Opera de Paris Click here to subscribe There’s a new kid on the streaming block. L'Opera de Paris has just opened its archive to the world and there are some great treasures to be discovered. For instance, by making available the entire 22/23 season on video, we get the chance to see their production of Nixon In China (https://play.operadeparis.fr/en/p/nixon-in-china-1) which has been generating a lot of talk in opera circles. I never miss an opportunity to see John Adams’ first opera and here, for its entry into the Paris Opera repertoire, this work has been directed by Valentina Carrasco, who underlines the importance and the mediating power of ping-pong, the Chinese national sport. For those not familiar with its sources, in February 1972, the American president Richard Nixon went to China to meet Mao Zedong. In the context of the war in Vietnam and the cold war, this encounter marked a turning point in Chinese‑American relations. Nixon in China tackles the political thaw instigated by ping-pong diplomacy, begun by the invitation of the American table tennis players by their Chinese counterparts, one year before the presidential visit. This is a mesmerising work in which the pulsations and repetitions typical of minimalism are combined with melodic lines of great lyricism. For those who think they don’t like contemporary opera, this is a great starter. Also, check out the ballets, operas and concerts now available on the Paris Opera platform, including two conducted by Gustave Dudamel before he decided that he was leaving Paris four years early, “to spend more time with his family”, shortly after having been announced as the new Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. In common with most major arts organisations these days, this new streaming platform is giving us a choice of subscribing to the entire archive on an annual basis (€99 with two months free) or on a monthly basis which means that you can have a month’s worth for a single performance (€9.90 with a week’s free trial) as long as you remember to cancel before the end of 30 days. If you’re under 28 there’s a special monthly subscription rate of €4.95. Gombey Dance – Bermuda Click here to watch Gombey performance was initially a street tradition in Bermuda bringing enslaved people of West African, Native American, and Caribbean heritage together to celebrate during the Christmas season. Gombey reflects both its deep historical roots as a symbol of creative resistance to colonial authority and its modern role as an emblem of the nation. The Warwick Gombey Troupe, is one of five troupes in Bermuda today. Irwin Trott, both a master drummer and educator of Gombey performance, founded this Troupe in 1996, dedicated to representing the unique heritage of the island of Bermuda through its Native roots that trace back to the Wampanoag, Pequot, and Narragansett people of New England. The Warwick Gombey Troupe’s debut at Jacob’s Pillow in New England represents a kind of homecoming to the land of their ancestors. Ambition – Rijksmuseum Click here to watch Here is another of these wonderful films about the paintings in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. This one, narrated by Matthias Ubl, Curator of Early Netherlandish and German Paintings, is about those portraits we have seen by the great Dutch artists of those rich business men and their wives, the pillars of their 15th and 16th century society, the wealthy urban elite who could afford to commission a painter to represent them and their lives, and the wonderful artworks that resulted. We would have forgotten the subjects of these works – they were merchants, bankers and other worthies - important in their time but not historically noteworthy, but for these extraordinarily detailed examinations of their faces, clothes, and backgrounds which give us such a clear picture of their personalities and those things in their lives they wanted the artist to include in their portraits. This, the painters are telling us across the centuries, is what these people wanted us to know about them, about their domestic and professional lives, about the things they are proudest of. This section of the exhibition is called Ambition. Looking at the paintings of these self-confident people, we can see why. Ella and the Duke – "It Don’t Mean A Thing (If it Ain’t Got That Swing)" Click here to watch This was recorded live as part of the Ed Sullivan variety show in 1965. It never gets old. Scat, almost unknown today, was the vocalisation of music without words, often, as here, in counterpoint to the melody of the song being sung. Here is the Queen of Scat, the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald, showing how it’s done. At the piano, who else?, Duke Ellington, her favourite partner. And nobody could swing better. Pocket Reviews Private Lives – Ambassadors Theatre The plays of Noel Coward are all about style. And style can’t be bought or taught. You’ve either got it or you haven’t. And Patricia Hodge, who is playing Amanda in the smash hit production of Private Lives at the Ambassadors has more Coward style than perhaps any other living actor can muster, combined with the technique to harness it. It doesn’t hurt that she is starring, with Nigel Havers, in one of the two or three greatest comedies ever written. Coward wrote Private Lives for Gertrude Lawrence, his oldest friend. They’d met when they were child actors in 1912 and loved each other until she died. Gertie had the perfect style but lacked technique and, according to Coward, gave a different performance every night, which drove Coward to send her infuriated telegrams even when they were playing together. (“Only thing to be fixed is your performance!”). Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers are older than the actors who customarily play Amanda and Elyot, a divorced couple who meet some years after their divorce, while honeymooning with their new spouses, and realise that they can live neither with nor without each other. It’s a brilliant idea to play this as older but not at all wiser, just as unsuited as they were the first time, when they were young. Hodge and Havers (and their director, Chris Luscombe) have the experience and the chops to savour every single nuance of Coward’s play and a few more of their own. They look right, they sound right, they move right and, in their hands, Amanda and Elyot are the appalling, vicious, and completely wonderful couple you have always wanted to meet (but preferably on neutral ground). I’ve seen every production of Private Lives on Broadway and the West End since Noel and Gertie died (Why? Long story I’ll tell you another time) and I can tell you that here, on the stage of the Ambassadors Theatre, is finally the production that Coward would have loved above all others. This is his Private Lives and ours. Infamous – Jermyn Street Theatre I saw two comedic master classes this week, in totally different plays and places. One was the aforementioned Patricia Hodge in Private Lives in a big West End theatre. At the other end of the scale, at the tiny Jermyn Street Theatre, I found the impeccable and brilliant Caroline Quentin, starring alongside her daughter, Rose Quentin, in Infamous, a ramshackle but often very funny play about Lady Hamilton, mistress to Lord Nelson who, frankly, doesn’t sound like much of a catch. April De Angelis is a favourite playwright of mine and even though Infamous runs out of steam in the second half, it is buoyed throughout by the fabulous comic turn of Caroline Quentin in two different roles with excellent support from her daughter. The first half has Emma Hamilton (gorgeous Rose Quentin) riding high as the wife of the British Ambassador to Naples and laying plans to snare the hero of Waterloo to her bed, which we know she does, over the oft-expressed objections of her down-to-earth and down-trodden mother. This is Caroline Quentin in an askew mobcap, begging her daughter to enjoy the gilded life she has and not to aim higher, reminding her of how high she has already risen from her origins as a London prostitute. But Emma persists and inevitably, she falls from grace into the second half of Infamous which takes place in a cowbarn in Calais in which Emma (now played by Caroline in a ratty dressinggown but still full of delusions of grandeur) is living with her lovechild, Horatia (Rose). Sir William Hamilton has died, Lord Nelson has returned to his wife and then died, leaving Emma and her child, “to the nation” which, predictably, has abandoned them. It all gets a bit muddled after that but De Angelis is never less than funny and entertaining. Best of all is the comic performance from Caroline Quentin who never sinks into cliché despite the obvious temptations. Every moment is fresh and surprising, every new idea, physical or intellectual, is a revelation from this highly skilled actor. There are a few actors I’d watch even if they were reading the telehone directory. After seeing her in Infamous, Caroline Quentin is definitely one of them.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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