West Side Story 2021

 

	1961	2021
Tony	Richard Beymer (voice:  Jimmy Bryant)	Ansel Elgort
Maria (Bernardo's sister)	Natalie Wood (voice:  Marni Nixon)	Rachel Zegler
Anita (Bernardo's girlfriend)	Rita Moreno (voice:  Betty Wand)	Ariana DeBose
Bernardo (head Shark)	George Chakiris	David Alvarez
Riff (head Jet)	Russ Tamblyn (voice:  Tucker Smith)	Mike Faist
Officer Krupke	William Bramley	Brian d'Arcy James
Lieutenant Schrank	Simon Oakland	Corey Stoll
Doc's shop keeper	Ned Glass as Doc	Rita Moreno as Valentina

These are comparative cast lists for the two movie versions of Bernstein's West Side Story.  The lyrics are by Sondheim.  All the main roles were dubbed in the 1961 movie while none were in the new one.  Voice:  means the name of the person who is actually singing.  I was fascinated to see Rita Moreno sang here but was dubbed in the earlier version.  Curious.  After all, Rita has a Grammy.

If you were paying attention, at the very beginning they are talking about urban renewal in that part of New York City and show a photo of Lincoln Center which opened in 1962.  The film showed street signs from that neighborhood.  So there was a slum there before it was torn down.  I liked all the old cars seen parked in the street.  This is my era, apparently.

I enjoyed this remake and found it very emotional.  The dancing was top quality and very professional, but the same cannot be said for the singing.  Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if the volume was turned up a bit.  The singing wasn't bad, just insignificant.  Live in the theater it would be louder because the cast would be chosen partly for their singing and then amplified. 

There was a lot of untranslated Spanish with quite a lot of "Speak English" remarks.  I only know tiny bits of Spanish.  The story was darker and more violent.

In my review of West Side Story at the Sacramento Music Circus I said, "The way the production looks is how the story is told.  One group runs quickly off the stage and is replaced by another.  'Who are these people?' is a question that should be instantly answered." It was at the Music Circus, but it was not here.  It was no easy trick to tell the two groups apart.  I found this a particular problem.

Tony loses his cool for a moment and changes everything.  This is the heart of the story.  One should see it again.  Don't miss this.  The young man who plays Tony is particularly beautiful.

Yannick Movie

 

I went to my local theater to see the movie from the Metropolitan Opera called Yannick: An Artist’s Journey, a new documentary from filmmaker Susan Froemke about Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met's new music director.  It shows his life in music throughout his whole life.  His childhood piano teacher is shown.  She's very proud.

I liked it very much.  They never forgot to show his love for music.  They showed a lot of rehearsal scenes, which for me is a joy.  They showed him rehearsing Diana Damrau in La Traviata and the whole cast in The Dialogues of the Carmelites.  This last was particularly enjoyable.  Try to see it.

Addendum.  It went by on the screen very quickly, but Yannick conducted as his Met debut the Carmen I loved so much.

Hamilton Disney+

Jonathan Groff - King George III
Daveed Diggs - Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson
Leslie Odom Jr. - Aaron Burr
Lin-Manuel Miranda - Alexander Hamilton
Phillipa Soo - Eliza Hamilton, wife of Hamilton
Renée Elise Goldsberry - Angelica Schuyler, sister of Eliza?

Christopher Jackson - George Washington

I am watching the Disney+ version of Hamilton, 2020.  This is not a movie of a musical like The King and I, but rather a movie of a live performance of the musical.  You are there.  The guys above are the USA founding fathers.  The guy on the left is Aaron Burr and next is Alexander Hamilton.  They are in their uniforms for the revolutionary war.  No wigs, and certainly no racial makeup.  Each actor looks like they would look on the street.

The plot runs from when Hamilton is studying law and runs through the duel where he dies.

Lin-Manuel Miranda both created this and plays the main character.  The content is astounding, but it goes by so fast that some plot points are lost.  My version doesn't include text.  The quality of the reproduction is excellent.  I have another copy but it's the usual too loud orchestra and fuzzy diction.  The Disney+ version is much better.

