Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Tyrone Power A Centennial Celebration

Today would have been the 100th birthday of Tyrone Power. Power, one of the biggest box office draws of his day (in 1939, he was second only to Mickey Rooney), is remembered primarily for his swashbucklers and costume dramas, though he appeared in just about every genre.

He was a hero in real life, as well, serving as a Marine pilot in World War II, during which he flew in cargo and flew out the wounded during the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinanawa.

He was descended from a long line of distinguished actors, dating back to his great-grandfather (also named Tyrone Power), who was born in 1795. He was also related to Laurence Olivier and theatrical director Tyrone Guthrie.

In the 1950s, increasingly dissatisfied with the roles he was being offered, Power started to devote more time to the stage. Not wanting to completely alienate one of their most profitable stars, 20th Century Fox began to offer him more latitude in choosing his projects.

Sadly, Power died of a massive heart attack while shooting a duel with George Sanders in King Vidor’s “Solomon and Sheba” in 1958. He was 44 years old.

It was pretty standard during the Golden Age of Hollywood for actors to appear as just about any ethnicity. Though he himself was of Irish, English and French Huguenot ancestry, Power was cast as Hispanic or Latino on several occasions, most notably as the matador in “Blood and Sand” and of course as Don Diego Vega and his alter ego in “The Mark of Zorro.”

I don’t intend this as a backhanded salute to Cinco de Mayo – I am sure there must be justifiable ambivalence over the Spanish conquest of Latin America among a certain segment of the population – but here’s Power in all his glory, from “Captain from Castile” (1947).

“Captain from Castile” was filmed on location in Mexico and incorporates a real volcano in mid-eruption. The stirring music is by Alfred Newman.

Main title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqTNEssSe2M

The famous Conquest march: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXVWSAMq6aA

Theatrical trailer (not in Technicolor?!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB62g7-H8Kc

PHOTO: Power with Jean Peters

May 5, 2014
Mexican Music for Cinco de Mayo Weekend

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” it’s all Mexican music on the eve of Cinco de Mayo. We’ll hear a fun solfeggio piece (“Sol-fa de Pedro”) by the baroque composer Manuel de Zumaya. Zumaya, born in Mexico around 1678, is believed to have written the first opera in the western hemisphere. He became chapel master of Mexico City Cathedral in 1715.

Blas Galindo is best known in the United States for the evocative “Sones de Mariachi.” But he composed over 150 works, including seven ballets. One of these was “La Manda,” or “The Vow,” written in 1951. The scenario is a bit of downer, about an ailing wife on a pilgrimage who believes she is losing her husband to another woman, but the music is full of distinct nationalist character.

Manuel Ponce is one of Mexico’s most famous composers. He’s probably best recognized for his guitar music, thanks to his association with Andrés Segovia. Less frequently heard is his Violin Concerto of 1942. We’ll have the soloist who gave the work its premiere, Henryk Szeryng, in a recording made some forty years later.

Pour yourself a Corona, mix up some guacamole, and enjoy “Mayo My,” Mexican music for Cinco de Mayo, Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Thursday night at 11, or listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

May 4, 2014
Tchaikovsky’s Devilish Opera

Okay, so the Kentucky Derby is today. But I’m not here to write about that. I’m here to write about Tchaikovsky and the Devil.

Opera aficionado Sandy Steiglitz will be broadcasting Tchaikovsky’s “Cherevichki” (“The Slippers”), tomorrow on WPRB’s “Sunday Morning Opera with Sandy.”

Part fairy tale and part farce, Yakov Polansky’s libretto features such incidentals as the theft of the moon, amorous peasants secreting themselves in burlap sacks, and a ride through the air on the Devil’s back to collect the Tsarina’s slippers (hence, the title). All this takes place against the backdrop of a Ukrainian Christmas.

“Cherevichki” (sometimes spelled “Tcherevichki”) is Tchaikovsky’s reworking of an earlier opera, “Vakula the Smith,” which the composer believed unjustly ignored. Even in its revised form, the work is arguably more obscure than Rimsky-Korsakov’s neglected gem, “Christmas Eve,” which was drawn from the same source material (a story from Nikolai Gogol’s collection, “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka,” of which you will hear more on June 23, Saint John’s Eve).

