Georgia O’Keeffe – Imagine BBC Click here to watch I rarely watch broadcast television because my time is mostly occupied with screening video and online productions for Theatrewise so I miss a lot. It’s a question of choices and sometimes I choose wrong. Fortunately, many of the best programmes made for broadcast are now available online. Here is a case in point. I heard about, but didn’t see, this great documentary about Georgia O’Keefe, originally broadcast as part of the imagine series on BBC2. I feel really lucky to have been able to catch up with it on YouTube – in my opinion the best invention since the wheel – as I had never previously ‘got’ O’Keefe’s puzzling and in-your-face paintings and now I do. On the brink of the Depression in 1929, Georgia O’Keeffe – America’s first great modernist painter – headed west. In the bright light of the New Mexico desert, she forged an independent life and found the solitude she needed for her truly original art. The photographs taken of her by her older lover (photographer Alfred Stieglitz) scandalised the public. Her flower forms were seen as a shocking and vibrant display of femininity, her bones and skulls as surreal and disturbing. Now, 30 years after her death, to coincide with a major Tate Modern show in 2016, imagine… told the story of Georgia O’Keeffe, one of the most inspiring artists ever. Falstaff - Met Opera On Demand Click here to subscribe Don’t forget that since the pandemic the Metropolitan Opera has been streaming its enormous library of more than 800 Performances On Demand for what seems to me a modest fee. You can buy a membership for $14.99/month or $149.99/year with the Met’s unlimited subscription plan. If you only want to see one opera you can take the monthly plan and cancel within 30 days. They also offer a free trial week which is worth taking. If you love opera you can’t go wrong. This week on Met Opera on Demand: they are streaming the 2023 revival of Robert Carsen’s ingenious production of Falstaff starring baritone Michael Volle as the larger-than-life Falstaff who, “puts the noble grain of his voice to deliciously undignified use,” with soprano Ailyn Pérez, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, and contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux reprising their delightful portrayals as the Merry Wives of Windsor who deliver his comeuppance. Maestro Daniele Rustioni conducts a brilliant ensemble cast that also features soprano Hera Hyesang Park and tenor Bogdan Volkov as the young lovers Nannetta and Fenton and baritone Christopher Maltman as Ford. Teodoro Morca – Freedom Click here to watch Flamenco is a difficult artform to penetrate if you’re not born to it. Today we know it as the song, dance, and instrumental music commonly associated with the Andalusian Roma (Gypsies) of southern Spain. Its somewhat tangled roots emanate from Rajasthan (in northwest India) arriving in Spain between the 9th and 14th centuries via Roma (gypsy) migration with instruments unknown at the time such as tambourines, bells and castanets. This then mixed with and was integrated into the music and dance of communities as different as Sephardic Jews and Moors. This centuries-long cultural intermingling produced the unique art form known as flamenco. Its dance is incredibly complex, being composed of tiny movements of the feet and the beating of contrapuntal rhythms with the heels, each of which has its own history and construction. Masters of the form pop up in every generation, often emerging from the bars and streets of Spain’s poorer neighbourhoods. Others follow the masters and learn at their feet, literally, despite coming from countries with no flamenco tradition at all. Such a master is Teodoro Morca who was born to Hungarian immigrants in Los Angeles and began his Spanish dance training in 1952 as a teenager with the Cansino family, Antonio Triana, and Martin Vargas. With dance training wider than most flamenco dancers, he studied classical ballet, escuela bolera, modern dance, and karate. Flamenco had come into fashion in the U.S. following the Spanish Civil War. Artists sought refuge in America from Generalissimo Franco, and Morca was able to study with émigré dancers and to start earning recognition as a choreographer. But flamenco is jealously guarded by the Spanish and there was no way to be an American flamenco Master without relocating to Madrid where he joined Pilar Lopez’s Baile Español and became the only American teacher at the famed studio Amor de Dios. He worked with many companies as either performer and choreographer, including José Greco, Teresa, First Chamber Dance Company, David Lichine, Lola Montes, Maria Alba, and Luis Rivera. After returning to the US he danced and taught regularly at Jacob’s Pillow where this video of his signature solo, Freedom, was made for a video compilation entitled The Joy of Bach. The music, therefore, is not flamenco guitar but Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Broken Wings – Khalil Gibran musical Click here for tickets This is an unusual original full-length musical by Nadim Naaman and Dana Al Fardan. It purports to be “an autobiographical account of Khalil Gibran’s first love”. What it is is a musical adaptation of the poet’s 1912 autobiographical novel. The show had a brief London run in 2022 and continues to tour to many locations throughout the world without attracting much mainstream attention. But it is a curiousity and worth seeing by all Ghibran adherents. It begins in New York City, 1923. An ageing