Farrell Fan

She was excellent. In today's New York Times, the reviewer Anthony Tommasini wrote: "In her City Opera debut, the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato as Sister Helen sang impressively and conveyed both the character's inner doubts and quiet strengths." He praised all the singers and the production. But he didn't care much for the opera. Where I heard suggestions of Italian verismo, he said "Echoes of Barber, Copland, Gershwin and especially Bernstein are too close to the surface. The vernacular music Mr. Heggie composes is quite tame, like the gospel tune that Sister Helen teaches the children at Hope House, the school she runs. Stronger composers evoke vernacular song and dance by adding some contemporary twists of their own." Of the end of the opera, Tommasini writes, "In the death chamber De Rocher is hooked up to the drugs that will kill him in total silence. Then we hear just the ticks of his heartbeat, and the flat line when he dies. Sister Helen, unaccompanied, sings a refrain of the gospel song. Lights out. The idea, clearly, was that at this moment music would add nothing. But it comes across as if he had no idea of what else to do." He concludes his review, "Opera is a form of theater that has always been driven by music. However appealing, Mr. Heggie's music is just not strong enough to take on this complex story." I don't agree, and Tommasini is very fair in pointing out that "As at the premiere, the audience responded with an enthusiastic standing ovation."

This work had its premiere two years ago in San Francisco and has subsequently been performed by Opera Pacific and Cincinnati Opera. Last night it came to New York City Opera. There was a time not long ago when new operas were atonal, scarcely singable, and generally unlistenable. That time is mostly gone. To me, Dead Man Walking sounded like turn-of-the-20th-century verismo. Jake Heggie, the composer, seems a musical relative of Giordano and Zandonai. The Lord's Prayer which accompanies Joe De Rocher's "last mile" made me think of the Te Deum in the first act of Puccini's Tosca. The opera derives from the book and movie of the same name. It takes a somewhat different approach to the material. I didn't read Sister Helen Prejean's book, but the very-good movie amounted to an impassioned plea against capital punishment. By contrast, the opera's principal theme is forgiveness. Can Joe find forgiveness? The parents of the two teenagers he brutally murdered can't forgive him. Can Sister Helen? Can God? Can Joe forgive himself? The libretto is by Terence McNally, the well-known playwright and Opera Quiz panelist. The program notes credit him with inventing an episode in which Helen and Joe share youthful memories of Elvis Presley (to an appropriate musical accompaniment). "McNally wanted to find a moment in which Joe could manage to view Helen not as a nun, but simply as a fellow human being--and a friend," says the program. I found the moment gratuitous and unbelievable. I also found the southern accents of the cast, particularly Joe's, very annoying. At times Dead Man Walking sounded like a performance of Porgy and Bess. Accents aside, the cast was uniformly excellent -- Joyce DiDonato as Sister Helen, John Packard as Joe, Sheryl Woods as Joe's mother, Adina Aaron as Helen's friend, Sister Rose. The conductor was John DeMain. Packard not only sang well, he performed an extraordinary number of pushups. After the gruesome murders of the opening scene, the next scene featured a rousing, gospel-type number at the school where Helen taught. Later on, there was a real operatic sextet, with Helen, Joe's mother, and the four parents of the victims. It looked like everyone involved in the production came out for bows after the performance, including, of course, Heggie and McNally. The audience applauded long and lustily.

Well, it's not exactly pulling a curtain open or closed, but I love the moment toward the end of Balanchine's Midsummer Night's Dream when Puck begins to sweep the stage. This is just before he incurs the "extraordinary risk" (see thread by that name) of being lifted into the celestial regions.

Thanks for posting this, Ed. I would have missed the broadcast otherwise, and the Verdi Requiem is among my favorite pieces of music. I didn't hear Bill Moyers' opening remarks, so I still don't know who the conductor was. Whoever he was, he led a careful, correct, restrained performance. I could have done with more wild anger in the Dies Irae, and more passion throughout. Sam Ramey was the best of the singers by far. It was rather strange that there was no audience. I wonder what the thinking was behind that decision. At any rate, any chance to hear the Verdi Requiem is not to be missed. It provided a fitting conclusion to a solemn day. Thanks again.

rg is correct about Peter Martins' gala farewell, partnering Farrell, at the 1,000th performance of Balanchine's Nutcracker. The date was Dec. 6, 1983. But neither of Martins' great predecessors, Villella and d'Amboise, had gala farewells. Villella's last performance in particular was as un-gala as you can get. On November 14, 198l, he performed Afternoon of a Faun and Apollo with Heather Watts, stepping in for Gelsey Kirkland, at the University of Iowa. (No offense to Iowa.) Both Martins and Villella came back to dance after their supposed "farewells" -- Martins with Farrell in Sophisticated Lady in 1988 (and again the following year at HER farewell), and Villella in Watermill at NYCB in 1990. I think I remember Ib Andersen having a gala NYCB farewell, and perhaps Adam Luders, as well. I hope others remember more clearly. At any rate, yes, definitely -- male dancers should have gala farewells.

