Virtual Opera

One of the stars of “Ted Lasso” played one of the most memorable characters in the history of “Game of Thrones”

by Maria A. Rodriguez on July 21, 2021

Ted lasso star Hannah Waddingham plays the series’ main antagonist – Rebecca, the owner of AFC Richmond – alongside Jason Sudeikis. It’s a juicy lead role that Waddingham worked hard to secure, and she is certainly making the most of it.

But what fans might not know is that they’ve probably seen Waddingham on one of the biggest series in television history before. They just didn’t realize it.

Hannah Waddingham in ‘Ted Lasso’ | 27th edition of the SAG Awards / Getty Images for WarnerMedia

The ‘Ted Lasso’ star started her acting career on stage

Waddingham is originally from London and comes from a family of opera singers. A graduate of the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts, Waddingham began her acting career at the London Theater. She scored roles in Space Family Robinson, Spamalot, A Little Night Music, Into the Woods, and The Wizard of Oz.

The actor said Collider that spending years in musical theater before moving on to television and film was a major influence.

“It made me a grafter. It made everything I do honest and muscular, because you have to take care of yourself in the theater, ”explained Waddingham. “I think when you walk into the theater, you don’t go in to become a star. You do it for camaraderie and to play great roles, and that’s something that has always stood out to me.

Hannah Waddingham has appeared on numerous UK TV shows

Waddingham has booked many shows with long stints in the theater during his career. But when she was not on stage, she appeared on many British TV shows. The actor has had guest roles on shows like Coupling, soccer wives, doctors, bad education, and Partners in crime.

In 2015, she landed a role in one of the biggest TV shows on the planet at the time – Game of thrones. Fans may not remember seeing her, but they know her costume and her voice. As Septa Unella – aka “The Nun of Shame” – Waddingham uttered one of the most memorable lines in Game of thrones the story.

The “Ted Lasso” star was part of an iconic scene from “Game of Thrones”

Waddingham’s only word of dialogue: “Shame! »- became iconic, and she immediately knew what it should sound like. She said director David Nutter told her about her singing background and asked her to find the perfect tone to say the word.

“He said to me, ‘Look, I know I don’t need to go through this with you because of your training as a singer, but if you can find some ground – and I’m calling on you as a singer. , as a musician – find a pitch, one, that you can maintain and, two, that’s something she’s been doing her whole life because she’s the henchman of the Great Sparrow and a tone that lets everyone know that there is no problem with this character, ‘”recalls Waddingham.

Hannah Waddingham hit the nail on the head

The actor says she stood across the room – which was a large conference room in a hotel – and showed Nutter exactly how she thought the character should pronounce the word. Apparently she succeeded. After showing the director what she had in mind, Nutter told her, “Well, this is the shortest meeting I’ve ever had. I will see you tomorrow.”

Waddingham says that being part of Game of thrones influenced her priorities when it comes to taking on future roles. Mainly because she looked “so hideous” to play the henchman.

“It educated me so much about looking inside instead of worrying about what you look like on camera,” Waddingham explained.

‘Ted Lasso’ star says his experience on Apple TV + series is like musical theater

It is clear that Waddingham places great importance on his time in musical theater because of the camaraderie that comes with performing with an ensemble. She says her experience on Ted lasso was very similar.

“I always refer to all of us as a company of comedians because the ball bounces so happily and there isn’t a person in this show who thinks she is more important than anyone else. And I mean that hand over my heart. And I think it shows on camera, ”Waddingham noted.

Waddingham praised his co-star Jason Sudeikis, saying “he’s the Ted Lasso vibe”. She says he doesn’t just play the character, he embodies him because he will always push everyone to the fore.

Season 1 of Ted lasso is available on Apple TV +. Season 2 will premiere on July 23, 2021.

RELATED: ‘Game of Thrones’ villain reveals his death was originally supposed to be much worse

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Opera theater

Welcome to the arts; the wise man of O’Bagelo’s

by Maria A. Rodriguez on July 21, 2021

In some ways, it’s as if the coronavirus pandemic never happened. For the past two weeks, blueswoman Carolyn Wonderland has been at the Abilene Bar & Lounge. Oliver Wood, singer and songwriter of The Wood Brothers, was at Anthology. Irascible and invaluable social critic Steve Earle was at Point of the Bluffs Winery.

