papeetepatrick

He is probably as good an example as has ever existed of a great film actor being also a great man. I always knew that Newman's Own Salad Dressing went to charity, but somehow I'd missed that it was for the children's cancer camps. Really one of the most exemplary of all philanthropists. As far as the film work, he was certainly a major star. I was not a big fan except for certain films--he's perfection in 'Sweet Bird of Youth' and I also love 'Paris Blues' with him and Joanne. I wish I'd seen him do 'Our Town' in 2002--that's a unique play, and he could do it sincerely if anyone could. I'd be interested to hear if anyone saw it, and wonder if compares favorably to the old film with Martha Scott and William Holden, which is in a class of its own.

Live: Makarova No. 1 in one sense and Melissa Hayden No. 1 in Balanchine version in another sense. I'm not going to choose, so I really should have put them in alphabetical order. On tape: Mezentseva.

Probably, it's Iannis Xennakis, one of the high modernist composers who used Stochastics, combinative calculus, to compose. I once attended a NYPhilharmonic concert in which one of his works was being done, and there was this one blonde violinist who kept looking embarassed about the piece--she clearly hated it, and almost felt like one of the average ears in the audience. I like some of the work myself, there are two huge virtuoso piano pieces, Herma and Evryali, and he sometimes did sound for installations as at the late 50s Brussels World's Fair, and it is always very good, but it is not an easily accessible sound. Xennakis is not really music for ballet, would be more likely to be found in modern dance, but I'd like to see the Balanchine piece.

No! There are NO other ways. The 32 fouettes are lodged in my brain and I'm going to leave them there. Basically, I also feel that way about the balances, and want them . With all this new technique from gymnastic types 'ruining ballet', the least we can expect is new specimens who are 'good at the balances and radiance' in brand new brave-new-world wonderful ways! Maybe the problem is ballerinas not knowing how to do the 'seductive glitter PLUS the 32' and the 'radiance PLUS balances', because there is no dearth of athletic ballerinas able to execute the difficult technical feats. It's like in opera, Kathleen--there are NOT any Maria Callases anymore, and we ought to figure out why this is, not, say, why bel canto florid writing ought to be simplified. In other words, the problem is not a scarcity of fouette- and balance-doers, it is a scarcity of radiance- and seductive-glitter doers. More FIRE and passion, not less ridiculous technical demands! Now, I originally voted that I didn't care either way, but I have changed my mind, and think all Auroras must strive to do radiance PLUS all the balances. I realize this vote change causes a difficulty for Diebold Voting Machine vote-fixing and hanging chads, but there it is...

Oh, what a lovely continuation of an already beautiful autumn day, Hans! (I hope it's nice there too). Not that I watched it on the clip yet, but this gives me the right to watch the regal Sizova movement yet again. Or anyway, I'm going to look at it that way. I'm not going to watch the clip because now I'm going to get the movie out and watch it again and enjoy the aniticipation within the context of the whole movie. Oh, what license and indulgence--yes, I always like what you say about Sizova, and when I first saw the movie I'd never seen a more enchanting ballerina. And I still haven't. But now I get to watch the whole thing again because I must see these regal movements in context...it would simply be unseemly any other way...

I wondered if it's the costume too, because this is the only time I've ever seen Fonteyn look downright chunky. It's wonderful, but since this has been singled out from the rest of the context of the ballet as the feat that it is, I wonder if anyone has ever seem the arm really move calmly, i.e., I agree Fonteyn's doesn't seem at all grasping or desperate, but it does still move quite rapidly. I know this sounds a bit too much 'sports' to talk about it like this, but there might be other (and even lesser artists, of course) ballerinas who have managed to get the balances and let the arm float down a bit more relaxedly still; I can see it having a very wonderful imperious quality to it if it worked. I'm not sure I've ever seen that, but somebody must have; and to be able to do so would, I would think, completely remove all sense that there is some thought of the difficulty going on. What I really don't like is a ballerina who snatches the roses earlier, and that's not difficult not to do, because the best don't.

I think I have seen this, even though not every guy's hand, and that gives the artificial quality--something like a test she's got to pass.

