rainy day poem

Chet returns (to the Mercury L)

I can’t
Play
No, there is Paris
Tomorrow
But unless
You land me there
Ahead of time
I‘ll be invisible.
No this time the
Lost fell to you
without
Singing the dare
No there is no
Work for me outside
this hotel
Maybe we should
Get lost again
Forget our names
Live to tell the
Truth so it seems
Like lies.
Maybe we got lost
In that dream
Tore it down
Between the
Nightmares
whisper and
the rain comes in.

now the sanity of

‘One, dear’

by Jan Carroll

The Palin express

Hard not to think of the current poisonous politics as I heard the opening of Macbeth at Philadelphia Shakespeare Theater. “Fair is foul and foul is fair’ the witch kept repeating.

Shame that witch wasn’t on hand on hand for the Tea Party production of McCain yesterday starring that new maverick, that intellectual giant and all around hatchet woman Sarah, slash and gore.

Her new credo is ‘Take our country back’ is just another in her relentless crusade of divisive politics. A new low of course is her use of a graphic with a gun sight cross over the locations of democrats who voted for the health care bill.

McCain, in defending her on the news shows, said that it was just part of the usual rhetoric. Excuse me, but in a week of health care opponents throwing bricks, cutting gas line, mob mentality, it is sir, not the usual rhetoric and it is completely disingenuous for you to suggest it is.

While the Palin, who doesn’t even have a rudimentary knowledge of our system of government or history continues to criticize the president he has been busy himself- on nuclear arms control, education, health care, visiting the troops in Afghanistan…oh never mind- but then again he‘s just an elitist thinking about

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day…

But I guess Sarah is too busy reading all her press to think about Shakespeare. Oh yeah what was that passage from Lady Macbeth about washing her hands?

MetroScape

A last gasp of liony winter in the winds today in Philly to move the buds into statis even though the sun was bright.  Great day to be out and to dip into Verizon Hall for the Philadelphia Orchestra concert conducted by Sir Andrew Davis in a program of Mozart and Elgar. The bobbers were there, heads pointed south 10 minutes in for Elgar’s Sym. no 1, lulled to their expensive weekly nap by its lyricism and roused only by his blasts of orchestral Brit processionals.

Stage

Kathleen Turner is starring in Red Hot Patriot The Kick Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, a new play by Allison and Margaret Engels. Ivins was the unflappable anti-establishment Texan whose journalism kicked butt where it politically counted. The play premieres this week at the Philadelphia Theater Company.

Arriving in Philly in last weekend’s deluge, Turner, said she is glad to be back in Philly in a play. Many remember her smoldering performance as Maggie in Cat on A Hot Tin Roof and she recalled her run at the Forrest Theater in the early 90s co-starring “the great cast- Charles Durning, Polly Holliday and who can forget, Daniel Hugh Kelly.”

“I’ve been onstage in Philly twice before and I found the audiences here to be very rewarding and thought this would be a great place to do this one.” she said by phone in her trademark sultry voice.

“This is a one woman show that came to me, last spring through my friends, the Engels, two sisters, who are journalists and teach journalism. Molly was a woman extraordinaire. We crossed paths because I have been on the board at People for The American Way for many years and our agenda is protection of the first Amendment. Watchdog of the religious right, is right up there too.”

“Both issues that Molly was involved with. She was our keynote speaker one year. I just thought she was wonderful and a vital journalist. When this came my way, I was very open to do this part just to honor her. It turns out that this play uses her material and I rediscovered how…funny, sharp and biting in many ways.” Turner said.

Turner is in fact coming off of two hits that snagged headlines, her occasionally nude Mrs. Robinson in the stage version of The Graduate’ in London and her Tony nominated performance last year as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Opposite Bill Irwin as George, who won for best actor.

“Martha’s a heartbreaker, you learn a lot about herself. She is so angry and unhappy for so many right reasons. Glorious that Bill and I found so much of the humor. Bill and I agreed that in truth George & Martha truly loved each other. When people left the theater they knew they hadn’t just seen two drunks screaming at each other…We did it during the Bush years. It was becoming a national habit to not face things and ignore the truth.”