It was always like that back then.

Although I had heard scattered reports that something was in the air, my first real feeling of a pandemic came in early March 2020. I was sitting at a bar in a restaurant in downtown Rochester and I noticed that each time the bartender vigorously sprayed the counter with disinfectant.

Over the past 15 months or so, some places of entertainment have continued to operate with varying degrees of recognition of what is happening in this county; more than 600,000 have now died from COVID-19. We’ve seen venues trying out concert versions of the drive-in, plexiglass between bartenders and customers, socially distanced tables. Masks required except for eating and drinking, although I could never quite understand how sitting in front of a burger and a beer was a preventative virus like a mask.

And entertainment has responded by migrating to virtual platforms. Musicians playing live for advice on your laptop. The KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival stays alive by going entirely online.

And now? The sudden outbreak of events this summer took me by surprise.

It’s an uneven return, that’s for sure. Large touring events take longer to come together. So the Auditorium Theater schedule is largely postponed from the pre-pandemic Rochester Broadway Theater League and scattered events such as the August 19 “Old School Summer Jam” with Dru Hill, Ginuwine and Montell Jordan. The Lake Darien Amphitheater offers leftovers from its 2020 schedule. The Constellation Brands-Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center has a lineup that approximates the type of shows we would expect from the venue before the pandemic: Brandi Carlile, King Crimson, Harry Connick Jr. and the usual country stars.

The uncertainty has led to the cancellation of many major summer festivals like the CGI Rochester International Jazz Festival. The GrassRoots Music Festival bailed out the summer, returning with a series of smaller weekend events; Rochester’s sacred steel powerhouse, The Campbell Brothers, premieres July 23.

Virtual presentations are not ceding the territory they have fought for over the past 15 months. Writers & Books has worked in this vein throughout the pandemic through virtual events with writers. Her next presentation is with acclaimed Rochester novelist Joanna Scott, who has a free presentation on her new collection of short stories, “Excuse Me While I Disappear,” at 7:30 pm on July 22.

With a dearth of live opportunities, local musicians have prepared new music. While his opportunities to perform live with the Hi-Risers and Los Straitjackets have remained calm, guitarist Greg Townson is hosting a record release party on July 23 at the Abilene Bar & Lounge for the new instrumental album he created in the void, “Off And Running!”

What we are really seeing is the return of life in the smaller, less complex outdoor shows.

Finger Lakes Opera, and a cautious but thoughtful summer of “The Marriage of Figaro, with Wine, is a nerd offering at Lincoln Hill Farms in Canandaigua.” Toronto’s Celtic indie rockers Enter the Haggis perform at Lincoln Hill on July 24. It’s one of the new locations – others include the Earthlings Jurassic Farms and the JCC Canalside Theater – that have emerged from the wreckage of the pandemic.

The University of Rochester has quietly announced that restrictions on its venues – Kodak Hall at the Eastman Theater, Kilbourn Hall and Hatch Recital Hall – have been lifted; good news for the Rochester Fringe Festival to return in September. The party in the park has resumed, with Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes (and a busy tribute band schedule). Bands on the Bricks is back at the Public Market.

The Bug Jar, Rochester’s home for indie rock, reopens August 6. The Geva Theater Center and Blackfriars return to the stage; Geva has Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” musical on August 3rd. Downtown’s biggest club, Anthology, has an intriguing show on August 3 with Japanese Breakfast, an indie group led by Michelle Zauner, a woman of South Korean descent whose autobiography has become a New York bestseller. York Times.

The cinemas are open again. It’s “Cat Video Fest” this weekend at the Little Theater. The cats are probably fine, I just don’t know how to communicate with them. So for people like me who can’t survive on a diet of superhero movies, there’s the usual heady fare at The Little and The Dryden.

In many ways, it looks like the good old days. Actor Billy Bob Thornton becomes a musician at Point of the Bluffs. Ani DiFranco also has a concert there. As we roll out from August and into the fall, Abilene Bar and Lounge celebrates the music of George Harrison, Johnny Cash and John Prine.

