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The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci – Goodman Click here for tickets Chicago’s Goodman Theater gave life to The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci nearly thirty years ago. It was a smash hit. Now it’s being revived in the Goodman but, just as importantly for those of us not living in Chicago, is now available online. Leonardo strove to know the world equally through artistic and scientific means. This poetic portrayal of one of history’s most imaginative minds returns to the Goodman nearly three decades after it burst onto the stage in a career-catapulting production for adaptor/director Mary Zimmerman. In a production composed entirely of words from his notebooks and various treatises, da Vinci’s ideas on topics from mathematics, anatomy, architecture and engineering, to philosophy, love and the human spirit come to vivid life. Mary Zimmerman says “The show is really a portrait of a consciousness, sourced only from the notebooks. It's meant to be a manifestation of those sheets of paper, which are crowded with very many different things—a shopping list, drawing of an angel, geometric formulae, architectural notes. The incidents of his life are present in the show to some degree, but it’s really about that ever-probing, ever-curious, ever-wondering consciousness.” Mar 13-Apr 3. $25 Virtual piano recitals from Aspen – Maxim Lando and John O’Conor Click here to watch Virtual Stage | Aspen Music Festival And School The Music Festival in Aspen, Colorado, where I have spent my summers for thirty years, have been offering free recitals and concerts by artists who regularly perform at the Festival, throughout the pandemic. This is clever marketing, keeps the Festival alive in the audience’s mind, and gives regulars like me the chance to hear these fine artists in another setting. We recent heard lovely performances from Simone Dinnerstein and Colin Davin, and this week we get two more. On Monday, and then viewable for three days thereafter, we can meet the 19-year old pianist Maxim Lando. Recently named Musical America's “New Artist of the Month,” Lando plays music by the late jazz pianist Chick Corea, amongst others. On Tuesday, a very different kind of music and performer. Irish pianist John O’Conor, long associated with Aspen Music Festival, plays Beethoven's "Pathétique" and "Moonlight." sonatas. O’Conor is a Beethoven specialist. His recording of the complete Beethoven sonatas caused CD Review to rave, “he should be recognised as the world's premier Beethoven interpreter" I have heard him play many times in Aspen and wouldn’t miss this one for anything. Note that these concerts start at 6pm Mountain Time on Mar 14 and 15 and are then each available for three days worldwide. Working From Home – National Gallery Click here to watch This is one of the Talks videos made by the National Gallery’s curators during lockdown. Francesca Whitlum-Cooper, then stuck at home herself, away from her place of work in Trafalgar Square, makes us focus on the interiors in some of her favourite paintings. She is looking at the ordinary, the everyday actions of the people in her choices, like this little girl eating breakfast. Now we can once again go to the Gallery and see these paintings in person, but when we couldn’t, they gave us a feeling of calm and patience that we sorely lacked. How lovely for us that through the eyes of someone who really knows about painting we can appreciate details we might never have noticed and that their willingness to share what they know made lockdown bearable. Margot - Tony Palmer Click here for tickets This rivetting documentary begins conventionally, as the biography of Margot Fonteyn. The documentary-maker, Tony Palmer, has a history of making sensational arts films so I was expecting some revelations but not this. Tony Palmer interviewed those who knew Fonteyn best, her fellow Royal Ballet dancers, choreographers and administrators, her personal assistants, even her mother, and what emerges is the story of how the most famous dancer that England has ever produced was deceived and betrayed by those closest to her. It’s about a little girl called Peggy Hookham, brought up in Shanghai, who told her mother she would one day become the greatest dancer in the world and achieved beyond her dreams. It also exposes how, despite being almost unable to walk, Dame Margot Fonteyn was still performing at the age of 67 and died penniless and exploited. It’s not an easy watch for those of us who love ballet and who have always thought of her as the epitome of classical perfection. She was, as this film shows in excerpt after excerpt of her exquisite placement, her musicality, her unshakeable technique and her extraordinary dance intelligence, but at what a cost. London Assurance – National Theatre Click here to subscribe Time for a classic play? The National has just added this to its National Theatre at Home line-up. Dion Boucicault’s 1841 farce couldn’t ask for a better cast than Fiona Shaw and Simon Russell-Beale in two of the greatest comic roles of the English stage, in this brilliantly funny play. London Assurance was first produced by Charles Matthews and Madame Vestris's Company in March 1841 at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. It was Boucicault's first produced play and first major success and its been in the repertory ever since. Sir Harcourt Courtly is lured away from the epicentre of fashionable London by the promise of a rich and beautiful bride, Grace, several decades his junior. Arriving at Oak Hall, Gloucestershire, he marvels at this rural Venus until her charms are eclipsed by her hearty cousin, the foxhunting Lady Gay Spanker. Meanwhile his disguised son turns up in flight from his creditors and falls head over heels for Grace. When Lady Spanker discovers the young couple, she needs little prompting from the visiting chancer Dazzle to lead Sir Harcourt astray. You can subscribe for a year or, if you only want to see this play, you can subscribe for a month, during which you have access to all the plays on National Theatre at Home and cancel within 30 days. 'Aaron Burr, Sir' - Hamilton Click here to watch The Sons of Liberty from the current Broadway cast of Hamilton took their song, "Aaron Burr, Sir", to the revolutionary Fraunces Tavern in New York City, the tavern where it all started. For those not familiar with early American history (or those who haven’t seen Hamilton yet) The Sons of Liberty was a loosely organized clandestine political organization active in the Thirteen American Colonies founded to advance the rights of the colonists and to fight taxation by the British government. Va Pensiero – Odessa Opera Click here to watch This needs no words. It is the Odessa Opera Chorus and Orchestra in the cold wind outside their opera house defiantly, and beautifully performing Va pensiero , the liberation theme from Verdi’s Nabucco, as they prepare to defend their opera house and their country. One last thing. The pianist Iryna Manyukina bidding farewell to her beloved piano just before she has to leave her destroyed home outside of Kyiv.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDUdK5SYa7w
6 Comments
Julian Markson
14/3/2022 12:40:13 pm
Your final video this week of Iryna Manyukina bidding farewell to her beloved piano shows and sends a very powerful message of the mindless destruction being caused in Ukraine. Not sure whether it will be seen by those who need to be aware of the propaganda that is being told to the Russian army who believe that they are defending Russia, rather than actually attacking a much smaller independent nation.
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11/8/2022 08:56:31 pm
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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