Gibran narrates from his cold studio. Through poetry and music, he transports us back two decades and across continents, to turn-of-the-century Beirut. His eighteen-year-old self returns to The Middle East after five years in America, to complete his education and discover more of his heritage. He falls deeply in love with Selma Karamy, the daughter of family friend and hugely respected local businessman, Farris Karamy. However, Selma soon becomes betrothed to Mansour Bey Galib, nephew of the powerful Bishop Bulos Galib, who has one eye on the Karamy family fortune. Gibran and Selma fight to reconcile their love for one another, whilst navigating the rules, traditions and expectations that their society lays before them. This show was written by Middle Eastern duo Nadim Naaman and Dana Al Fardan, and directed by Bronagh Lagan, produced by Ali Matar with orchestrations by Joe Davison. Perhaps more interesting that the show itself is the question of what inspired the acclaimed author of The Prophet to write the novel on which it is based? What moved him to such profound philosophy in his later life? The events of Broken Wings highlight key issues of the time, yet the themes and debates raised remain increasingly relevant today, over a century later; the fight for gender equality, the freedom to love who we love, tradition versus modernity, wealth versus happiness, immigration and the importance of ‘home’. Last Night of the Proms – Royal Albert Hall Click here to watch Thank goodness that’s over for another year and with it the perennial debate about Rule Britannia. For those not resident within these sceptered isles, this is an annual argument between the nostalgists and the modernists, between those who believe that Rule Britannia, Elgar’s anthem to home and empire, is a symbol of all that is great and good about England, and those who believe it’s an outdated, jingoistic, colonialist relic that should be chucked out with the leftover programmes. The song goes on forever, the audience in the Albert Hall’s pit working themselves up with ever increasing fervour with every repeated chorus, waving their Union Flags with abandon, insisting loudly and tunelessly that “Britain never, never, never shall be slaves.” And since nobody, to my knowledge is suggesting we should be, even that seems mega-pointless. Last night’s extravaganza, conducted again this year by the long-suffering American conductor Marin Alsop, passed off with no blood on the blood red velvet seats of the Albert Hall which are, in any case, removed for the Proms to make room for more standing audience members. The programme, in addition to the familiar fanfares and anthems, included arias by Wagner and Verdi and the Easter Hymn from Mascagni’s Cavelleria Rusticana with soprano soloist Lise Davidsen and cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. As always, in the tradition department, there was the Last Night staple Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs, a medley of songs arranged by Wood in 1905 to mark the centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar, and other odds and sods from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Emmerich Kálmán and Heitor Villa-Lobos. The Proms, for those not blessed with a whole summer of nightly summer classical concerts, is the longest running series of orchestral concerts in the world, and is officially known as "The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts", having been invented by Wood in 1895 and conducted by him for nearly 50 years. Today, Henry Wood is remembered every year at the Proms with the placing of a bronze bust – borrowed from the Royal Academy of Music – at the back of the Royal Albert Hall’s stage. On the Last Night of the Proms each year, a member of the audience places a chaplet over the bust and Wood’s ‘Fantasia on British Sea Songs’ is performed. This is done very seriously, with straight faces, and is perfectly idiotic, but it is arguably the most popular moment in the presentation of classical music in Britain. The audience, most of whom have no idea who Wood was or why they're applauding a bronze bust, or what on earth the wreath of ivy leaves has to do with anything, go crazy. They love it and who am I to argue with such a harmless piece of fun? The Proms used to be essentially a London party. All my schoolfriends and I heard our first classical concerts standing in the pit, melting bars of chocolates clenched in our fists, our flags stuck in our waistbands awaiting Rule Britannia. But importantly, for many years now, the Proms are not limited to those 5000 Londoners who cram into the Albert Hall each night for eight weeks every summer. The concerts are all, every night, broadcast live on BBC radio and television so that anyone can join the party. The Proms are, as Henry Wood envisioned, the most democratic and widely available series of concerts in the world. Here's a Rule Britannia, not last night’s Last Night, which was somewhat tame, but my favourite, this one from 2016, sung by the most improbable “Englishman”, the Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez, who was a jolly good sport, dressing up in that ridiculous garb (his national costume, I'm told). singing beautifully as though he believed every word and note, and getting nearly all the words right. I love that the BBC Symphony Orchestra members behind him are in fits of laughter along with the audience.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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