But we’re not done with it yet.

Abilene still has a vaccination-only policy. We have lost restaurants and concert halls that are unique to our community. And with the surge in COVID-19 cases, Los Angeles has just reinstated indoor mask requirements. The lanes seized by COVID-19 remain open for the Delta variant, no matter what.

It is not finished.

John Vito, the sage of O’Bagelo’s

John Vito was best known to the general public in Rochester as the owner of O’Bagelo’s, the bakery, sandwich shop and temple of brutal wisdom on State Street. He later owned Baked & Carved in the East End.

But as Vito’s life evolved, his kidneys were failing him. He turned to making health-conscious videos and even wrote a book about cooking for your kidneys.

I knew Vito, who died on July 7 at the age of 56. I appreciated his sardonic spirit and his passion for the problems of the city. But others knew the Rochester native much better. Annie Dennis was just a kid when I moved her street over a quarter of a century ago. She posted this memory of Vito on Facebook and allowed me to share part of it:

O’Bagelo’s was my first job, I started when I was 16. I worked every Saturday for my middle and high school years, and during the week during summer vacation.

John was tough on me. He would call me if I was doing something the wrong way or if I was working harder, not smarter. He would challenge me and ask me questions to make me understand for myself why what I was doing was not the most efficient way to complete a task. He was a jerk, he frustrated me, he pissed me off.

All my adult life I have always thanked John for teaching me critical thinking in the workplace and showing me firsthand what it means to work hard on something. During my senior year of high school, all of John’s help was gone so he was running the store, completely on his own, from opening at 6am until he could clean the place after it closed. I would go after I got out of school and help him do the mess. He would be super laid back to agree whether or not I showed up after school, but I know he was always so relieved to have help.

I found out about his health issues through the vineyard and kept up to date, always rooting for him to get better. I have been fortunate enough to run into him several times over the past few years and to spend time talking. Thinking back to when I worked for him, telling him about his battle with kidney failure and his journey to getting his kidney transplant. About how his work had turned into educating people through food on how to eat well when you have kidney disease, through his Cooking for Your Kidneys project.

He’s always been a great person to sit down and talk to.

He worked so hard for his business, fought so hard for his health, and worked to make the world a better place for those with similar health issues. Now is the time for him to rest.

Vito’s visit is at 11 a.m. on August 28 at Arndt Funeral Home, 1118 Long Pond Road. His memorial service will be celebrated immediately after the visit at 2 p.m.

Jeff Spevak is the Arts & Life editor of WXXI. He can be contacted at [email protected].

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Opera song

Asians are represented in classical music. But are they seen?

by Maria A. Rodriguez on July 21, 2021

Fight stereotypes

Asian artists have long been the subject of racist tropes and slurs, dating back at least to the 1960s and 1970s, when musicians immigrated to the United States from Japan, Korea and others. regions of East Asia to study and perform. A 1967 report in Time magazine, titled “The Invasion from the East,” reflected the thinking of the time.

“Stringed instruments were physically ideal for Orientals: their nimble fingers, so proficient in delicate calligraphy and other crafts, easily adapted to the demands of the fingerboard,” the article says.

Over time, Asian artists have gained a foothold in orchestras and the concert circuit. In 2014, the latest year for which data is available, musicians of Asian origin made up about 9% of large ensembles, according to the League of American Orchestras; in the United States, Asians make up about 6 percent of the population. In renowned groups like the New York Philharmonic, the number is even higher: Asians now represent a third of this orchestra. (In Europe, it’s often a different story: in the London Symphony Orchestra, for example, three of the 82 musicians, less than 4%, have Asian roots, while Asians make up over 18% of the population of London.)

Yet racist portrayals of Asian artists have persisted. Some have been told by conductors that they look like computer engineers, not classical musicians. Others were described by hearing panels as too weak and too young to be taken seriously. Still others were told their names were too foreign to say or remember.