Oh, she's powerful. This time it ran better, only stopping about 8 times, but that left plenty of time to experience it anyway. There were two times I actually got tears in my eyes, and I just wanted to go outside by now and not watch anything at all. And this happened without my even trying to pay much attention. And part of it is their perfectly-matched bodies, not only their artistry but the look it gets because their limbs are so much alike that visually it is a very special thing. As much as I love Corella and Ferri, I love Corella a bit better as the ultimate Romeo, and perhaps admire the lyricism of Ferri's dancing. My favourite Juliet I've seen live is Susan Jaffe, but--I can't remember who the Romeo was... But Dowell and Kirkland are like the bodies a painter (can you think of some painters they remind you of? I think I can) might have chosen for a particular look--they are almost like twin brother and sister almost. Oh, this is just so beautiful. And thanks for all that info, carbro, and also about the anorexia when she did the Swanilda. I knew there had to be something wrong even from just the little seconds I'd seen from the R & J this morning. It looks more like the kind of thing one associates with determination after retirement, you don't see much that we think of with someone known to be prodigious technically, as Kirkland so truly is.

I am truly sorry I somehow never saw Kirkland live. This bloody R & J YouTube keeps starting and stopping, although the 3 seconds I get do look exquisite, reminds me a bit of Alessandra Ferri, but I could only get so far with the stopping and starting. I may look up some of the others, but was distinctly not enraptured by her Coppelia Variation (although that YouTube worked fine). It hasn't any spark of happiness that I can see, and looks dispirited and with little energy. Much different from Cojocaru's clip which I watched just afterward. Although neither reminded me of what I remember Patricia McBride to have brought to this role. Did Balanchine make this ballet for McBride?

Yes, I take Coppelia seriously, and find it one of my favourite ballets--easily. Loved the Balanchine with McBride, and never anything quite so much since, but there's a good DVD of the POB production I saw recently. Interesting discussions of the mechanical reproduction, and the 'robot' instead of the 'dream women', but that's an 'element of magic' (thought not tragedy), surely. Also important is the difficulty of comedy, and I agree with Alexandra that it tells us just as much as tragedy about the human condition (and anything else, for that matter, if there is any), because how could that be different from theater? High comedy is accessible only to a select few, nothing easy about it, although I don't think this applies to contemporary movies at all, where comedy is an extension of TV sitcoms or jokey stuff, not comedy in the old traditional sense of theater. These matters of comedy are not like Joan Rivers and Comedy Store types. I like all these ideas, which have enhanced my understanding of Coppelia, although not my enjoyment probably, because I was just fine enjoying it without thinking about it too much. And the score definitely makes it preferable to me to anything set to Minkus. I like it better than Raymonda too, which has nice music, but Glazunov is better in short doses, in which it sounds elegant; an evening full of Glazunov runs into a sense of banality and it gets boring. I can easily see a one-act ballet of Glazunov pleasing me more. But the word for Coppelia is mainly 'delicious.'

Well, I'll admit, that happens to be exactly what I was thinking about mostly too, or at least Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. I don't think I've ever even seen Nutcracker at ABT, though. Which is not to say that the new work might not shake out the fossilization problem people talk about.

That's my gut reaction to it, because I think NYCB is mostly about past greatness, to which there is no way to realistically return fully except for glimmers here and there, and that there is more freedom and potential at ABT. And people reported other developments, like Makarova coaching the corps this past season. With the kind of stars it has, ABT could with this addition become the greatest company in the world, for a few years at least. It's definitely going to make me want to plan to go next spring and summer. When you hear this kind of thing, it sounds like ABT will likely become more than something 'that will do' since we don't have the Kirov that often, etc. Could be very exciting, the combination of new works and warhorses.

I think this is good too, and reminds me of young girls doing something along the lines of Saunders and French--and they're both really cute in it here.

I guess Leigh really is good in this, but that I had expected to like the film far more than I did. Various kinds of period things I think I'm going to like sometimes end up seeming much less than I expect, like 'They Drive by Night', with Ida Lupino's weird part (which impressed enough to get her a studio contract, although Ann Sheridan does the better acting, IMO), and 'The Spiral Staircase', which seem so rudimentary after Fritz Lang pictures, so tightly and rigorously plotted, of the same period (like 'You and Me', 'You only Live Once', 'The Return of Frank James', 'Hangmen Also Die', and 'Fury', which is even earlier--some of these are likely underrated.) But then there'll be some extremely dated things I'm very moved by, no matter how corny, like 'Sergeant York', for which Coop won one of his Oscars. 'Love Affair', with Boyer and Dunne, is very dated as well, and I think it's wonderful. That's not underrated, I think, though, and was nominated for major Oscars. At any rate, it's light-years better than the remake with Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant, even though they're themselves troupers and do the best they can with pulp that's no longer of any use.

