Opera

Cunning Little Vixen

Perelman Theater, March 20

 
The Cunning Little Vixen  Leoš Janácek’s 1924 opera, is the fourth chamber opera collaboration by Curtis Opera Theatre and Opera Company of Philadelphia and from every angle Vixen has proved the most successful.  Among other things, it was very cunning of them to bring in Amy Smith, one of the artistic director’s of Headlong Dance Theater, to choreograph and completely animated the story. Janácek’s magic realism is for adults and children — playful animal characters but the gritty underbelly of eat or be eaten, fox or be outfoxed world.

The score is packed with orchestral intrigue and magic — character instrumentations and shimmering earthiness. The two-tier set by Laura Jellinek is a curious domicile for humans and  the hens, foxes, insects, dogs, bunnies and a few transpecies creatures appear and vanish in recesses that peek at the forest outside.

Brandon Cedel plays the Forester who traps the animals for food, clothing or pets. He traps the young vixen, but she soon figures a way out.  Elizabeth Reiter, in a rust colored sun dress is a mature Vixen who not only rebels against her own captivity, she rallies the hens to free themselves from egg-laying bondage.

The vixen eventually escapes from being tied up and is courted by the Fox, played by mezzo soprano Kisten MacKinnon, who comes on strong, but has no nefarious agenda other than wanting to make a happy life with the Vixen. Forest creatures abound with a fantasia of vocal sounds by Janacek.

The musical and choral interludes featured 30 singers and a dance cast that included such Philly modern dance troubadours Kate-Watson Wallace, Nichole Canuso and John Luna.

The hen chorus brings operatic hysterics and the spirited Pennsylvania Girlschoir playing vixen’s brood charm vocally as they scurry everywhere. The wild kingdom wedding dance with all of the creatures breaking into the electric slide is too fab.

Janácek’s vocal lines are so fluid that it just sweeps you into the story. At the center are the crafted and flinty performances by Cedel and Reiter. Reiter has such an inventive soprano range, able to surprise ala the character’s wild heart. Great vocal chemistry with Kristen MacKinnon who plays her mate. Cedel kept his Hunter the deepest roundness bass-baritone.

Emma Griffin’s stage director keeps everything visually interesting, yet breezy enough not to detract from the music. The Curtis Orchestra, conducted by Corrado Rovaris, played with such passion and pristine detailing, like they were celebrating Vixen’s musical uniqueness. Peter and the Wolf, eat your heart out.

MetroScape

How Philly Moves is a photo series started in 2008 by photographer Jacques-Jean (JJ) Tiziou, of thousands of photos taken of 160 Philadelphians dancing. The participants are of all nationalities, ages and backgrounds; a few have danced professionally, most have not, but they share the joy, energy and love of dance. The photographer’s private project is now about to become very public art as part of the city’s Mural Arts Project and the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA).

Last week, in windy 40-degree rainy weather, Tiziou was bobbing and weaving on scaffolding across from the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts on Broad St. to oversee the first his exhibitions from the How Philly Moves series. The structure houses a projection booth that will beam Tiziou’s photos, as well as video of Tiziou’s studio sessions working with the dancers in the series, on the side of The Kimmel building. Tiziou also took the opportunity to take pictures of his game construction and tech crew.

When people are in motion, Tiziou is moving with them. “Picture taking is more about eye contact and the body language.” He said while taking a few more shots as the crew finished up. “PIFA was reaching out for community partners and they wanted to do something with the Mural Arts Project, so they reached out to me. To have something happening in the heart of the city is very exciting.”

The Kimmel is the headquarters for PIFA and Tiziou’s exhibit coincides this week with the start of a three month installation of How Philly Moves murals to be displayed at the Philadelphia International Airport starting in June. The airport exhibit is a series of painted murals of the twelve of the dancers and will be displayed on multiple stories on six buildings around the airport. Jon Laidacker is the lead muralist with along with a team of artists – Tjai Abdullah, Efrain Hererra, Charles Newman, Laura Velez, and Tom Walton- who are working out of a studio space on the top floor of the Gallery at Market East.

Even with two of his exhibits being installed at the same time, Tiziou was otherwise the picture of calm earlier this week as his crew did middle of the night test runs of the Kimmel projections. The screenings involve blending video, stop motion animation and working with the stills and incorporating a lot of the imagery.” He said. He is collaborating with filmmaker Tobin Rothlein, co-artistic director of Miro Dance Theater, to coordinate the tech designs for the Kimmel site. The images will be projected from dusk to dawn, running from a network of computers, displayed in randomized sequences.

Tiziou worked with videographers to record the ten-minute shoots, which will also be part of the montage. He directed the shoots, but was very much part of the action “doing a little dance, to get the best vantage points. Photography is something a camera does, doing my little dance to get the best vantage points.”

Even with video and other elements, “This is very much a photography project.” Tiziou said. “We are using video in this and stop motion, and animated sequences of stills. Taking the whole batch of pictures I would take – not just what might be considered the best ones – but all taken at high speed to get a sequence. I knew that those who aren’t used to performing on film, would be self conscious and artificial. But there will be one split second where you get their energy and essence of movement.”

The main challenge for the PIFA show are “Compositional restraints. Piecing out all of these bits of film and making them look right on the Kimmel wall. We‘re working with a canvas that is a boxy vertical one and the imagery started out horizontal, so it‘s tricky. There is a lot of tech to that has to make this a quick, hi-def process that will transfer.“ He also “didn’t want just the images to pop on like a light switch. It will start to fade in at dusk as the outside light go down.”

Tech details aside, Tiziou’s focus as a photographer is the community engagement. For the dance shoots Tiziou didn’t have much in the way of funding but relied on “calling in favors, asking friends to volunteer and getting spaces donated. With digital transition. You can make it more flexible, show the work right away, a public art practice that I started with the Live Arts Festival where I shot thousands of images, for instance, photographing not just the performers, but celebrating the community.”

The dance sessions represent that spirit as well as the uniqueness of his subjects. The photos for the exhibit represent all variety of dance styles and Tiziou‘s dance photos are known for their kinetic elements and he views each person’s physicality is as different as fingerprints. “The way someone moves a key to their expression as individuals. In fact, every single person walking by fascinates me as a photographer.”

~Hard to imagine a spring without Jan’s flowers, the ones that she grew on her land and the ones that came up naturally. She had a particular fondness for weeds and not only would photograph them, but try to figure out their hybrid. Of course, as much as she filmed the blooms above ground, she had equal interest in subterranean botanica — especially of the fungal variety. Trying to remember her joy in such things today in the buds and leaves that are starting to color in the trees on the streets of Philadelphia.  Biking past today’s new colors in Rittenhouse Sq. hinted at mauves and pinks and the promise of vibrant greens.

Gay lives

Farley Granger died at 85 this week. He bucked the studio system, insisting on good parts and when it came to living openly as a gay man, he refused to play into Hollywood’s antigay policies. A wonderful actor and unique star, he will be missed.

 In 2007 he was in Philly to receive an award from the Philadelphia International gay and lesbian film festival.  I had a chance to interview him and his partner Robert Calhoun for an Edge piece.

The following is part of that interview ~~

 

They would pause first, then finished each other’s sentences.

A beautifully romantic idea rarely seen in real life. But for screen legend and gay icon Farley Granger and writer Robert Calhoun, it is a description that would apply after 45 years together.

I met them when they came to Philadelphia where Granger was honored for cinematic artistic achievement at the 13th International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. The couple is also on a mini tour to promote Include Me Out, Granger’s bare bulb memoir co-written by Calhoun.

Looking a little dazed from travel, the men graciously recount many details of Granger’s life in films and on stage in the lounge of swank Hotel Sofitel, where they were preparing for a reception in their honor that evening at XIX Nineteen Caf�, the elegant penthouse restaurant at the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue Philadelphia. After receiving his award, the film festival continued to honor them with a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, the 1948 thriller that starred Granger as a gay killer modeled in Arthur Laurents’ screenplay after the real-life murderers Leopold and Loeb.

Calhoun immediately interjects as they sit down. “We did the book together and I’m inclined to more detailed memories.” It is Granger, though, who fills in the emotion and star power.

Granger was scouted at age 17 by a studio rep for movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn and appeared in the film North Star before going into the Navy. When Granger returned to Hollywood after his discharge, he refused to be controlled by the Orwellian studio system and backed away from it. How intrusive were they when he began his career in post WWII Hollywood?

“Very.” Granger said without hesitation

Calhoun: “Farley did the first two films for (influential producer) Lewis Milestone starting when he was 17. He did North Star and then at 20th The Purple Heart then he went into the Navy. When he got out he got back and went to see Lewis Milestone and then …”

Granger: “Milestone said ’Aaron Copland is in town doing the music for my film and he would love to see you again. Why don’t you call him?’ We had dinner at the famous James Wong Howe restaurant and Aaron came in and I was smoking a cigarette and we laughed about that … and we just giggled about everything really. I was saying things like ’what do you really think of Prokofiev?’ to him and making an ass of myself I’m sure. And we were just having a wonderful time. The next day I was called into Goldwyn’s office and told I’d been seen with Aaron Copland and that was very bad thing to do…” Calhoun: “because Copland ’was a known homosexual.’” they said.

Granger: “’I said, I don’t believe what you’re telling me …’ They said he’s gay and I said I know that and I said ’… it’s my life and I’ll see who I want to see, if you don’t like it, get rid of me. But I certainly will not give up Aaron Copland for you, being as stupid as you are and I walked out.’ I was furious.”

Calhoun: “That was 1948 in Goldwyn’s office and a vice president did most of the talking and Goldwyn said there imposingly silent behind his desk … But he (Granger) directed this to Goldwyn and said ’and furthermore I met him at your studio on a film you made called North Star.’”

Robert notes that Granger never expressed any fear or regret for how he handled them. It certainly didn’t hinder his career. “Goldwyn wanted to loan me out a lot of times to other studios because he only made one or two movies a year. He would loan me out and they were bad scripts. Ali Baba things that Tony Curtis did and I didn’t want to do them, so I said no.” Granger laughs when I ask him if they didn’t get rid of him because he was such a screen presence who was not only great looking but a naturally talented actor, and that they were afraid of him.

“Both probably.” he says with a wicked laugh….

Calhoun: “You’re not scary, but you’re not going to be pushed around. He also was not a part of the gay cliques that existed in Hollywood. The weekend swim parties at George Cukor’s house. Farley was not part of those groups. He chose to be with the New York/Metro musical crowd at Gene Kelly’s open house weekly. And musical people didn’t care who did what with whom. Farley found those parties so much more fun.”

Granger’s star was sealed as a leading man working with director Alfred Hitchcock on Strangers on a Train and Rope, both films with homosexual angles. In Rope, Granger and John Dahl play college age buddies who kill a fellow student for vicarious thrills. Rope was written by gay playwright/screenwriter Arthur Laurents (West Side Story and Gypsy), with whom Granger had a relationship. The meticulous Hitchcock never brought up the word homosexual, so ’it’ was never discussed, but the actors played it pretty straightforwardly as lovers.

On Strangers on a Train Calhoun said “It just sort of happened. They didn’t discuss it, but it’s so apparent that Robert Walker knew what he was doing … and Farley certainly was aware. It was interesting that it thread that very fine line of being acknowledged or acknowledged between the two of them.” Granger said that Walker was great to work with. “Hitchcock never brought up the word homosexual in either of the films,” Calhoun added, “which is odd because he obviously knew what he was doing.” Granger (with an ironic laugh): “Yes, he certainly did.” The actor also recalls taking tennis lessons from gay tennis great Bill Tilden at Charlie Chaplin’s house for his role as a tennis pro in ’Strangers.’ Granger invited his friend choreographer Jerome Robbins to dinner to meet Chaplin. “They came and they were wonderful and later that evening they ended up dancing together, which was just heaven to see.”

Granger bought out the remainder of his contract and was headed to New York to study and work in theater, his real dream. His agent told him that instead he had to make back the money he had just given back to Hollywood and should go to Italy to work with maverick gay Italian film director Luchino Visconti on a film called Senso.

Granger: “I didn’t know Visconti. My agent said that Goldwyn would let me out of the contract if I gave him all of my money. And I said sure I’ll do that. Then he said there’s this Italian movie and they wanted Ingrid Bergman and Brando, but they couldn’t do it. It was supposed to be very good. I loved Italy anyway, so I said ’Yes I’ll do it.’ We ended up living there.”

Granger was also in a famed, but ill-fated revival of The King and I co-starring Barbara Cook, who would become a lifelong friend. “Everyone wanted to take it to Broadway and Hammerstein said he and Richard Rogers would do it. But nothing happened.” Just as it was about to happen, there was an actor’s strike, and then Oscar Hammerstein died. Granger: “We were good. She was the best.”

Calhoun: “Barbara eventually sent us a copy of a letter that she had from Laurents writing to Rodgers saying how terrific he thought the show was. How much more impressed he was with the revival. Rodgers wrote back that, by far Farley and Barbara were superior than the original production on Broadway.” It was time to stop, but, like Barbara, I could have danced all night with Farley.

The couple was greeted by a full room of admirers at the Hyatt. Just desserts because Philly has special meaning for them: they fell in love and committed to each other on one of the saddest days in our nation’s history – the day President Kennedy was shot in 1963. “It was in Philadelphia that we really became a pair.” Calhoun said.