“You are considered an automaton,” said Akiko Tarumoto, concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Tarumoto, 44, who is of Japanese descent, said musicians of Asian descent in the Philharmonic are sometimes confused, and in other ensembles she had heard fellow musicians call new recruits simply of “Chinese girls”.

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Opera music

The future of Houston’s art scene – Houston Public Media

by Maria A. Rodriguez on July 20, 2021

Khori Dastoor, Managing Director and CEO of Houston Grand Opera (as of January 2022); Janice Bond, deputy director of the Houston Museum of Contemporary Art; Juraj Valcuha, Music Director of the Houston Symphony (from fall 2022)

Town Square with Ernie Manouse airs at 3 p.m. CT. Connect to 88.7FM, listen online or subscribe to Podcast. Join the discussion at 888-486-9677, [email protected] or @townsquaretalk.

It is a historic and pivotal period for all of us, including the world of the arts.

Many Houston arts groups have gradually branched out into live performances and reopened arts spaces over the past year and months.

This fall, many will finally be returning to the stage for full seasons in person.

How will local arts groups evolve after the pandemic?

How has the last year changed their art forms?

And what is the future of performing arts, equity and community and national impact?

Some organizations are rebuilding, innovating and even welcoming new leaders.

Today, the directors of Houston Grand Opera, Houston Symphony and the Houston Museum of Contemporary Art join us – all of whom have recently announced new leaders.

They discuss their visions, lessons learned, and the future of Houston’s art scene.

Catherine Lu is the guest host of this episode.

The guests are:

Khori Dastoor

Houston Grand Opera’s new Managing Director and CEO, who will take office in January 2022

Janice Bond

John Mangum

Houston Symphony Executive Director and CEO, speaking on new appointed Music Director Juraj Valcuha – who begins his role as musical director in the 2022-2023 season

Town Square with Ernie Manouse is a gathering space for the community to come together and discuss the most important and pressing issues of the day.

Audio for today’s show will be available after 5 p.m. CT. We also offer a free podcast here at itunes, and other applications.

To subscribe to Today in Houston

Fill out the form below to subscribe to our new daily HPM Newsroom editorial newsletter.

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Opera singer

Sunset opera singer Eric Barry

by Maria A. Rodriguez on July 20, 2021

SUNDOWN, Texas (KCBD) – From sunset to the world stage; this is the journey of award-winning opera singer Eric Barry

His love for music began in the band at Sundown High School where he played the trumpet.

He went to college at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas. A teacher over there heard him sing – just by chance. He then began singing lessons and continued his education at Yale, where he earned a master’s degree.

Since then, he sings all over the world. He says it took a lot of work to get to this place in his career.

“I have sung in so many countries that I can’t remember. And as an opera singer, we sing in these other languages. I had to study French, I had to study Italian, I had to study German. At Yale, I had to study Czech and Russian. I sing in nine languages, ”he said.

Barry says he’s proof that you can make big dreams come true in a small town, and Sundown has a supportive community.

“Sundown, in particular, is full of talented people and people who care about the community and want to help young people move forward in life.”

Barry now lives in Amarillo, which he uses as a hub for his travels and performances.

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Opera theater

7 shows from Cape Cod theaters

by Maria A. Rodriguez on July 20, 2021

From the suburbs to Oz

College Light Opera Company continues its summer of musicals with “Trouble in Tahiti”, Leonard Bernstein’s story set in the suburbs of the 1950s about marital struggles between a successful businessman and a frustrated housewife. Next will be the classic “The Wizard of Oz”, about young Dorothy’s journey over the rainbow to a magical and sometimes dangerous land.

Shows take place at 7:30 p.m. July 20-24 for Tahiti and July 27-31 for “Oz” at the Highfield Theater, 58 Highfield Drive, Falmouth, with a live streaming option for the July 24th and 31st shows. Tickets and information: http://www.collegelightoperacompany.com/.

Shakespeare is trying to write, in a different pandemic

Cape Cod Theater Project will end its 2021 season live with a story that combines Shakespeare and a pandemic, featuring actors from some popular TV shows.