Moss is busting out all over

‘more moss’
potn by Jan Carroll

meanwhile a few centuries later, yet another Roman operatic orgy

Barber in gold, silver, lame and mylar

Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, branded a monstrous failure when it opened at the Met in 1966 and stands as one of the all time theatrical catastrophes. Even the 1963 film Cleopatra had the benefit Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s canoodling to blame. But for this Barber opus debuting in a newly built Met house, it couldn’t have gone worse, forever branding the opera box office poison. The eight performance run sent Barber into a creative tailspin and on personal bender.

Curtis Opera Theater and Opera Company of Philadelphia, collaborating for the third time on their ambitious chamber opera series attempt a rescue of the music. It is both scaled down, but highly campy as they seek to restore what does work in the opera. Namely, a flawed, bold operatic experiment from Barber.

The trouble in Egypt is still the same old story, Nile Queen falls for Roman General, the countries vie for power, nothing survives save the asps. Certainly not Shakespeare, in Franco Zefferelli’s filmy libretto, short on plot details and broiled dialogue cycles ‘My man of men‘ is Cleo‘s refrain.

At the Perelman Theater, David Zinn’s understated metallic set frames the tableaux of Roman and Egyptian exotica- from Cleopatra’s gold train that spans the length of the stage (drawn out under a rain of glitter confetti) to the transgender pink drag corsets on her slaves- this A & C is decidedly over the top. In embracing that milieu, OCP-COT unvaults Cleo’s musical treasures, the steel and fantasia in Barber’s score, even the grand scale of its thorniness.

Allison Sanders and Brandon Cedel in the leads, keep this an unfussy love story, even when the music and drama demands gnashing. Theirs is a hot-blooded love affair with arias. Barber’s overlapping singing is smoothly dispatched, helping to keep focus in some narratively sketchy scenes.

Cedel had moments of swagger in the love scenes and Sanders flashed a reluctant diva at times, but mostly they downplayed the drama for musical intimacy, despite the libretto‘s claustrophobia. Cedel and Sander retain a reserve and mystery, good choice when exposition is so clammy. Her voice was cool control especially in the queenly strata, Cedel’s smooth bass-baritone lending virile mystique.

bloglog supplemental

This is post 601! seems significant somehow. a thousand thanks to Jan whose eye and photographs tell better stories than I can. ta, Lew

operaworld

In the opening moments of the rarely performed Attila, the overture engulfs the Metropolitan Opera with Verdi’s ominous symphonic clouds, but those fast tempests are overshadowed as the curtain comes up on the production’s two stories of stony collapsed ruins. Think crushed Stonehenge.

Everything about this opera is big, even if it is musically minor Verdi, its nationalist themes of protecting Italian soil made it a populous hit in 1846.

Championing Attila’s restoration for its debut at the Met is Riccardo Muti, also just making his debut on the podium. Maestrodiva hair as silky as ever.

Muti’s hand is clearly felt in the dimensional sound, the punctuation in the orchestral gallops and the stillness in the fades. Marco Armiliato, who conducted Monday night, shows again (as he did with Il Trittico) how he can project solo sections and filagree a wall of sound out into the expanse of the house.

The Huns will not be lunching at the Coliseum today, madam, and this is a story of a strident and somewhat dense conqueror. There is some deadly leather accoutrements by Dolce, with Attila’s chrome feathered headress stabbing out of the ruins, with no hint of decamp.

Attila and his Huns are leaving a path of destruction as he cuts his way west, but God is on the side of the Romans, so the conquerer has to cut a deal with his enemies. All along he is being set up by Odabella, who seduces him so she can avenge her father’s death. Her lover Foresto doesn’t know her scheme, so feels betrayed himself and launches a plot of his own. The story drags on but basically, suffering mobs or not, becomes a love triangle of raging jealous arias.

When it is time for a set change, they don’t mess around. What could be more impressive than the ruins? It’s opposite- a towering crystalis forest topiary. Breathtaking stagecraft.

Let’s get really mossy

potd by Jan Carroll

‘Let’s watch moss grow’