Fun fact: there was a complicated rivalry between Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, each composer supportive of the other in public, while in private nagged by suspicion and envy. Though Tchaikovsky was sufficiently awed to swear his publisher to secrecy about his use of the then-new celesta in “The Nutcracker,” lest Rimsky steal his thunder, Rimsky had no qualms about following in Tchaikovsky’s footsteps when setting “Christmas Eve.” His version of the Gogol tale appeared ten years later, in 1895.

The only thing crazier than airing a Christmas opera in May is writing a Christmas opera about the devil. Needless to say, I can resist neither.

Check out “Cherevichki” on WPRB’s “Sunday Morning Opera with Sandy,” tomorrow at 6:45 a.m. ET. If you’re an early riser, tune in around 5:30. Sandy’s there spinning arias and duets at a time when the roosters are still wiping the sleep out of their eyes.

You can hear the show locally (Princeton, NJ) at 103.3 FM, or anywhere online at wprb.com. While you’re listening, visit her Facebook page – Sunday Morning Opera with Sandy – and leave nice comments.

PHOTO: Ivan Mozzhukhin in a silent film version of Gogol’s tale, “The Night Before Christmas” (1913)

May 3, 2014
Trenton Princeton Orchestral Weekend Brahms Abounds

No less than three orchestras descend on the Trenton-Princeton area this weekend. The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and the Princeton Symphony Orchestra will perform at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium (tonight at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m., respectively), and the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic will perform at the Trenton War Memorial’s Patriots Theater (tomorrow at 8 p.m.).

In this three-ring orchestral circus, the clown car is seemingly chock full of Brahms, as he and Beethoven appear on two of the three programs (NJSO & PSO). The NJCP will do their best to keep all the plates spinning with Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.”

Anthony McGill will unveil Richard Danielpour’s Clarinet Concerto, “From the Mountaintop” (NJSO); Aisha Dossumova will tread the highwire with two violin showpieces, Franz Waxman’s “Carmen Fantasy” and Saint-Saëns’ “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso” (NJCP); and Joseph Kalichstein, of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, will lend a touch of gravitas with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 (PSO).

Two of Brahms’ four symphonies, fully half of his symphonic output, will be performed on the Richardson concerts. You can read more about it in my articles in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/05/scheherazade_at_heart_of_new_j.html

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/05/2_orchestral_concerts_to_featu.html

May 2, 2014
Picaresque Novels on Film: Rogues & Road Trips

It’s May Day! This week on “Picture Perfect,” revel in some freewheeling lack of judgment, as we present an hour of films based on picaresque novels.

In case you weren’t an English major, picaresque novels are generally characterized by rogues or anti-heroes as protagonists; episodic, wayward structure; and not infrequently, lowly humor.

We’ll hear music from “The Reivers,” after William Faulkner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a coming-of-age story about a boy swept into automobile theft and illicit horseracing in the American south. Mark Rydell directed the 1969 film, which starred Steve McQueen as the rakish Boon Hogganbeck and featured narration by Burgess Meredith. John Williams wrote the breezy Americana score.

Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is frequently characterized as an American picaresque. It’s certainly one of the funniest of “serious” books. A middling film adaptation was made in 1960, directed by Michael Curtiz, with Tony Randall given top billing, shifting the focus of the story to the con artistry of the King and the Duke. It features an evocative score by Jerome Moross.

If Hervey Allen’s “Anthony Adverse” had any humor to begin with, it was definitely lost in translation. (Too bad the novel was written in English.) However, the 1936 screen adaptation certainly does sprawl. One could say it’s picaresque in the worst way. It just doesn’t go anywhere. It does, however, feature a top-notch cast (Frederic March, Olivia De Havilland, Claude Rains, etc.) and an Academy Award-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

While the modern picaresque novel had its roots in the Renaissance, the genre really seemed to hit its stride in the 18th century, with comic novelists like Henry Fielding. Fielding’s “Tom Jones,” perhaps the quintessential picaresque, was made into a film in 1963. It went on to win Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Tony Richardson), Best Adapted Screenplay (John Osborne) and Best Original Score (John Addison). Addison’s music suits Richardson’s quirky virtuosity like an off-kilter powdered wig.

Tune in for an hour of picaresque adventures, this Friday evening at 6 ET, or listen to it later as a webcast, at http://www.wwfm.org.

May 1, 2014

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS