Posts

Showing posts from January, 2019

Stravinsky - L'Histoire du Soldat

Image
Le Studio - Philharmonie, Paris, Sunday 27 January 2018 Actor/narrator: Eric Ruf. Dancer: Alban Richard. Soloists of the Orchestre de Paris and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. When I was a teenager, on one of my first forays abroad, I had the good fortune to be invited to stay with a cultivated Swiss family in Lausanne, who opened up intriguing new worlds for me. They had real paintings, parquet floors, oriental rugs, a grand piano, and what they called their salon de l’art brut , a spare room kept empty but for their own improvised artworks. They introduced me to the first opera I ever knew and owned on record, Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which would later play a part in my getting into university, as I talked about Apollinaire's play when discussing the theatre of the absurd during my entrance interview. They also introduced me to Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat , the words to which the whole family seemed able to chant merrily by heart while it was on their gramophone, (wh

Offenbach - Les Deux Aveugles. Hervé - Le Compositeur toqué

Image
Studio Marigny, Paris, Sunday January 20 2019 Production, sets, costumes: Lola Kirchner. Lighting: Cyril Monteil. Giraffier, Séraphin: Flannan Obé. Patachon, Fignolet: Raphaël Brémard. Piano: Christophe Manien. In case anyone doesn’t already know: The vocation of the Palazzetto Bru Zane – Centre de Musique Romantique Française is the rediscovery and international promotion of the French musical heritage of the long nineteenth century (1780-1920). Its interests range from chamber music to the orchestral, sacred and operatic repertories, not forgetting the lighter genres characteristic of the ‘esprit français’ of the nineteenth century (chanson, opéra-comique, operetta). The Centre was inaugurated in 2009 and has its headquarters in a Venetian palazzo dating from 1695 which was specially restored for this purpose. [From the Bru-Zane website] Over the past few years, I’ve enjoyed rediscovering some rare French operas through Bru Zane’s recordings, so I was glad to see they wer