Thank you both, Morris Neighbor and Estelle, for the enlightening comments and for the charming personal story, Estelle.

Yes, on both counts. In the film Elusive Muse, there's an interesting section of Farrell staging Tzigane at the POB with Isabelle Guerin. It was the first ballet (1975) Balanchine choreographed for Farrell following her return to NYCB. The next year he did Chaconne for her. That's also on this year's program.

Magnicaballi did do it in October of 1999, but I didn't see it, because I was having a quadruple bypass at the time. A thoughtful friend sent me the program. Before there was a Suzanne Farrell Ballet, during "Suzanne Farrell Stages Balanchine"at the Kennedy Center in 1995, Tzigane was danced by both Maria Calegari and Helene Alexopoulos.

You make a good point, Doris R, about the members of the Farrell company. And, as Alexandra has indicated, many of them have danced with Farrell for years. As for 2003, it promises to be the longest season so far. Suzanne is happy about being able to offer her dancers more work, and looks forward to still longer seasons in the future.

My understanding is no tour this year. In 2003, there will be a six-week tour in October/November, followed by performances at the Kennedy Center in early December. The company is now under the aegis of Columbia Artists Management.

With all due respect to my friend Bobbi, whose opinions I value, I don't see what's so terrible about that photo. It seems a natural progression from the kind of photos NYCB has been using in recent years -- Peter Boal at the Unisphere in Flushing Meadow, Helene Alexopoulos at the parachute jump in Coney Island, Albert Evans nuzzling Janie Taylor at Grant's Tomb, Kyra Nichols in New York Harbor with, alas, the World Trade Center in the background, and on and on. (True, in those photos, the dancers wore recognizable costumes.) This is a photo on a rooftop with the Empire State Building in the background, and seems part of a continuing attempt to identify NYCB with New York City landmarks. The appearance of the dancers harks back to some photos by Arthur Elgort in the 1980 NYCB souvenir book. There were several group shots of corps dancers and soloists in that, including one in which Stacy Caddell and Darla Hoover were sprawled on a grand piano. Personally, I bemoan the fact that NYCB ever got away from using performance photos exclusively -- although there are many of Paul Kolnik's shots inside the brochure in question. But what I really hated was when they banished the old NYCB logo of Orpheus's lyre by Isamu Noguchi, thereby denying their heritage. in favor of an upside-down pyramid and generic lyre. If I'd had access to Ballet Alert when that happened, there would have been a whole lot of bleeping going on. Excuse the digression.

I love opera...but I have my doubts about a 300-pound ballet dancer.

One hopes that what will not survive are directors like this. For example, whatever became of that operatic "bad boy" of an earlier time, Peter Sellars?

In the book "Tributes," there's an essay by Robert A. Caro, which ends: "When the curtain rises on a ballet, I frequently take off my glasses. Therefore, I can still see what's happening, of course, but the colors and the movements become a little hazy. The lines of the corps and the soloists swirling among the lines become more like pure patterns to me -- captivating patterns. I am lost more than ever in that world onstage -- that wonderful world." I consider Caro's sentiments borderline-idiotic, but I bring them up because from where I sit in the New York State Theater (First or Second Ring) or the Metropolitan Opera House (Dress Circle), I cannot make out the dancers' faces. And I only take off my glasses when I go to bed at night. If I wish to discern a facial expession or have a closer look at some steps, I must look through my opera glasses. I can state truthfully that, without opera glasses, all dancers look beautiful to me.

I used circumlocution in my post, because I knew our moderators would bleep out the word -- and rightly so. (I notice they bleeped a word from Bobsey.) I agree that PBS is not the same as HBO and I'm glad of it. Although I enjoy both The Sopranos and Sex and the City on HBO, the profanity has a numbing effect. Especially in the case of The Sopranos, I think it definitely detracts from the dramatic impact of some episodes. But having made a commitment to show "Contact," I think the PBS powers-that-be should have realized they'd be harming the effectiveness of the "Did You Move?" sketch with their bleeping. But I don't want to make a big bleeping deal of it.

