June 14, 2006
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The true saviour?Hundreds of irate Christian protesters are massing this week in Wales to protest a performance of "Jerry Springer -- The Opera", calling it blasphemous, offensive and altogether rude. One het-up website in Britain describes the show (a huge hit over there) thusly:
"I don’t want to go into too much detail, but the Lord Jesus is portrayed in ‘Springer’ as an infantile sexual deviant. Satan tells Him ‘F--- you’, and Mary his blessed mother castigates Him for abandoning her when He died on the cross. His wounds are mocked, He says He is ‘a little bit gay’ and finally Jerry Springer tells him: ‘Jesus, grow up for Chr---’s sake and put some f---ing clothes on.’ On top of all that, Almighty God is portrayed as an ineffectual inadequate who needs Jerry Springer’s shoulder to cry on, and Springer himself emerges as the true saviour of mankind."
Sure sure sure -- but what about the music?
Adrian Butler in the Liverpool Echo has a drily funny take on braving the protestors to see what all the fuss is about. "There's basically one joke, and it goes like this: four letter words and phrases like "chick with a d**k", when sung in an opera, become hilariously funny," he writes, adding: "Musically, it's more complex than I expected. Richard Thomas's wide-ranging classical music take-offs are startlingly clever -- by turns eerie, touching and singable."
In The Guardian this week, David Ward has a short, thin but still interesting account of participating in a chorus of 700 -- seven hundred! -- singing Thomas Tallis' "Spem in Alia" -- a work so beautiful the human head can barely contain it. "We sang the final mighty chord," he writes, "and stood amazed through the long, enveloping silence that followed." Jealous? Me too.
Also worth reading is Andrew Clark's nicely-done overview of the just-concluded Ojai Festival in the Financial Times. "It’s the rubbing-together of the primitive and the sophisticated that lends Ojai its charm," he writes. "But a festival cannot live on its past, and Ojai today faces the same questions as any other niche event: how to preserve its character and satisfy demand in a changing cultural climate."
Pauline Malefane as CarmenAnd in case you missed it, there's a new film version of Bizet's "Carmen" making the rounds. The twist: it's set in a modern-day slum outside Capetown, and is sung in Xhosa - the South African language known for its clicking sounds.
"U-Carmen eKhayelitsha" is "moderately watchable", says Arthur Kaptainas in The Gazette. "There could be no bullfight, alas," he cautions, in an otherwise positive review. More info here on this film, which took the Golden Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival last year.
Chicago Sun-Times critic Wynne Delacoma writes this week about a new cantata performed at the Ravinia Festival by Opera Africa, the same group that brought the Zulu-language opera "Princess Magogo,'' by composer Mzilikazi Khumalo and librettist Themba Msimang, to town in 2003. The new piece (by the same composer), is called "uShaka,'' and tells the story of a legendary Zulu king.
"Khumalo composes in a thoroughly Western style, but the Zulu musical scale and its emphasis on music for massed voices makes for a smooth blend of traditions," Delacoma writes. "At times "uShaka,'' especially its choral numbers, brought to mind the melancholy solemnity of 19th century Russian opera as well as strong hints of heroic Verdi."
"It takes courage to improvise, to leap off the cliff," says Paul Cram, whose Sonic Courage Festival opens in Halifax, Nova Scotia tonight; on the menu are bassist Barry Guy and baroque violinist Maya Homburger, who do contemporary improvisations based on early music. The program features an interpretation of the 12th Century hymn "Veni Creator Spiritus" -- the same work that inspired Gustav Mahler to make the courageous leap of the Eighth Symphony.