Mostly Mozart Creation Eurotrash
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Mostly Mozart Creation Eurotrash
Our first ever hearing of Haydn's Creation-despite pleasant music though a little o
n the static side for me, pleasant enough singing and orchestra work, some nice projections and props and with surtitles because of certain other messages coming across the screen and other props and costumes I'm afraid I'd have to call this drivel and eurotrash-rather disappointing. Regards, Len
n the static side for me, pleasant enough singing and orchestra work, some nice projections and props and with surtitles because of certain other messages coming across the screen and other props and costumes I'm afraid I'd have to call this drivel and eurotrash-rather disappointing. Regards, Len
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Re: Mostly Mozart Creation Eurotrash
What on Earth were they doing presenting The Creation as anything but a straight oratorio in the first place? I can imagine no work that less lends itself to being a production, and BTW, it is one of the few major works in which I have sung. I can't even imagine using surtitles for it. There is only one way to translate, even from the Hebrew, "And God said, let there be light, and there was light."lennygoran wrote: ↑Thu Jul 19, 2018 9:51 pmOur first ever hearing of Haydn's Creation-despite pleasant music though a little o
n the static side for me, pleasant enough singing and orchestra work, some nice projections and props and with surtitles because of certain other messages coming across the screen and other props and costumes I'm afraid I'd have to call this drivel and eurotrash-rather disappointing. Regards, Len
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach
Re: Mostly Mozart Creation Eurotrash
Staging concert works has been going on for a while and has sometimes been well received. I don't mean semidramatic works like Berlioz's "Damnation de Faust" or ballets based on concertos and such, but productions like Bach's "Saint Matthew Passion" as performed by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic and staged by Peter Sellars. Gilding the lily, for sure, but easily avoided by simply not attending the performance. Some of Handel's oratorios are operas in disguise, but most are narrative rather than dramatic works; that won't keep them off the stage nowadays.
John Francis
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Re: Mostly Mozart Creation Eurotrash
John I took a photo of the page which talks about the production-maybe you or others could provide some more guidance-I was expecting large brilliant images of the sky, clouds, etc-this one had that but also things that looked like tablets, a husband and wife leaving a fish tank and drying each other off with modern towels-hope you can read the page below. Len
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Re: Mostly Mozart Creation Eurotrash
I'm just not interested. "The Creation" is a concert work, not an opera, and the effort to dramatize it was irrelevant and wasted, whether you liked it or not. A few years ago, Lincoln Center presented Colin Davis and the London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra in a great performance, purely in concert without window dressing; the Mostly Mozart forces couldn't possibly come anywhere near that. So I skipped it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/arts ... 3symp.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/arts ... 3symp.html
John Francis
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Re: Mostly Mozart Creation Eurotrash
Like the two Johns, I prefer this work in its oratorio form, but I prefer HIP, such as the recording below, which received a recording of the year award in the year of its release (1983). The two CD set is available used from amazon for about $5, and well worth it! The spine-tingling opening alone is worth the price of the set (also available to download). Staging it the way Len describes may be current fashion, but to me it seems like just a distraction.
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Re: Mostly Mozart Creation Eurotrash
Brian Sue and I both believed we were distracted-not the same for tonight's Broadway Carousel! Len
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Re: Mostly Mozart Creation Eurotrash
Oh, you were carousing on Broadway? (hahaha) I love that musical as much as anybody else, but one of my memories dates back to what would now be called middle school, where we had a talented but eccentric music teacher. At the time, "queer" had already evolved from meaning "odd" to meaning "homosexual." So he plays this original cast recording which includes the words (omitted from the movie) "You're a queer one, Julie Jordan," and of course all the boys (except me) break out in riotous laughter. Later the same teacher decided to play Tit-Willow from Mikado with the same result. I am not making this up.lennygoran wrote: ↑Fri Jul 20, 2018 11:25 pmBrian Sue and I both believed we were distracted-not the same for tonight's Broadway Carousel! Len
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach
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Re: Mostly Mozart Creation Eurotrash
OTOH Tommasini liked it.
The performance of Haydn’s “The Creation” on Thursday was not your typical straightforward Mostly Mozart Festival presentation. During the sublimely contented scene for Adam and Eve, the blissful pair gave praise to God while submerged to their necks in a tank of water. The choristers stood in the aisles of the theater dressed in ragtag street clothes, holding supersized helium-filled balloons.
This was the North American premiere of a staged production of Haydn’s 1798 oratorio by Carlus Padrissa, of the Barcelona-based experimental theater group La Fura dels Baus. The presence in the pit at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center of the period-instrument Insula Orchestra from France, conducted by its founding director, Laurence Equilbey, and the participation of Ms. Equilbey’s Accentus choir, shows Mostly Mozart making good on its promise to reach out to international artists and broaden the range of its offerings.
This summer, Lincoln Center has canceled its ambitious (and expensive) Lincoln Center Festival. The idea is that Mostly Mozart will stand alone, encompassing its traditional concert offerings (cut down this year) as well some of the adventurous projects that once defined the Lincoln Center Festival, like this staged “Creation.” But the overall volume of presentations has markedly fallen.
Ambition isn’t new to Mostly Mozart; in 2015, for example, it presented the American stage premiere of George Benjamin’s opera “Written on Skin.” But Lincoln Center still needs to figure out how tradition and innovation mix in its summers. It’s hard to know what this new Mostly Mozart brand stands for.
In any event, it was a great idea to bring this “Creation” to New York. Haydn’s work begins with a depiction of chaos in the universe, an earth without form, until God is moved to create light. Mr. Padrissa was struck, he said in an interview in the program, that the opening of the oratorio is an uncanny depiction of the Big Bang. Not only that, but also three of the five letters in Haydn’s name spell “DNA.”