I thought the final performance of Susan Stroman's "Contact" looked quite good on "Live from Lincoln Center." (I had seen the show in the theater and liked it enormously.) When the TV broadcast was announced, I wondered how the dialogue in the second sketch would be handled by PBS, since the most basic of all four-letter words, in its adjectival and adverbial forms, is used in it repeatedly. I ended up thinking they'd probably go with it. I was wrong. They bleeped it every time, including at crucial moments. Thereby the illusion of being at a live theater event was destroyed and we were reminded we were watching television -- the medium of Jerry Springer. I think "Contact" is strong enough that it overcame the bleeping; nevertheless, I think it was the wrong decision. What do others think?

The Nutcracker commercial sounds charming. I hope to see it sometime. In the last year or so, Suki Schorer has become an advertising star. She has been seen (but not identified) in various TV commercials and print ads for Fosamax, a prescription medication said to reverse the effects of osteoporosis. The setting is a ballet class. In "real life," Suki, of course, is a great teacher at SAB. Before that she had a distinguished career with NYCB. In the early ads and commercials, she wore a dreamy, meditative expression, even while offering corrections to her students. More recently, she delivered a tasteful sales pitch on one of the commercials. In the latest print ad I saw, she's apparently enjoying something funny that's just happened and has a beaming, wonderfully animated smile. So the ever-perky Suki is coming through.

Was "Writing in the Dark" a collection gathered from her earlier collections -- "Afterimages" (1977), "Going to the Dance" (1982), and "Sight Lines" (1987) -- or did it involve new writings? As for her Balanchine book, I've been looking forward to it for nearly twenty years now.

Thanks, dirac, for posting the original, exceedingly weird, list, and Tancos for supplying a necessary antidote. Really -- no less than a dozen pop singer/rockers on a list of all-time great Britons! And reclaiming Alexander Graham Bell and Tom Paine as Brits! The BBC list is particularly deficient in theater and dance -- no Olivier, no Geilgud, no Frederick Ashton. But, like all such lists, it's fun to contemplate and wring one's hands.

BW. telos is actually a Greek word meaning the end or ultimate object -- something like that. It's not in my vocabulary, but I was quoting from the press release about William Forsythe leaving Ballett Frankfurt that was posted in the News & Events forum. It's an awful piece of pretentious gibberish, but as Alexandra has noted, perhaps it was translated from the German. Maybe by a Greek.

What with mobilizing for a great future, executing agendas, and the appointment of a Director of Strategic Initiatives, ABT would seem to have joined the Department of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld. It's obvious nobody at ABT will be free to follow his personal and particular telos as William Forsythe will be doing now. It's been a bad day for the English language in the world of ballet.

I did see this and found it an unusually pleasant commercial. Thanks, Alexandra, for pointing out the dance connotations. At the other extreme, there was one some time back showing parents driving up to fetch their children from school. One harried woman is running in traffic, carless, as two girls emerge from the building. "That your mom?" one asks. The other mulls it over for a while and then says, "Nah." I found this ashamed-of-your-mother attitude extremely unpleasant. I've forgotten what they were selling.

According to the "Blue Bible" (Choreography by George Balanchine: A Catalogue of Works), the solo version of Variations had its premiere on July 2, 1982. The accompanying note reads:"The premiere of this ballet intended for the Stravinsky Centennial Celebration took place two weeks after its official close. Balanchine had first choreographed a solo for Suzanne Farrell to this music as the final section of his 1966 work for the New York City Ballet, in which the music was played three times. The 1982 work was entirely rechoreographed. This is the last ballet choreographed by Balanchine." The other day I went to the website of Florida State University, where Farrell is Artist in Residence, and found that Anthony Morgan (choreographer of A Farewell to Music) is a member of the faculty there. I learned from his bio that he is originally from Canada and danced with numerous modern companies including Martha Graham and Pearl Lang. He had his own group in New York, the Anthony Morgan Dance Company, from 1985 to 1992. At the FSU dance department, he is listed as teaching "Contemporary, Choreography and Composition, Dance Appreciation."

Thanks for the clarification, Kay Denmark. I agree with everything you say about Albert Evans. Incidentally, in addition to the African-Americans, there's another corps gentleman of color -- Amar Ramasar -- who is someone to watch. I hope his career develops as it should.

If the implication of "Ask Albert Evans" is that he is the only African-American in the company, that's not correct. I think that at present NYCB has five African-American men and one woman. But I too wish Edward Liang would come back. He is a very talented dancer.