Leonard Bernstein worked on Candide, his musical version of Voltaire’s novella, for many years, revising and adding to the score. Lyrics were contributed by such luminaries as Lilian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, Richard Wilbur and Stephen Sondheim. The new DVD from Deutsche Grammophon presents what was a famous video, of the concert version Bernstein conducted in London in 1989, the final year of his life. The cast is stellar — Jerry Hadley as the hero, Christa Ludwig as the Old Lady, the young Della Jones as Paquette, and Nicolai Gedda in a variety of small roles. Bernstein, as well as conducting, contributes spoken introductions and incidental comments.
Wonderful though Hadley always is, the most striking soloist here is June Anderson as Cunegonde. Candide is a sort of musical, much influenced by Gilbert and Sullivan, but Cunegonde’s Glitter and Be Gay (no pun intended) is pure opera. As for seeing Christa Ludwig, a great Wagnerian, dancing with castanets in I Am Easily Assimilated, to say it’s memorable is an understatement.
I wish it could be said that modern people didn’t need to be persuaded that official ideologies have to be disproved. Voltaire in Candide thought differently, and so did Bernstein, once considered a subversive by the US authorities. One of the virtues of this DVD is that the booklet tells you which librettist wrote the words to each number. West Side Story may be Bernstein’s most popular work, but Candide is his most intelligent.
Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele (1868, revised 1875) isn’t a well-known work today, but the 1989 San Francisco Opera production, new out on DVD from Well Go USA, is sensational. The first two scenes scour scenic motifs from Mexican Catholicism, Brazilian carnivals and Andalusian Good Fridays to produce a visual orgy of sensual piety. Invention then flags somewhat (though the Witches’ Sabbath is also fun) and the first scene is resurrected for the finale.
Boito wrote the librettos for Verdi’s last two operas, Otello and Falstaff, but he couldn’t write tunes the way Verdi so effortlessly could. Even so, the music of Mefistofele is satisfactory for dramatic purposes, and here it is given a compelling performance under conductor Maurizio Arena. The leading soloists are spectacular, especially Samuel Ramey in the title role. It’s rare to find a singer so strong, and also so striking as an actor. The San Francisco audience goes crazy over him, as well they might. But Dennis O’Neill as Faust and Gabriela Benackova as Marguerite and Helen are both wonderful too. This DVD is all in all a highly recommendable product.
Handel’s Julius Caesar is given an enormously enjoyable performance in the classic English National Opera production dating from 1984. At last available on DVD from Well Go, it could hardly be improved on. Good though the Italian-language Sydney Opera House production was [it was reviewed in Taipei Times December 22, 2005], this English-language one is better. The opera, incidentally, was performed in both languages in London in Handel’s lifetime.
Janet Baker leads the cast as a masterful Caesar, with Valerie Masterson as Cleopatra, Sarah Walker as Cornelia, Della Jones as Sextus, counter-tenor James Bowman as Ptolemy, and John Tomlinson as a menacing Achillas. Baker, already 52 when this video was made (though she looks 25), sustains her part magnificently. Her long aria How Silently, How Slyly, with its hunting imagery and solo horn accompaniment, is unendingly pleasing. In the central section the horn is replaced by tripping violins, if anything even more wonderfully, and just before the end voice and horn go off together on a sort of crazed private journey. This is the music I want to hear when I’m dying.
But Valerie Masterson is also superb as Cleopatra (disguised as the servant Lydia). On her aria Lamenting, Complaining Caesar is made to comment “Great Jove in his heaven has no melody to equal such peerless singing.” You can’t but agree — unless it’s Janet Baker’s own.
“No characters, no tunes,” said the poet W.H. Auden in dismissing Janacek’s operas. In one sense this is true, but the secret to enjoying them is to listen to the orchestra — it, not the vocal lines, contains the music’s beauty. Janacek anticipates Philip Glass (who also turned to opera) and, when given performances that balance spectacle, rhythm and brilliance of sound, his often bizarre creations readily spring to life.
Sexuality in nature is the theme of The Cunning Little Vixen (1924), and it’s consistently delightful in a 1995 production from the Theatre Musical de Paris — Chatelet. It’s child-like, but at the same time warns us all of the folly of ever completely growing up. Thomas Allen and Eva Jenis lead the cast, the majority of whom are young dancers. The pictorial quality is innocent, vivid and funny, like the comic-strip where Janacek first discovered his story. Guilt-free sex, including group sex, forms this production’s unexpected theme, especially in its dances. An anti-puritan belief in the innocent beauty of nature and life is the opera’s real message. Sex overcomes death, and life goes on for ever.
— BRADLEY WINTERTON
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby