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What better music to hear in bitter midwinter than the Benjamin Britten/Peter Pears’ opera adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Opera Philadelphia brings the US premiere of Robert Carsen’s famed 1991 production. Britten’s score as squirrelly as ever, but reined in with interpretive clarity by conductor Corrado Rovaris.

Composed in 1960 and immediate hit, Carsen’s surrealistic reimaging of Midsummer was first presented Aix-en-Provence, France with Michael Levine’s modernist vision of Shakespeare’s enchanted Arden turned first into an enormous green bed with a silvery moon hovering against a cobalt sky. A seductive playground for Puck to be as puckish as ever dashing flouncing around heating up everyone’s passions & arias with screwball mischief.

Oberon and Tytania, King and Queen of the forest faires are circling and arguing over an infant as the regimen of young chorister attendants, mustached and in green tailcoats swarm over the pillows and sing Shakespeare’s verse.

Oberon (countertenor Tim Mead) in a billowy green robe with matching hair and Tytania) Anna Christy fight over their child.  Then the magical night is set in motion as the forest sprites (Philadelphia Boy Choir ~Children chorus) in green tailcoats, scurry around in regimental configurations on the bed, in resplendent voices.

Oberon summons Puck to pluck the cupid’s flower and pair lovers up to his bidding.  But Puck scrambles the spells and the lovers are smitten by the wrong lover. Actor Miltos Yerolemou plays Puck with maniacal charm, as he waves the aphrodisiac lily around and causes lusty mayhem on Helena (Georgia Jarman), Lysander (Brenton Ryan), Hermia (Siena Licht Miller) and Demetrius (Johnathan McCullough)  and causes Tytania to be enamored by a donkey. 

Meanwhile, the Theatricals workers are staging a play about lovers being kept apart by a big wall among other plot devices, being kept apart by a wall (Shakespeare was often prophetic). Puck though turns the star Bottom (Matthew Rose) into a mule, or is it an ass? who cares, Tytania is under Puck’s wayward spell in the night falls in love with. Rose and Christy are vocally intoxicating in their bedroom romp.

The Rustic theater troupe puts on the play within the play and end up in old-timey skivvies in the same frame as the Royals are decked out in dazzling silver and gold organza palace couture that looks out of MGM movie studio circa 1939.

The 2nd Act curtain comes up on the four lover leads and Puck on three beds that hover in midair of the Academy of Music proscenium, against the cobalt sky the audience burst into applause.

Britten famously rushed to compose Midsummer, with his lover Peter Pears the librettist, all but six lines, are directly from Shakespeare’s text- some summarily disabused- but all serviceable for their purposes to premiere it at their opera festival.

Rovaris lit Britten’s intricate, modernist orchestra score and it has a sketchy, and even ponderous progressions and mise-en-scene. But, chunks of it, especially for the choristers and reflective arias of Oberon, Helen, Bottom, and a few others intoxicates.  And there are equally magical orchestral moments, the atmospheric chimera of the strings.  Among the outstanding principal players, 1st violin, harp, cello, harpsichord, horn.

The tight orchestra-libretto dynamic of Britten’s Billy Budd, for instance, is not achieved in Midsummer, but there are brilliant passages throughout. Pears’ libretto has some thorny passages, but many like the rapid-fire singspiel of the rehearsals of the play within the play by ‘the Rustics’ is virtuosic. Those hapless theatricals- Matthew Rose (Bottom), Miles Mykkanen (Flute), Brent Michael Smith (Quince), Patric Guetti (Snug)- make the most of it. 

 Emmanuelle Bastet was the revival director for Opera Philadelphia’s production and it is a physical comic soufflé, with the more engaging moments in the quieter scenes- Oberon’s regal pacing over the stage, for instance- the more manic moments, in this performance, scattered scene focus.  In the first act, the blocking mayhem also lent itself to vocal projection problems.  The Boy Choir swarms around with charming precision, but Matthew Bourne’s choreography is overdone with the principals, even anemic at key points, though Yerolemou had wonderful physical comedy moments and wowed the crowd when he dove off the edge of the stage into the first balcony box.

Baritone Johnathan McCullough and soprano Georgia Jarman play broad comedy, lots of mugging and pratfalls. Jarman goes from cloying stalker to sultry seductress, without letting the comedy get in the way of her stellar vocal prowess. Mezzo-soprano Siena Licht Miller’s Hermia and tenor Brenton Ryan dial it back and slay with charm if some erratic vocal moments. Bass-baritone Evan Hughs’ Theseus and mezzo Allyson McHardy’s Hippolyta deliver regally passionate vocal chemistry in the final scene.

ClassicalPhilly

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guitarists, musicians, Philadelphia Orchestra, Spanish music

Macelaru’s passionate Viva Espana!

The Philadelphia Orchestra

Verizon Hall, Philadelphia

Christan Macelaru, conductor

Los Angeles Guitar Quartet

Feb. 9, 2019

Before performing an encore, Los Angeles Guitar Quartet musician Bill Kanengiser, spoke of conductor Christan Macelaru’s artistic precision and passion he brings to Spanish repertoire. And those qualities were clearly present throughout as Maelaru led The Philadeldelphia Orchestra’s Viva Espana!  concert of works by Chabriel, Rodrigo, de Falla, and Ravel.  

Macelaru often introduces pieces to his audiences, but on this night, he skipped that and let the music speak for itself. Opening with
Emmanual Chabrier’s  España, which proved a rousing prologue, with traditional eternal Spanish folkloric themes.

Next, the captivating and profoundo musical dimensions of Joaquin Rodrigo’s  Concierto andaluz, for four guitars and orchestra. Its tempo de bolero opening movement, with its dancey central theme, played with esprit and inner drive. Rodrigo’s second movement Adagio, is so soulful and in this performance the LAGQ a dazzling showcase for their sublime technical artistry. The opening descending note passages by John Dearman then in dialogue with Bill Kanengiser, is transcendence in its earthy and ethereal musicality- suspending time, Rodrigo musically reflects on his life and the environs at gardens of an historic Renassaince palace in Granada,

The journey gives way to a more communal environ by Matt Greif and Scott Tennant in a lively town musicale scene expressed in orchestral riffs and a rousing roundelay of solo passages among the musicians. The quartet’s technical mastery is virtuosic and completely inside the music.  The concerto itself has the ambiance of a journey and the Adagio the musical soul of the piece, the final movement a fiery flamenco guitar finale.        

The foursome was applauded back to the stage for an encore, the Italian Tarantella by Chilean composer Horacio Salinas, which brought the house down again.  A rowdy crystalline rhythmic dazzler, interspersed with the musicians drumming the body of their instruments.

After intermission Macelaru delivered a most muscled performance of Manuel de Falla – El amor brujo, a sultry tone poem about a gypsy card reader who sees her future of love and evil spirits, musically expressed in folkloric ritual dances.  The pacing of this unpaused labyrinth of musical narrative about a gypsy card reader and the swirling furies of her life.

Ravel – Rapsodie espagnole Macelaru’s concert closer which the orchestra brought to its full atmospheric power.  Ravel was born 10 miles from the France-Spain border and his mother was Basque-Spanish. The musical sensual impact of Spanish nights, the symphonic bloom of Andalucian Fandango and Festiva. Macelaru’s detailing of the depth of sound dimension and inner rhythmic drive, that brings the full vision of Ravelean mystique. Among the many outstanding principals building that earthy musicality included associate concertmaster violinist Mark Rovetti, oboist Peter King, clarinet Ricardo Morales, cellist Hi Yi Ni, violist Choong-Jin Chang, 2nd chair principal violin Kimberly Fisher.  

BooksBooksBooks

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booksbooksbooks, poetry

Revisiting British poet Thom Gunn

Thom Gunn | New Selected Poems

Edited by Clive Wilmer

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

https://us.macmillan.com/fsg/

British poet Thom Gunn was recognized as a unique talent from his very first collection “Fighting Terms” which was published while he was still studying at Cambridge in the early 50s. Gunn bucked the poetry trends of the time of deconstructed free verse. He made his name as a contemporary classicist and avoided what Gunn referred to as “confessional” free verse of famous contemporaries Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and Robert Lowell, among others.