It is not at all obvious that she understands the part very well, since she conveys none of it in her acting (which is supposed to be where she'd prove this understanding, given that she was not a literary scholar), only a conventional middle-class woman, without even quite the sensibility of a bluestocking. Of course, the maternal is absent as noted, even though she had had a child and Garbo hadn't. Many actors are 'difficult', probably most. I don't think it is even an important issue. In any case, many people consider alcoholism a mental illness, it's obviously not purely physical. What some of these discussions are about is simply that people have different tastes in films, and it is not as defined in how you can judge it as are the classical arts like ballet and opera, which cannot be done by amateurs. Many of the greatest movie stars had no 'training' in the sense of years and years of hard, repetitive work. Gary Cooper for one, Marlene Dietrich for another, Robert Mitchum and Clark Gable two more, and I don't even think Claudette Colbert took all that many acting classes, Ava Gardner, etc.... Davis and Garbo did have some real formal training. Some of them just started working on stage and in films in bit parts, or were born into theater or vaudeville families, or just learned how to do it as 'on-the-job training'. Things have changed, but the early years, including the silents with great actresses like Lillian Gish were not working in the academies toward these goals the way they are now. And some of the greatest stage stars were self-taught, Edith Evans being the best possible example.

I left the above since people were reading it, even though I realized it was wrong in terms of Leigh's 'proximity of discipline', regarding rock music and opera as opposed to sports. I was stuck in Ms. Barton's basically undisciplined approach to whatever. Anyway, I'm not sure, even though there are rock operas, that most rock music and opera are any closer than opera and sports. But I know that there are major differences in critical writing for rock, jazz and classical music. Classical criticism is still more formal, but there's still a lot of jazzy new stuff, sort of PoMo-affect, that repudiates modernism in just as 'fun' a way as Ms. Barton does. Also don't know that even if you call rock music music and one legitimate realm of music, that it is ever, including its criticism, referred to as a 'discipline', even though many of the best practitioners in that field are disciplined artists. Maybe so, but it begins to seem like some lines of demarcation oughtn't to have been let to disappear quite as much as they have, as it all starts mixing into some mulligan stew.

'Proximity of discipline definitely had everything to do with it. The discipline would knock out the turf issue, and classically-trained people definitely are more intellectual as a group than rock music people. That doesn't mean they are greater artists, but that they are used to think in more lucid ways than people who go to all the rock concerts--this is a big exciting messy emotional thing. And while going to a ballet or opera isn't going to attract nothing but thinking people (anybody can see that), they do understand certain rules and regulations, e.g., people may 'BOO!!' opera singers off the stage, but they don't ever stampede people to death as at some rock festivals. She had the very attitude of non-discipline--all sports stars would have much discipline too, but as for sportswriters, not necessarily more either, unless they had had to work very hard to become great tennis players, etc. Just look at TV sportscasters and you're not going to find very many intellectuals, but on the other hand, you may well (and often do) find some who are very affable, and not trying to prove how smart-ass they are. I know plenty of rock writers who don't have such an absurd attitude about the classical arts. Furthermore, many rock writers write about jazz--that's where all the Voice's pazz/jop stuff comes from. And people like Gary Giddins have always been able to write intelligently about whatever music he chooses to write about, even though his encyclopedic knowledge is jazz. Actually, the interesting question is can Ms. Barton, in her endless cheap-sensation-seeking, write about pop and rock music? I am sure that I would not think she can do that either, and that she would think she wrote even more profoundly about that than she did about opera. There's a long tradition of rock writers which is very anti-intellectual, and you can find that going back to Greg Tate writing about rock and black music in the Voice in the 70s, riffin' all over the place and talkin' about politics and social problems the whole time. There's a whole genre of that kind of pop and jazz writing. This type does not ever observe any of the academic social conventions of any kind of formal writing, so it comes across as this sort of expressionistic thing. The least Ms. Barton could have done is say 'I don't get it', instead she more or less implies 'opera lovers don't get it' and there is no way that they love their roughage. Yes--not only do I want cheap rose, but I want to drink all my wine straight from the bottle--it's so much more REAL that way. I agree with Mashinka--moronic and brain-dead.