That’s a stretch. Still, his staging of this scene was dazzling. Video images of cloud formations and gases were projected on scrims as the orchestra played Haydn’s grave music, surging slowly through passages of unmoored chromatic harmony. Various instruments brought a sinister cast to solo lines that thread through the textures, then splinter off. During sudden percussive bursts, we saw images of starry masses exploding. Everyone made the most of the work’s most stunning moment, when the chorus and orchestra break into a full, radiant C major chord on the word “Licht” (“light”) in “And there was light.”
The angel Raphael (the bass-baritone Thomas Tatzl, wearing grayish robes run through with small colored lights) intoned the familiar words from the first verse of Genesis with stentorian gravity. In this production’s most affecting directorial touch, the chorus members are a downtrodden group of migrants or refugees, outcasts from the heavenly realm.
If there was vagueness in the staging, this in some ways enhanced the dramatic ambiguity at the core of the work, often glossed over in performances. While we are witnessing the creation in real time, the miracle of God’s work is also being reflected upon, as if in the future, in choruses of praise. It was especially moving to see these homeless vagabonds banding together to sing Haydn’s marvelous choruses.
In another poignant touch, the choristers had iPads. As they held up their devices, images of flowing rivers, flying birds, milk gushing from udders of cows and more played across rows of screens, emphasizing how isolated these refugees were from the real things.
The tenor Robin Tritschler’s clear, strong voice lent authority to his portrayal of the angel Uriel. Mr. Tatzl made a magisterial Raphael and, in the final part, a take-charge Adam. The soprano Christina Landshamer, as the angel Gabriel, brought a luscious voice to Haydn’s beguiling arias, often while being suspended by cables hooked to a mechanical lift that dominated the stage. As Eve, she had to affirm that her adored Adam’s will was now also her will. The sexism of this stood out more in this contemporary staging. Still, she sang beautifully.
Ms. Equilbey drew lithe, impressively natural playing from the excellent orchestra. And the great final chorus of praise, a stirring fugue, could not have been better.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/arts ... ic-reviews
The performance of Haydn’s “The Creation” on Thursday was not your typical straightforward Mostly Mozart Festival presentation. During the sublimely contented scene for Adam and Eve, the blissful pair gave praise to God while submerged to their necks in a tank of water. The choristers stood in the aisles of the theater dressed in ragtag street clothes, holding supersized helium-filled balloons.
This was the North American premiere of a staged production of Haydn’s 1798 oratorio by Carlus Padrissa, of the Barcelona-based experimental theater group La Fura dels Baus. The presence in the pit at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center of the period-instrument Insula Orchestra from France, conducted by its founding director, Laurence Equilbey, and the participation of Ms. Equilbey’s Accentus choir, shows Mostly Mozart making good on its promise to reach out to international artists and broaden the range of its offerings.
This summer, Lincoln Center has canceled its ambitious (and expensive) Lincoln Center Festival. The idea is that Mostly Mozart will stand alone, encompassing its traditional concert offerings (cut down this year) as well some of the adventurous projects that once defined the Lincoln Center Festival, like this staged “Creation.” But the overall volume of presentations has markedly fallen.
Ambition isn’t new to Mostly Mozart; in 2015, for example, it presented the American stage premiere of George Benjamin’s opera “Written on Skin.” But Lincoln Center still needs to figure out how tradition and innovation mix in its summers. It’s hard to know what this new Mostly Mozart brand stands for.
In any event, it was a great idea to bring this “Creation” to New York. Haydn’s work begins with a depiction of chaos in the universe, an earth without form, until God is moved to create light. Mr. Padrissa was struck, he said in an interview in the program, that the opening of the oratorio is an uncanny depiction of the Big Bang. Not only that, but also three of the five letters in Haydn’s name spell “DNA.”
That’s a stretch. Still, his staging of this scene was dazzling. Video images of cloud formations and gases were projected on scrims as the orchestra played Haydn’s grave music, surging slowly through passages of unmoored chromatic harmony. Various instruments brought a sinister cast to solo lines that thread through the textures, then splinter off. During sudden percussive bursts, we saw images of starry masses exploding. Everyone made the most of the work’s most stunning moment, when the chorus and orchestra break into a full, radiant C major chord on the word “Licht” (“light”) in “And there was light.”
The angel Raphael (the bass-baritone Thomas Tatzl, wearing grayish robes run through with small colored lights) intoned the familiar words from the first verse of Genesis with stentorian gravity. In this production’s most affecting directorial touch, the chorus members are a downtrodden group of migrants or refugees, outcasts from the heavenly realm.
If there was vagueness in the staging, this in some ways enhanced the dramatic ambiguity at the core of the work, often glossed over in performances. While we are witnessing the creation in real time, the miracle of God’s work is also being reflected upon, as if in the future, in choruses of praise. It was especially moving to see these homeless vagabonds banding together to sing Haydn’s marvelous choruses.
In another poignant touch, the choristers had iPads. As they held up their devices, images of flowing rivers, flying birds, milk gushing from udders of cows and more played across rows of screens, emphasizing how isolated these refugees were from the real things.
The tenor Robin Tritschler’s clear, strong voice lent authority to his portrayal of the angel Uriel. Mr. Tatzl made a magisterial Raphael and, in the final part, a take-charge Adam. The soprano Christina Landshamer, as the angel Gabriel, brought a luscious voice to Haydn’s beguiling arias, often while being suspended by cables hooked to a mechanical lift that dominated the stage. As Eve, she had to affirm that her adored Adam’s will was now also her will. The sexism of this stood out more in this contemporary staging. Still, she sang beautifully.
Ms. Equilbey drew lithe, impressively natural playing from the excellent orchestra. And the great final chorus of praise, a stirring fugue, could not have been better.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/arts ... ic-reviews
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