places. NYCB is the only company that performs the work today and it’s always worth revisiting for the warmth and precision of Balanchine’s choreography and the beauty of its music by Lehar and Strauss (Johann and Richard). You will notice that the women are not dancing in pointe shoes which are completely flat to the floor but in what are known as ‘character shoes’ with a tiny heel to make it easier for them to pivot and turn in the ballroom without the formality of classical ballet technique. The Sick Child - Rijksmuseum Click here to watch Friso Lammertse, curator of 17th century Dutch art at Amsterdam’s Rijsmuseum, talks movingly about this painting by one of the lesser known masters in his care, Gabriel Metsu’s The Sick Child. I’m struck by this curator’s personal warmth and sympathy for the mother and child in the painting and by the connection he draws between her despair and the current fear faced by us all in the current health situation. Our access to the experts who work with these works of art every day, know them and love them, is for me one of the few advantages of our lockdowns. Under normal circumstances, we can go to the museums, see the paintings, even read about them, but we don’t meet the curators. To hear these art historians talk about their charges with intimacy and knowledge is a tremendous plus. The Rijksmuseum does this particularly well in these very short talks. NY Times walking tours Click here to watch I’ve written before about these terrific walking tours through New York City conducted by the Times’ architecture critic Michael Kimmelman. He always has a guest walk with him and one of the Times’ photographers to make the local neighbourhoods come alive. This link will allow you to make your own choice about which locality interests you. Just look at the left-hand side of the page and click on the one you want. I’ve watched them all and, although my favourite is Broadway, (well, it would be, wouldn’t it?), I was fascinated by Chinatown, Lower Manhattan and, surprisingly, The Bronx. A Starry Night In Click here for tickets Are you a fan of any of the following: Jade Anouka, Adrian Lester, Clive Rowe, Rosalie Craig, Grace Savage, Harriet Walter, Aisha Jawando? I'd be willing to cross an ocean to see at least three of these talented and famous actor/singers and, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, starting tonight, and every evening at 7.30 BST through June 12, you can watch them all in cabaret in A Starry Night In. Tickets are just £9 and all proceeds go to Mousetrap Theatre Projects to support theatre and drama education for disadvantaged and disabled young people. Dear Elizabeth – Spotlight on Plays Click here for tickets Meryl Streep. Kevin Kline. Do I need to say any more than that? Well, perhaps a little. Sarah Ruhl’s play, Dear Elizabeth, is based on letters exchanged between the American poets Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. It follows their relationship from first meeting to their short affair, and the turmoil of their lives in between. June 17 at 8:00PM ET then available through June 21. $15 5 Minutes to make you love percussion - NYT Click here to watch Another favourite NY Times innovation is their music series in which they try to persuade detractors of certain voices or instruments to try them for five minutes and see if they can be converted. Various experts and critics are asked to choose no more than five minutes to sample in the hope that one or more will do the trick. This one is percussion. The choices of the musicians are always instructive and the explanations for why they chose what they chose are always worth reading, even if you end up still hating the drums. Hushaby Mountain – Hope Mill Theatre Click here for tickets Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester will be livestreaming Jonathan Harvey’s touching play this week and next, to what he hopes will be a whole new audience who don’t remember the AIDs crisis. It is about a group of friends in that moment of time, back in the 90s, coping with the shifting landscape, and a family trying to come to terms with the unimaginable. This was the time when treatments were just beginning to be discovered, combinations of drugs which for the first time meant that a diagnosis was no longer a death sentence. I remember the tag line for this play in 1999 was Love, Death and Judy Garland. It’s too complicated to explain why but you’ll get it when you see it. Hushaby Mountain, despite its themes and this rather ramshackle production, is irresistibly funny and it is especially timely to revive this play just when vaccination is serving the same function for Covid-19. Directed by Nick Bagnall, who starredin the original production, this online version will star Matt Henry, Jodie Prenger, Layton Williams, Nathan McMullen, Amy Dunn and Harrison Scott-Smith as Ben. June 11/12/13 and June 18/19/20 at 7.30 BST, Saturday at 2:30pm. £15 + £3 transaction fee. Metropolitan Opera – Nightly Opera Streams Click here to watch Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I’m referring to the directorial tendency to take an opera you know well…and turn it into an opera you don’t know at all. Usually that takes the form of updating or setting the opera into a place and time never intended by the composer or librettist. This is considered fair game as long as the music is not interfered with. If you leave the arias alone it seems to be acceptable to make as big a hash of the authors’ original intentions as you possibly can. This updating and resetting happens in other forms, of course, and it’s not all bad. Sometimes it’s simply brilliant. I’m thinking of the Ian McKellen Richard 111 Nazi reset in WW2, or last year’s Death of a Salesman with an all-Black cast. In both cases, and many others that come to mind, the directorial decisions enhanced the works and gave them a life beyond that envisaged by their originators. I can’t believe that either Shakespeare or Arthur Miller weren’t standing on a cloud somewhere, applauding loudly. But it’s fair to say that it works less often than it succeeds. I want a dollar for every time I’ve muttered through gritted teeth at a play or opera, ‘It was fine as written.’ Does this suggest that I’m a fossil who only likes other fossils? Maybe. But, as I’ve said, I’m open to a really intelligent resetting or recasting and will celebrate it with enthusiasm. We’re getting the opportunity to make that judgment again this week as the Met obligingly gives us a whole week of operas performed in an innovative or unusual setting. The Met calls it Changing the Scene: Updated Settings for Classic Operas.This week of free Nightly Opera Streams showcases inventive productions that re-set the action of classic operas—with sometimes startling and sometimes exciting results. Michael Mayer set the action of Verdi’s Rigoletto in 1960s Las Vegas—a neon-lit world ruled by money and ruthless, powerful men. Des McAnuff set Faust in the early 20th century. Mary Zimmerman reimagined Bellini’s La Sonnambula in contemporary New York, as did David McVicar for Handel’s Agrippina. Robert LePage can’t help producing the most outre version of everything and in the case of Thomas Ades’ The Tempest this treatment actually worked. And Phelim McDermott’s view of Mozart’s Cosi was to transport it to a boardwalk amusement park on Coney Island in the 1950s. The result is a twisted playground in which the two pairs of lovers at the heart of the tale find themselves on one emotional, and sometimes literal, thrill ride after another. Watch and let me know what you think.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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