In the developing play “God’s Spies” by Bill Cain, founder of the Boston Shakespeare Company, Patrick J. Adams, of television “Suits” and of National Geographic’s Disney + “The Right Stuff”, will represent the famous playwright (here known as the name “Shax”) in 1603. He tries to write, but there is the plague, and he takes shelter in place with a young Puritan lawyer (played by Sathya Sridharan of Netflix’s “Bonding”) and a prostitute from the street (Troian Bellisario from “Pretty Little Liars”.

Virtual performances, led by CCTP Artistic Director Hal Brooks, and audience discussions, will take place at 7 p.m. on July 22-24. Entrance by donation: $ 25. Information: https://capecodtheatreproject.org/.

An evening (or anytime) of Twain stories

In a video show available for virtual viewing, Dennis-based theater company Eventide will present Dennis Snee’s “Twain by the Tale,” a two-act review of Mark Twain’s stories, skits and monologues. Director / editor Stephen Rourke himself plays Twain and other plays are performed by local actors, filmed individually during the pandemic against a green screen at Cape Cod Media Center.

Stephen Rourke stars as author Mark Twain in Eventide Theater Company's virtual production of

The pieces Rourke woven together for the final production include “The Legend of Sagenfeld”, “Noah and the Bureaucrat” and “Le grand duel français”. The cast consists of Janet Geist Moore, Cleo Zani, Mitchell Kiliulis, Andrew Krauss, Pamela Lambert, Brandon Prentiss, Chuck Gifford, Stephanie Miele, Ana Item, Emma Engelsen, Thomas Crutchfield and Toby Wilson.

The show is available to stream on demand from July 22 to August 2. 1 on eventidearts.org. Tickets are $ 20 to $ 30 depending on the number of viewers per device.

Comedian / actor Kevin Flynn will star in a one-man show about his family as part of the Hyannis Film Festival.

Growing up in Irish

The Hyannis Film Festival will feature actor-comedian Kevin Flynn at 7 p.m. on July 27 in the autobiographical one-man show, “Fear of Heights,” described as a funny and bittersweet play from growing up in a family of Irish-collar immigrants. blue.

In this third solo piece about his family, Flynn examines whether he is living up to his steelworker father and grandfather, and their successes in America. A description of the show says for Flynn, “his career on screens and stages and his life as a husband and father, sometimes on uncertain paths, has moved away and reaffirmed his family history.”

Flynn is the founder of the Nantucket Comedy Festival and its youth program Stand Up & Learn, and co-produced a documentary about the 1980s Boston comedy scene. His credits include roles in the films “Me, Myself, and Irene” and “The Heartbreak Kid”, and, on television in “Sex and The City”, “Law & Order”, “Ultimate Collectors” and “Go For It! “

The show will take place at 529 Main Street in Hyannis, a former retail space that is now an event space / community center for the Sturgis Charter Public School. Tickets: $ 40 for general admission, unreserved and remote seats, through Eventbrite. Face masks are encouraged, especially for people not vaccinated against COVID-19.

A meet and greet with the artists will take place Tuesday at 5 p.m. at Finn’s Craft Brew Tap House, 16 Barnstable Road, Hyannis.

Janet Geist Moore and Robert Bock star in "Kalamazoo" at the Cotuit des Arts Center.

I like the second time

Local actors Robert Bock and Janet Geist Moore star in “Kalamazoo”, a romantic comedy by Michelle Kholos Brooks and Kelly Younger on the second act of life. Two eccentric but endearing widowers in their late sixties meet through computer encounters.

The shows, directed by Melinda Gallant, will take place at 7:30 pm July 29-31 at the Black Box Theater at the Cotuit Center for the Arts, 4404 Route 28. Tickets: $ 20, $ 15 for members. Parental discretion is advised due to the strong language and adult themes. Reservations and information: artsonthecape.org or 508 428-0669.

A return to port

Harbor Stage Company in Wellfleet will return with two shows this summer, starting with artistic director Robert Kropf performing a new solo piece by John Kolvenbach. “Stand up if you are here tonight” is described as “a celebration of the people, the presence and how far we have come together”.