Leigh--that is an excellent group of little vignettes, and since you didn't mention the others--about other sports figures on Louise Bourgeois at the Pompidou Center, pianists like Bronfman and the Finnish Saarinen, I thought I'd just say that they all went in with an open mind, and this many more than Castaignede's by itself sets out Barton's sullen piece in great relief. Her piece should have been thrown out and never published, as the point was not to give a greater insight into class warfare and people somehow wearing their lack of discipline as a badge. It's informative about a serious loss of standards though, and this is the kind of thing that should have just appeared as, say, a blog entry on her own blog. It's the kind of thing for which people should be fired. And hers was an attitude cultivated as well--in all 4 or 5 of the sports vignettes, you saw people of good will and with an open mind who wanted to look at someone else's worlds, secure in their own. Anyway, read all the others too., as they are all something Ms. Barton ought to learn from--not least that the football and golf writers gave reasons why they couldn't fully (or in the case of the dance, appreciate very much at all) appreciate Brahms and Saarinen--but these did not have the tone of people who thought they were somehow writing authoritatively about something of which they were very aware that they knew little. Brat writing should just be on the blogs.

If there is one thing those Glyndebourne toffs don’t do, it’s speak ungrammatical English. The only people that would speak that poorly would be……now let me think ………..Guardian rock chicks! Frankly I don’t think anyone said anything of the kind, indeed I put it to you, members of the jury, that pretty much all of this piece was fabricated and the people that Ms Barton found herself rubbing shoulders with at the opera were probably rather nice, but that wouldn’t fit in with the piece she intended to write, so she invented incidents that would illustrate her own noxious prejudices. There's be some 'Glyndebourne toffs' young enough to occasionally use pop-language, which would be said ''That's sooooooo not Glyndebourne' and you hear everywhere sleazily by now. With the attitude of low-cool chic Ms. Barton was exuding from every pore, I don't see why this is an ugly incident, except it's not so much ungrammatical as just trendy talk (incidentally, it's also possible that this 'toff' knew what s/he was doing, and was parodying this kind of talk and pegging Ms. Barton). I agree though, that it's unlikely that anyone would have even said 'That's just not what we want at Glyndebourne', or other versions. But not impossible, of course; toffs say sharp things, and in this case I just think it was well-earned. Her attitude is repulsive, she was making no serious effort to enter in something that should have been the objective of someone new to opera. The article is successful as a document of her failure to enter into opera, while always holding up proletarian symbols self-righteously. Yes, that was the killer remark, the cool paean to junk food always included. God forbid someone should do anything that they 'ought to', by the way, even though opera for those of us totally involved with it is hardly something enforced. You fell asleep by the telly, which I might do too, but right now I am writing about this bimbo while listening to Flagstad's 1937 recording with Fritz Reiner of Der Fliegende Hollander, and it is not impossible that there are other things I should be doing instead! There is nothing I'd rather hear than Flagstad pre-war. I am not very concerned if I love this 'instinctively', or 'learned how to like it' due to too much education or somthing or other. Like very much the use of the word 'fatuous' for this, because it's a word she'd use (if she uses it) for all the opera buffs were she to have tea with them. But yes, it is a fatuous piec. And some of these repeat only a single one of these for an entire song, which never occurs in Figaro. I heard something by The Dresden Dolls which is mostly one tritone arpeggio with diminished triad combined with a a dminished 7th chord an octave higher. Then there are all those drone pieces that are becoming more and more popular and more and more morbid. I also like this: "to see Dido and Aeneas by Purcell, and Samson by Handel. Buxton is a gorgeous place and the crowd far less annoying. I have been listening to Madame Butterfly repeatedly, to accustom myself to the style of singing. It seems to be paying off: I enjoy Dido and Aeneas far more than I expect. Samson, though, is a struggle." I think we deserve a titter at her expense, since she's so 'cool-superior' to all this pretentious, over-produced thing. So I think I will listen to the old Mexico City version of 'Aida' with Callas/DelMonaco to accustom myself to a production of Schoenberg's 'Moses and Aaron' I'll be seeing soon. That way I'll accustom myself to the style of singing.

