After 400 years, the Bard continues to provide some great shakes. Two Shakespeare-related works will be served up in the Princeton area over the course of the next week.
Tonight at 8 p.m., the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra will unveil Darryl Kubian’s “O for a Muse of Fire” (which takes its title from the Prologue to “Henry V”), as part of a concert to be held at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium. Also on the program will be Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” with pianist Serhiy Savlov, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 “Pathètique.”
Though written two hundred years after Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” Bellini’s opera, “I Capuleti e i Montecchi” (“The Capulets and the Monatgues”), had a kind of parallel genesis, bypassing the Bard to draw from the same Italian Renaissance sources. Westminster Opera Theatre will perform the work next Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., at the Bart Luedeke Center, Rider University, in Lawrenceville.
Find out more in my article in today’s Trenton Times:
“Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves, when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.”
Okay, as a lover of all things Christmas, I’m confused. What day of Christmas is it anyway?
I know it’s Epiphany, but isn’t it supposed to be the Twelfth Day of Christmas, as well? Did I miss my Twelfth Night revel? Was I supposed to start counting on Christmas Day, or the day after? My certainty of Christmas lore is shaken.
According to what I glean from Wikipedia (which is never wrong), nobody quite knows the correct answer – or they think they do and that everyone else is full of s***.
I’d better put on my yellow stockings and cross garters just in case.
New Jersey Symphony Orchestra music director Jacques Lacombe promises to transform the winter of our discontent to glorious summer, with a great deal more than the lascivious pleasing of a lute. The orchestra will embark on a three-week musical exploration of Shakespeare-inspired works, January 9-25, including an appearance at Princeton’s Richardson Auditorium, on January 16, and two performances at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, on January 10 & 25.
Violinist Sarah Chang will appear in all six venues that will be hosting the series (including NJPAC in Newark, bergenPAC in Englewood, the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, and the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown), playing a suite by David Newman from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story.” “West Side Story,” obviously, is a musical update of “Romeo and Juliet.”
Also on the series will be such favorites as Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture” and selections from Prokofiev’s ballet on the same subject, but also concert rarities such as Elgar’s “Falstaff,” Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s suite from “Much Ado About Nothing,” Sergei Taneyev’s completion of Tchaikovsky’s love duet from a projected opera on “Romeo and Juliet,” and selections from Samuel Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra.”
For more information, check out my article in today’s Trenton Times:
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
We continue our celebration of the 450th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare on “Picture Perfect” this week, with music from film adaptations made by Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh. The two overlapped on a handful of the Shakespeare plays, including “Henry V” and “Hamlet.” William Walton was Olivier’s house composer, and Patrick Doyle provides the scores for Branagh.
Walton and Olivier collaborated on three big projects, with Olivier as actor, director and usually producer – “Henry V” (1944), “Hamlet” (1948) and “Richard III” (1955). Earlier, in 1936, Walton scored a film version of “As You Like It.” Olivier didn’t direct this one, but rather appeared in one of the leads as the lovesick Orlando. In the role of Rosalind was the more unconventional choice of Austrian actress Elisabeth Bergner, who had played the role on stage. Her husband, Paul Czinner, directed. The film exudes great charm, and Walton’s music is as close to springtime as it gets.
Branagh is today’s foremost popularizer of the Bard. His turn as actor and director in “Henry V” (1989) boldly placed him toe-to-toe with Olivier. Amazingly – and deservedly – comparisons were not unfavorable. Branagh’s performance was nominated for an Academy Award. (Olivier, too, had been nominated, and received a special award for his “Outstanding achievement as actor, producer and director in bringing ‘Henry V’ to the screen”). However, by the time Branagh came to direct his version of “As You Like It” (2006), a number of factors had changed.
Following “Henry V,” things continued promisingly with a crowd-pleasing romp, “Much Ado About Nothing” (1993). But then Branagh mounted an unabridged, four-hour film adaptation of “Hamlet” (1996), laden with crazy cameos from Jack Lemmon (bad) to Charlton Heston (amazingly good), followed by a headscratch-inducing, American Songbook-laden “Love’s Labours Lost” (2000), which was universally panned. It certainly didn’t help Shakespeare’s clout in the eyes of distributors.
“As You Like It” received theatrical showings overseas, but was shown in America only on HBO. In Branagh’s version, the forest of Arden is transferred to 19th century Japan. There, English traders encounter ample kimonos, kabuki theatre, ninjas and a sumo wrestler. As always, Doyle provides a score that is lyrical and lovely.
It’s instructive to view the two directors’ takes on “Henry V” in the context of the times in which they were filmed. When Olivier brought Harry the King to the big screen, England was in throes of the Second World War and his “Henry” bubbles over with patriotic zeal.
Branagh, on the other hand, offers a darker, post-Vietnam “Henry,” with his charismatic, ambitious king plunging his country into a war that is both costly and messy. Fortunately, as history tells us, the long-bow saves the day, and Branagh’s Henry makes us forget his cold rejection of old friendships with a hair-raising rendition of the St. Crispin’s Day speech that makes anyone who hears it want to fight the French, consequences be damned.
Join me Friday evening at 6 ET for “Picture Perfect: Music for the Movies,” or catch the show later as a webcast, at http://www.wwfm.org.