I can see the attraction.  It may be the most American thing that ever existed.  It's an opera because there's almost no talking.  Constant singing is opera.  Rap replaces recitative.  I don't know if I will ever feel the urge to see it again, but if you are American, you will need this.  I don't know what other people make of it.

Burr knows he will be remembered only as the man who killed Alexander Hamilton.

Gauguin Portraits from London

The film about portraits by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) in my local movie theater came in two parts.   The portraits in the exhibition were used to illustrate a biography which also included a few photographs.  The above picture, a self portrait, was compared to Christ on the Mount of Olives. 

Gauguin was born in Paris but lived for several years in Peru with his Peruvian mother.  Who knew?  He also married a Danish woman, had four children, and abandoned her.  He lived in Arles for a short time with Vincent van Gogh.  It may have been his fault that Vincent cut off his ear.  As a young person, Gauguin's paintings look pretty conventional.  He argued with Vincent but was very much influenced by him.

I tried to compare this historical context with my idea that you should just look at the paintings and let them form an idea in your mind.  Gauguin may provide a possibility because the pictures only vaguely represent reality.  It is what they look like, not what they represent that matters.  He is not painting reality, and it is important to realize that.  Photographs show that Tahiti was forever changed by Christian missionaries by the time Gauguin arrived there.  He had to die before he became famous.

The second half showed the exhibit at the National Gallery in London with commentary by artists and art critics. 

Cats the Movie

Jennifer Hudson ... Grizabella
Judi Dench ... Old Deuteronomy
Taylor Swift ... Bombalurina

In spite the terrible reviews I went to the movie Cats, a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.  It starts very slow, but ends nicely.  Judi Dench is her usual glorious self.  I got the plot for the first time.  The only thing that I absolutely hated was they have the excellent Jennifer Hudson to sing Memories, and they make her croon it except for one brief loud section.  Just remind yourself that it's Cats.

The people who are complaining seem to be people who have never been to the opera. 

Pavarotti Movie

Last night there was a Fathom Event that featured Ron Howard's new movie about Luciano Pavarotti.  This was irresistible, so I went.  I arrived early and got to read through interesting events in Pavarotti's life.

For me the most fun was trying to identify people in the photographs who were not identified with captions or remarks.  The only thing said about Mirella Freni was that she and Luciano had shared a wet nurse as babies.  However, her picture appeared several times.  I only remember Joan Sutherland mentioned for her contribution to his career.  She taught him how to breathe.  He mentioned that he felt her diaphragm working.  This is a normal part of vocal training. I was also amused by brief remarks by Vittorio Grigolo describing how a tenor sound is an artificial, deliberately created sound.  Any tenor needs to train with someone who understands this.

Early parts of the movie concerned themselves with the early parts of Luciano's operatic career.  The San Francisco Opera is never mentioned, though he sang there many times and learned many new roles with the professional coaches there.  After the Three Tenors concert in Rome in 1990, which I now recognize to have taken place in the Baths of Caracalla, he came to us no more.

There are quite a lot of interviews with his family, though the precise meaning of these only develops gradually.  It is handled carefully.  Luciano was very friendly and outgoing, made friends easily, including Princess Diana.

Then it moves into discussing his career as Pavarotti and Friends, something that does not particularly interest me.  He made lots of money.  My main complaint is there is a lot of talking and a lot less singing.

The movie ended with his spectacular performance in the Three Tenors Concert of Puccini's "Nessum dorma."  The best singing in the film.  Your curiosity will be fully satisfied, and there are lots of other sources for Luciano singing.

The Opera House

The Opera House is officially a movie about building the new Metropolitan Opera in Lincoln Center.  Unofficially it is about the youth of Leontyne Price.  She's the best part.