Even as he resisted “dramatizing” himself as so many other poets did in his era, he was, without doubt, a visceral poet who chronicled his life and times.

The full range of Gunn’s aesthetic is explored in- Thom Gunn – New Selected Poems, chosen by his lifelong friend and poet colleague Clive Wilmer who along with selecting the perfect poems that represent different aspects of Gunn’s best work, Wilmer writes an in-depth biographical essay and backstories of his creative journeys.

Gunn’s style was one of an ‘anonymous’ poetic auteur, closer to Elizabethan masters John Donne, Dante and Shakespeare. Gunn literary persona was reserved, objective and philosophical. A wry and compassionate observer, he used both naturalized meter and lyrical syntax and aspired to achieve clarity through “imagery and discourse.”   He grew up in England during WWII and Gunn later wrote that a key motif was that of a soldier.   

Gunn: “I was 16 at the end of WWII, so my visual landscape was full of soldiers. Of course, I became a soldier for two years  in the national service so that was another kind of soldier.”

Gunn would let long periods go by before he assembled a collection of poems he judged as worthy of publication.  Later in his career, Gunn also embraced free verse, but never abandoned structure and never repeated himself.  

It is apparent that obvious that Gunn was not living in some literary ivory tower, he was engaged with the world, and primarily the gay world as the main theme, less obliquely than other famous gay poets.

It was no accident that Gunn eventually met and befriended British expat Christopher Isherwood in California, along with becoming an intimate friend, Gunn admired Isherwood’s ‘transparency’ of his writing.

After falling in love with a handsome dramatic actor at school who was straight, they became friends and colleagues.  Gunn soon fell in love with Mike Kitay, who became his lover and lifelong companion even when they were no longer sex partners.   Gunn and Kitay left England to live the gay life in San Francisco.

“The Hug” a very private remembrance of sleeping with Mike Katay, couldn’t, in fact, be a more intimate self-portrait and completely universal in its impact.

He observes and documents life in San Francisco and the gay and straight street life.

“The Difference” is an equally intimate scene of a brief encounter with a trick, that is given equal philosophical importance. Especially in a time of grief, as his world was under attack from an unknown pathogen and a rabidly anti-gay government who did not care how many  GLBT Americans suffered or died.

Gunn never wrote with more craft, passion, and artistry as he responded to what was happening to his gay brothers during the AIDS epidemic. In the midst of the AIDS crisis, Gunn produced his most significant work.

Gunn became a writer warrior and his poetry in the AIDS era was the work of an ‘artist as a witness’ to his life and perilous times. He was among the earliest major writers to use their medium to report the impact of AIDS on gay America with his collection “The Man With Night Sweats.” These poems are among some of the most powerful literary work by gay writers documenting the personal loss and social impact on the gay community.

Gunn wrote many elegies for friends who had died of AIDS, of the impact of the epidemic in San Francisco. Gunn stated that he never felt that there was really a gay ‘community’ until he saw how GLBT people came together to help each other from the beginning of the epidemic, creating services to care for HIV/AIDS patients and grassroots support networks and AIDS activism. Wilmer writes that Gunn, from a literary standpoint, rose to the occasion and also produced the most powerful and well-crafted verse of his life.

Indeed, the poems and elegies written during this period are profound, well-crafted and most vitally exemplar of an artist as a witness to history. 

Poignantly, during the AIDS crisis, Gunn writes ‘The Gas-poker’ a poetic verite of his mother’s suicide, which took place when the poet was just 15.  He and his brother rushed to save her in a barricaded room, after they read her suicide note, tried to break down a door to get to her, but it was too late. 

His literary accolades include fellowships from the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Levinson Prize, the W.H. Smith Award, the Sara Teasdale Prize, et. al. Wilmer’s volume is a rediscovery of this gifted British poet whose work belongs in the pantheon of vital gay American literature.

Gunn, Wilmer reports, was also a beloved and respected professor at the University of California-Berkeley. Still, in the US Gunn enjoyed the academic or popular success he previously achieved in England.  This volume goes a long way in correcting that.