It's not offensive in terms of opinion, Sandy, it's a stupid feature, as sidwich and others pointed out 'a bizarre journalistic assignment.' It is not interesting, because it only exposes her ignorance; it does not tell you anything about opera itself. And it's not the same as if a classically-oriented opera person, etc., went to hip-hop or grunge: They'd be able to point out what they heard and describe it accurately. She can't and she doesn't. When she says 'I can see that it is beautiful', she cannot really. If I could see hip-hop is beautiful, it would do something for me, and one of the filthiest of all, Dr. Dre, has sometimes moved me musically because of his talent, and I don't mind the obscene words even if I don't want to dwell on them. She does not see any importance in history or tradition in any sense, otherwise she wouldn't ask idiotic things like 'why do they keep repeating themselves' in 'Figaro.' She leaves out all importance in learning about difficult things. An adventurer trained in classical music and opera who was given an assignment to write about rap and hip-hop would know how to blend in as much as possible, if only because that would be necessary in some of those venues for safety. What would have been a feature worth publishing would have been a rock fan who was open to the new experience and not some brat who they should have known to begin with was just going to write from a reverse-condescending point of view. She was even paid for this crap, I guess. That she has those opinions is not offensive, since they are common ones in every sense of the word. But that it would be published in a journal like the Guardian is somewhat offensive, because it is not professional. It does point out that high and low art still have quite a divide, and that democracy in terms of judgment may not apply. Mashinka calls it anti-culture, which may not quite work since you're stuck with the 'culture' in 'pop culture', but it is definitely anti-intellectual--and that's where the classical musician exploring pop and rock has something over someone like this who makes it sound like she was displaying some sort of largesse to the worlds of classical music and opera.

Of course not, it's just a feature assigned to someone precisely because of her near-illiteracy, but at least this happened: "There is one exception: the woman who glares at us as the photographer takes my picture on the lawn. "That's so not Glyndebourne!" she hisses. " That is the kind of haughtiness that becomes necessary for this kind of urchin, who only wanted to 'soil' things. So cool she had been, and how boring and unimaginative. Her attempts to be 'magnanimous' to some of the works, as opposed to the obviously tedious ones were especially trying. How wonderful that we can be privy to her connoisseurship of opera and cheap beer. This sort of reverse noblesse oblige she's managed to sustain throughout the whole hideous little gig. May she please read my review of her.

The Palais Garnier is on one of the France Arte Architectures films, which are all brilliant, and done from about 2000=2005. All of the history is there, including what suggested the 'lake' in 'Phantom', but it also mentioned the huge size of the stage. I've been there two or three times but not for many years. It was either the largest in Europe at the time, or one of them. So I was wondering if this set is a smaller rendering of the Palais Garnier stage. I remember this concentration on stage rather than auditorium size, because also in the series is a film about the Auditorium Building in Chicago, which went the opposite direction, with much more emphasis on the auditorium than the stage. This would go along with national differences --Chicago certainly had no wicked area for adventurers and voyeurs in what was supposed to be a rehearsal area, and the emphasis on democracy in a certain sense is not going to be as readily found in Paris (no box seats at first, etc., then they weren't especially well-located)--but as an opera house, Paris turns out to have been vindicated, even if it was threatened in more recent years (the Chicago house survived, but is mainly just a venue by now as theater, and was much used by rock groups in the 60s and 70s. Roosevelt University otherwise) So would there have been this much crowding of kitschy sylphs on the real stage of the Palais Garnier as there is on this replica, or is it much smaller?

Is that cool or what? I'd love to see that. Even the 'Intolerance' sets got the ax after a couple of years.l

Yes, it is very kitschy and kind of fruity maybe . Some sort of forms of Les Sylphides that aren't very steeped in tradition. Reminds me a bit of some Mussolini-period kitsch I saw, but can't remember the name of.

I thought that instantly, but without any but the most rudimentary reasons for doing so. But find the photo wonderful--lush, voluptuous, old. There's the painted set, too, isn't there? It made me think of Italy for just as elementary a reason. I can't quite make out the podium features; it looks like these 2 tusks are sticking out of it.