Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Poetry

Poetry in Motion on “Picture Perfect”

Time to sharpen your quill and replenish your laudanum. April is National Poetry Month. This week on “Picture Perfect,” the focus will be on poets at the movies.

We’ll hear music from “Dead Poets Society” (1989), Peter Weir’s beautiful-but-vacuous take on the transformative power of poetry, its “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” story arc made all the more poignant (and less cheap) by the passing of its beloved star, Robin Williams. Maurice Jarre, a long, long way from his Oscar-winning work on “Lawrence of Arabia,” wrote the music, which blends dulcimer and bagpipes (!) with electronics.

At least “Dead Poets Society” found a place in the hearts of the public. “Lady Caroline Lamb” (1973) did not. Sarah Miles plays Byron’s jilted lover, the wife of future prime minister William Lamb. Despite an impressive cast, which includes Jon Finch, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, and Richard Chamberlain (as Lord Byron, no less), and direction by venerable playwright and screenwriter Robert Bolt (“A Man for All Seasons”), the film received mixed reviews and tanked at the box office. The always fine Richard Rodney Bennett provided the atmospheric score.

“Il Postino” (1994) tells the story of a simple postman whose prosaic life is transformed through the power of metaphor. His model is the exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, played by Philippe Noiret. The film’s writer and star, Massimo Troisi, died of a heart attack twelve hours after shooting was completed, having postponed surgery until he finished work. He was 41 years-old. Argentinian-Italian composer Luis Bacalov’s bandoneon-tinged score was honored with an Academy Award for Best Music.

Finally, we put a point on things with the rapier wit of “Cyrano de Bergerac” (1950). José Ferrer struts his stuff as the warrior-poet with the prominent proboscis, who never wants for words, save in the presence of his beautiful cousin Roxane. Ferrer elocuted – and fenced – his way to an Academy Award for Best Actor. The score is one of Dimitri Tiomkin’s finest, and we’ll hear a recording taken from the film’s original elements, under the crisp direction of the composer.

It could be verse. Poetry warms the soul this week. It’s poetry in motion, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!

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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu

April 10, 2026
Music Poetry & Feeling Alive

I often think these things, but music makes me feel them.

e.e. cummings, and the comings and goings of back yard friends.

Happy Thanksgiving.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e. cummings
1894-1962

November 26, 2020
Princeton Festival Goes Virtual in 2020

COVID-19 may have put the kibosh on in-person events, but The Princeton Festival, like life, finds a way.

The June 2020 public performance season has been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. But in its place, the Festival has announced “Virtually Yours,” a free online series of live and recorded performances of instrumental and vocal music, musical theater, opera, and poetry, plus educational presentations, to be streamed every day, from June 1 to June 28.

“This online program maintains the high artistic quality Princeton Festival audiences have come to expect in a variety of genres, both classical and popular,” says Richard Tang Yuk, PF Executive and Artistic Director. “It includes totally new material prepared especially for us by leading artists, plus performances from our recorded archives. We’re confident audiences will find it to be an exciting and engaging series of events.”

Highlights of the “Virtually Yours” online festival will include the following (all times are EDT):

• Videos of four Festival opera productions, each streamed just once on Sundays at 1 pm. The operas are Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (June 7), Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (June 14), the acclaimed 2019 production of John Adams’s Nixon in China June 21), and Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman (June 28).

• A “Live Musical Theater Review” (Saturday, June 20, 8 pm).

• Broadcasts of 2019 Festival concerts by Concordia Chamber Players, Van Cliburn competition pianist Rachel Cheung, and the Princeton Festival Baroque Orchestra and Chorus, airing Fridays at 8 pm on WWFM – The Classical Network at 89.1 FM and http://www.wwfm.org.

• Videos of musical artists performing from their homes (various days).

• Latin band Fleur Seule on Saturday, June 13.

• A series of podcasts launched each Wednesday on such topics as “Women in Music” and “Costuming Operas and Musicals,” along with interviews with Shai Zohar, pianist, and Sylvia McNair, soprano.

• Twelve renowned poets from the U.S., Japan, and China, reading poems on the theme of women, in a compilation of videos made especially for the Festival. To be released on Monday, June 22.

• An Opera Workshop for people who want to learn more about the art form, starting Tuesday, June 9; and a Musical Workshop for aspiring singers beginning Monday June 15.

• Lectures by prominent experts: Professor Timothy Urban on “Why We Love Opera” (Thursday, June 4) and Professor Stacy Wolf on “Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theater across America” (Thursday, June 18).

A full roster of “Virtually Yours” events, with periodic updates to the schedule, may be viewed online at https://princetonfestival.org/virtually-yours/.

PHOTOS (counterclockwise from top): Richard Tang Yuk conducts the Princeton Festival Orchestra; pianist Rachel Cheung; Mark Delavan as “The Flying Dutchman;” and Allyson Briggs of Fleur Seule

May 19, 2020
Poe’s Ulalume Halloween Song

31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN (DAY 13)

In lonesome October, with its leaves crisped and sere, Edgar Allan Poe contemplates lost love.

Joseph Holbrooke’s “Ulalume”

The poem:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44889/to-ulalume-a-ballad

October 13, 2019
Whitman Mania on WWFM Classical Network

If you’ve a mania for Whitmaniana, you need look no further than WWFM The Classical Network.

Walt Whitman was born on this date in Huntingdon, New York, 200 years ago; he died in Camden, New Jersey, in 1892.

America’s national poet has inspired literally hundreds of musical responses. We’ll liven up your Friday afternoon with choral works, orchestral pieces, and songs. Join me at a special time, from 12 to 4 p.m., for a playlist of tributes to “the bard of democracy.”

On a related note, “Picture Perfect,” at 6 p.m., will offer music from movies about poetry and poets, including selections from “Dead Poets Society” (Maurice Jarre), “Lady Caroline Lamb” (Richard Rodney Bennett), “Il Postino” (Luis Bacalov), and “Cyrano de Bergerac” (Dimitri Tiomkin).

Poetry and movies will also inform an exciting live broadcast, tomorrow at 7:30 p.m., of Bernard Herrmann’s radio play, “Whitman.” Baritone William Sharp will assume the title role, with the PostClassical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez at Washington National Cathedral. The program will also include Herrmann’s Clarinet Quintet “Souvenirs de Voyage” and “Psycho: A Narrative for String Orchestra.”

In addition, some of our archived shows may be of interest. Check out our webcasts, including a four-part series devoted to Whitman on “The Lost Chord.”

Also, Rachel Katz spoke with Malcolm J. Merriweather, music director of The Dessoff Choirs, last Saturday on “A Tempo.” The Dessoff Choirs will present three world premieres of Whitman settings, as part of a Whitman Bicentennial Festival, tonight at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew in New York City. That show too has been archived.

To listen to the webcasts, go to wwfm.org. Click on “About Us,” then “Our Programs A-Z,” and then the individual shows, which are listed alphabetically. (“The Lost Chord” appears under the letter T.)

Or if you have the time and the patience to scroll through everything, simply click on “Classical” and then “Webcasts.”

Happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place, not for another hour but this hour!

Join us in sounding a barbaric yawp. It’s wall-to-wall Whitman, today from 12 to 4 p.m.; “Poetry in Motion” on “Picture Perfect,” Friday evening at 6; and Bernard Herrmann’s “Whitman,” with the PostClassical Ensemble, Saturday night at 7:30, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

May 31, 2019

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