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Jonas at La Scala

I attended the Fathom Event of Jonas Kaufmann's Puccini recital at La Scala.  It was lovely, of course, but he was so flattered that they loved him, he kept doing encore after encore.  When he finally sang something not by Puccini, I went home.  He was looking exhausted. The emotional intensity of the film was greater than on the recording.

Here's the program:

Giacomo Puccini (1858 - 1924) Preludio sinfonico A - dur

Le Villi Ecco la casa ... Torna ai felici dì – Prelude and La Tregenda

Edgar Orgia, chimera dall’occhio vitreo – Edgar Prelude to Act III

Manon Lescaut Donna non vidi mai Intermezzo Ah! guai a chi la tocca! ... No! pazzo son! Guardate!

Tosca  E lucevan le stelle – Prelude to Act III

Madama Butterfly  Intermezzo

La Fanciulla del West  Una parola sola! ... Or son seimesi

Suor Angelica  Intermezzo

Turandot  Nessun dorma

Encores:

Tosca Recondit Armonia
La Fanciulla del West  Mi creda libero
Non ti scordar di me
etc.
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Winter's Tale

At the end of November I watched at the movies Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale simulcast from London, starring Judi Dench.

This resulted in an argument with a friend, who admittedly spends a lot more time with Shakespeare than I do.  I said Judi brought a statue back to life of the long dead queen for the happy ending.  I liked this idea because it reminded me of Pygmalion.

Friend said that the queen was only pretending to be dead.  I thought about this and decided that Judi tells the king that he should let her suggest someone he could marry.  This could mean she knows the queen is still alive.

She looked like a real statue who hadn't aged a day, so the argument could go either way.

Cumberbatch Hamlet

It was fun to see Hamlet simulcast from the Barbican in London.  This is the version starring Benedict Cumberbatch.  It was very much like a modern opera production with contemporary clothing and furniture.  At one point Hamlet wears a Bowie t-shirt.  When Hamlet is speaking only to us, the other actors freeze in place while Hamlet speaks.

The strongest feature of this production is the intense energy of Benedict Cumberbatch.  He is on stage for the whole first half.  The other actors displayed a wide variety of accents, something I have not experienced for Shakespeare.  Stage English is the standard.  Did this intend to illustrate class in the characters, or was it just a coincidence?

It starts with chandeliers and celebrations and moves through madness and accidental murder to a scene of utter devastation and ruin with dead bodies strewn about the stage.

One of my favorite bits:  Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are standing with the queen and king.  King says to left person, Goodbye Rosenkrantz and then to right person, Goodbye Guildenstern.  Queen then comes up to these same two guys and says to the left person, Goodbye Guildenstern, and then to the right person, Goodbye Rosenkrantz.  When was Hamlet supposed to be funny?

It was fast paced and enjoyable.

Die Dreigroschenoper

Apologies.  The film I was reviewing has been removed from YouTube.  Perhaps you can find it elsewhere.

After seeing The Beggars' Opera at a local college, I became interested in its related work, Die Dreigroschenoper or The Three Penny Opera.  Now look what I found--The 1931 movie of Die Dreigroschenoper, which until this moment I had not known existed.

Rudolf Forster as Mackie Messer
Carola Neher as Polly
Reinhold Schünzel as Tiger-Brown
Fritz Rasp as Peachum
Valeska Gert as Frau Peachum
Lotte Lenya as Jenny

Kurt Weill's Three Penny Opera, 1928, appeared 200 years after The Beggar's Opera, 1728, and has basically the same plot.  The words are by Bertolt Brecht.

I watched this film on my big screen tv and found it to be charming. The most famous Weill singer of all time, Lotte Lenya, plays Jenny, the prostitute girl friend who sings Jenny's song.  Lenya is not quite beautiful enough to be a movie star.  If you can't make it through the whole movie, which has surprisingly few songs, here is a sample.



I find that I also love this, the song sung by Polly at her wedding, called Barbara Song.



All ends happily. While Mackie is in jail, Polly buys a bank to take on actual power and raise bail for Mackie. Mackie escapes from jail, allowing them to keep the bail money. Mackie has chosen well in his spur of the moment wedding.  Everyone makes up.

This is a treasure which I am pleased to have added to my life experience.  The English subtitles in the full movie are rather bad.  I kept wondering what a "queer coronation" might be but finally realized they meant queen.

Strange footnotes.  Neher died in a Stalin prison camp, betrayed by Brecht.  Lenya, according to IMDB, is most famous for her appearance in From Russia with Love.

Die Dreigroschenoper was written at about the same time as Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, 1930. Both works combine the gifts of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill and have a leftist political purpose. These were not their only collaborations, but they are the most famous ones.

Three Penny Opera is a bit easier to understand as a political instrument.  Members of the lower classes band together to take advantage of their position in the world.  One kills and steals.  Another trains pickpockets and beggars to optimize their take.  They band together to demonstrate against the new queen, a sour looking individual who covers her face rather than look at them.  Eventually they notice that their interests coincide, and they band together.  This is a strong statement for the lower class.  You know--workers of the world unite.

Mahagonny has always confused me.  Three fugitives from the law found a city where anything goes.  It would seem that in Brecht logic criminals are the good guys.  Mahagonny is sort of like Las Vegas.  They are wildly successful but break down into factions and collapse in poverty.  I can only imagine that Mahagonny represents capitalism.

If I read my sources correctly, Weill was Jewish and Brecht was not.  Weill left Germany before Hitler came to power, but Brecht waited until after.  They parted ways around the time of the filming of the Dreigroschenoper movie.  Weill's later works are not particularly socialist at all.

I don't always understand the relationship between the works I am experiencing in the Weill/Brecht partnership and the politics they are supposed to inform, but I do very much enjoy the roughness and down to earth quality of the style they inhabit.  Perhaps I shouldn't try so hard.

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The Woman in Gold

I remember that I went to New York when the Klimt paintings went on display at the Neue Gallerie after the legal settlement.  It was wonderful to see them up close.

So it is only fair that I should see the Woman in Gold movie.  I liked it much more than I thought I would.  It was a beautiful and emotional film.  Helen Mirren is the best.

I tend to feel that art belongs to everyone and should be on display, and that wasn't the point of view of the movie.  They made it clear that if the museum owners had behaved respectfully at any point she might have decided differently.  I feel myself that being treated with respect is what matters most.

She plays a song on her victrola, and I was pleased to recognize Schubert's "Du bist die Ruh."  And at the wedding he sings "Deh Vieni a la finestra" from Don Giovanni.

I must add--the most amazing thing about this movie is that they found a German speaking actress who looked exactly like Adela Bloch-Bauer.
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Into the Woods

I was going around the circle at Curves the other day, and the attendant was complaining about the new movie Into the Woods.  For her it had two endings:  the expected fairytale ending and the second dark one.  She also was surprised that there were musical numbers.  I tried to explain that this was a film adaptation of a classic musical comedy by Stephen Sondheim.  Who?

There has been a wide range of reactions to this film.  I imagine the range would depend on whether you had ever seen it as a musical.  It was done live here in Sacramento a couple of years ago, so nothing really surprised me when I saw it today.  I thought as film adaptations go, this one was excellent.

How could you want a better witch than Meryl Streep?  Or a better wolf than Johnny Depp?  I was especially impressed with the diction.  Every one of Sondheim's words could be clearly understood.  I think the movie's flaws are the musical's flaws.  I think Sondheim couldn't bear to write a fairytale ending.

Anything can happen in the woods.

P.S.  I've never really been a fan of Sondheim, except as a lyricist.  His first big project was writing the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957), possibly the best of all American musicals.  These are truly great songs. Sondheim, it seems, thinks they're too poetic.

He's been very busy since then.  He's done a lot of shows that I've never seen, and people seem to like to sing his songs.  But a string of songs by Sondheim generally makes me cringe.  I can only tolerate Judi Dench singing "Bring in the Clowns," for instance.

Early in the blog I wrote:  "While I was in London, I tried to see Sunday in the Park with George, mainly because I've never seen a Stephen Sondheim musical. Unless Sweeney Todd is Sondheim."  I went on to say,  "Sondheim is short choppy phrases of three to six syllables with tunes played on the black keys. All the tunes sound exactly the same. How does he do that? Perhaps it's a minimalist musical."

But then I kind of liked Sunday in the Park with George when I saw it on Broadway.  Still no hit tunes, but I kind of liked the content.  With Sondheim it's more words over music.  Ideas over execution.

And then this year came the marvelous Sweeney Todd at Lincoln Center with Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson, a truly great event.  Their gigantic personalities raised it above itself.

I can only shrug.  He's too significant to simply ignore, but musically he never grabs me. I'm now going to retire Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd.  Enough.
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Gatsby Movie

I was constantly distracted throughout Luhrmann's movie The Great Gatsby by the almost silent character golfer Jordan Baker, played by Elizabeth Debicki. She dresses the set so amazingly one hardly remembers one is supposed to be fascinated with Daisy.



In the movie everything is explained, something that was not true of the opera I reviewed here.  The story is about old money vs new money.  Gatsby imagines it's just about money, that if he has it, he has Daisy.  My house is as big as yours, and I have glitter and celebrities.  I think he realizes he isn't going to win before he sacrifices all for Daisy.

The only controversy that surrounds the film concerns the soundtrack.  He chose a rapper, Jay-Z, to provide music instead of traditional jazz.  I noticed a bit of Rapsody in Blue, but that was it.  In the opera they distinguished sharply between ambient music, music that is supposed to exist in the period, and background music.  I stopped caring when it served only as standard movie music.  I guess it bothers you only if you know.  It is not possible to not know once you know.

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Quartet

As an older woman who once sang in Rigoletto, I thought Quartet was the movie for me.  The action takes place in a home for retired musicians called Beecham House.  They have fallen on hard times and want to hold a gala on Verdi's birthday to raise money.

There were many familiar faces on the screen--including Maggie Smith the newcomer, Billy Connolly who can no longer censor anything he says, Michael Gambon, etc.--but none of them were more familiar than the great Dame Gwyneth Jones.  She appeared in many of the scenes and allowed herself to be insulted by the actors.  She even sang parts of "Vissi d'arte" in the gala, the only real singing besides the trio singing "Three little maids from school."  Throughout the film she was treated with a subtle deference.

When it came time to actually hear the quartet from Rigoletto, it was Paravotti, et.al. while still in their prime.  The movie reminded me a little of Tosca's Kiss.

Old age is not for sissies.

I've decided to include a copy of the quartet from Rigoletto that I like.



And while we're at it, here is Dame Gwyneth in Der Rosenkavalier.  Octavian is Brigitte Fassbaender.


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Les Miz

I knew when I went to the Les Miserables movie that they were all recorded singing right on the set.  What they didn't say was that they all tried to hide this from whoever else might be on the set with them, that they all whispered their way through their parts.  I hate that.  Sound as crappy as you want, but belt it out there.  I got some ugly looks when I said the only person trying to actually sing was Russell Crowe.  His voice isn't very pretty, but at least he was trying.  I kept wishing Susan Boyle would come on and do "I dreamed a dream."  [Guilty secret.]

Helena Bonham Carter and Sasha Baron Cohen were fun.

One of my Facebook friends said she wanted to rush home and brush her teeth.  If you haven't seen the movie, you won't get this.
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Anna Karenina

I went to see the new movie Anna Karenina starring Keira Knightley as Anna, Jude Law as Karenin, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the beautiful Count Vronsky.  The acting is outstanding.

If you go to the opera, this movie will seem pretty normal to you.  If you don't, well what can I say.  Much of the filming takes place inside an old theater.  Remind you of anything?  Like last summer's Atilla where each act was in a different falling down theater.  At least in the movie there wasn't another movie playing in the background.  And the Met's The Tempest was similarly staged inside of a theater instead of on an island.

The back of the theater would open and suddenly you would be outdoors somewhere, always a different place each time.  Like the end of Giulio Cesare in Salzburg.

There is some pretty peculiar looking waltzing, trains and horse racing that ran through the theater.  I haven't seen horse racing in an opera.  Yet.  I read somewhere that many of the images were from paintings.  I felt right at home.

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To Rome with Love

I went to see Woody Allen's To Rome with Love for the pictures.  I wanted to see if I could recognize where they were.  I would sit eating my popcorn and think "This is the Piazza del Popolo, and in that church there are Caravaggios.  And now they are actually on one of those rooftop patios that are just below the Pincio.  I'm jealous.  And this is the lake in the Giardino Borghese."  It is photographed with much love.  Only the Pantheon is missing.  In fact he under-represents all of the Roman stuff.  Perhaps this is a personal bias.

The plot is very chaotic.  Roberto Benigni becomes suddenly a celebrity and then suddenly not.  His chauffeur says celebrity is better.  I am doubtful.  There are endless jokes about people asking directions.  They are in the Piazza Venezia and wish to know how to find the Fontana di Trevi.  The intended lesson is that you can't get there from here.

Penélope Cruz is channeling Sophia Loren as a prostitute and doing a fine job of it.

The Woody Allen character is a retired opera producer.  He finds that his host, an undertaker by profession, sings in the shower and has a wonderful voice.  Woody tries to get him work singing, but he can only sing in the shower.  Does Eurotrash include people singing in the shower?  I wonder.  When it came time for Pagliacci to stab someone, he would walk over to the shower and get stabbed. 

The undertaker is played by Fabio Armiliato, an actual opera singer.  He's even sung at the Met.  I can't help wondering if Fabio Armiliato is any relation to Marco Armiliato, the conductor. 

I once told an Italian woman I knew who had married an American and moved here, "You know, they are having more fun."

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The Great Caruso

The Caruso family successfully sued MGM over the contents of the movie The Great Caruso.  I don't know enough to know what they would be suing about, but I do know that it's a charming movie.

Obviously Mario Lanza came into this life in order to make this film.  He was born the same year Caruso died and died young like his mentor.  He has a charming smile and manner, and he sings all the arias required for the role.  The singing is very nice.  His most frequent singing partner is played by soprano Dorothy Kirsten.

His death at 38 means he survived only the childhood of an opera singer.  He did not handle fame well and is often paired with Karen Carpenter in the short list of great singers who died young.

I was very much interested in the portrayal of the great tenor Jean de Reszke (1850-1925) in this film. There was a small overlap in the New York careers of the two tenors, with de Reszke retiring in 1904 just as Caruso was beginning. In the movie they were made to seem rivals of sorts, whereas in reality Caruso sang almost exclusively Italian repertoire while de Reszke sang primarily Wagner, Gounod and Meyerbeer. Was he the last great Meyerbeer tenor? The disappearance of Mayerbeer from the repertoire is something that interests me.

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Nine

I finally got around to seeing Nine, the musical that is sort of an homage to Federico Fellini. The Felliniesque hero has a life, quarrels with his wife and several other women, attempts to make a movie, drives around in a small car to various parts of southern Italy, the whole while fantasizing a musical. The break between reality and fantasy is the homage to Fellini's 8 1/2.

I always love anything filmed in Italy. The on location filming is amazing. I liked the look of the movie with its attempt to capture the look of an Italian 1960s film. It was wonderful to see Sophia Loren who played the hero's mother, though she is beginning to look fragile. I loved Judi Dench singing about the Folie Bergere with her fake French accent. Penelope Cruz is good in anything.

It misses on a couple of fronts. Except for Sophia, these people are simply not Italian. Scantily clad women littered around the set was very Italian, but the actors simply are not. They try. But they don't succeed. Daniel Day Lewis came closest.

The other flaw is that the music is very boring.
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