The shows will take place at 7:30 p.m. from Wednesday to Saturday and at 5 p.m. on Sunday, July 29-August. 20 at Harborside Theater, 15 Kendrick Ave. Tickets ($ 25) and information: www.harborstage.org. Tickets must be purchased in advance and customers will need to show proof of vaccination or wear a mask in the indoor theater.

Next door, from August 11 to September 7. 5, will be Brenda Withers’ “DINDIN”, described as “an intimate look at class, civility and the killer instinct” and starring herself and her co-founders Jonathan Fielding, Stacy Fischer and Kropf.

Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll can be contacted at [email protected] Follow on Twitter: @KathiSDCCT.

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Opera song

Obituary of Sir Graham Vick | Opera

by Maria A. Rodriguez on July 20, 2021

Although lead opera director Sir Graham Vick, who died of complications from Covid-19 at age 67, has worked on many of the world’s most prestigious stages, he has led the way with his own brand of productions on a low budget in unconventional places. There, he rejects sumptuous staging in favor of an emotionally charged dramaturgy, psychologically revealing, often interactive.

At the time of his death he was artistic director of the Birmingham Opera Company (BOC, formerly the City of Birmingham Touring Opera), which he founded in 1987, energetically creating groundbreaking works initially in sites such as hangars in planes, power plants and nightclubs. . The company eventually got its own theater in a converted ice rink, which city council agreed to renovate and manage.

His lecture to the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2003, partially reprinted in The Guardian, was a manifesto for his unwavering determination to broaden the social appeal of opera. Without ruling out the possibility of more country house operas, he urged companies to make their work known to the wider community for the well-being of the art form as well as society. herself.

Dedicated to pushing the boundaries of opera by embracing the contemporary world in all its richness and diversity, Vick and the BOC have mounted more than 50 productions, starting with a light Falstaff (the reduced orchestration was by Jonathan Dove) in 1987.

A scene from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, directed by Graham Vick at the Royal Opera House, London, 1997. Photograph: Tristram Kenton / The Guardian

Ravi Shankar’s Ghanashyam (1989), an Indo-European cultural fusion with dance and mime, in the presence of former Beatles and Shankar enthusiast George Harrison, came next, followed by The Ring Saga (1990), another collaboration with Dove, reducing this time an epic masterpiece to 10 hours of music spread over two evenings, with 12 singers and only 18 orchestral musicians. He toured halls and sports centers across the country. Life Is a Dream, by Dove himself, premiered in 2012.

Over 200 local people participated in Fidelio (2002), with each participant placing a black bag over their head, to better understand the experience of Florestan being imprisoned in total darkness. The goal was not just to engage and excite the audience, Vick said, but to examine how the work could be explored and better understood.

Vick’s first significant appointment was as Production Manager for Scottish Opera (1984-1987), where his provocative streak – in his Don Giovanni, for example, the titular anti-hero, disguised as Leporello, plunged Masetto’s head in the toilet – was not always appreciated.

Life Is a Dream by Birmingham Opera Company at Argyle Works, a former metal plating factory, composed by Jonathan Dove and directed by Graham Vick, 2012. Photograph: Tristram Kenton / The Guardian

His willingness to operate on shoestring budgets, on the other hand, not only found favor with management, but allowed him to focus on what he saw as the fundamentals of opera, stripped of all the details. and pretension of embellishment. At this time he also worked occasionally in London, with a Madame Butterfly for ENO (1984) which was attentive to the problems of sexual and cultural imperialism and a production of Un Re de Berio à Ascolto in Covent Garden (1989) set on stage like a tumultuous play. rehearsal with booming acrobats and trapeze artists.

But by this time he had formed the BOC, which would play such an important role in his future career. He has also worked with the Musica nel Chiostro company, formed by Adam Pollock in Batignano, Tuscany alongside other emerging talents such as directors Richard Jones and Tim Albery, and designers Anthony Macdonald, Tom Cairns and Richard Hudson. There, the backdrop of the old monastic buildings served as the backdrop, with the audience often wandering from one performance space to another between acts.

After making a triumphant debut at Glyndebourne in 1992 with Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades – a prominent death angel on the entrance curtain at first, and skulls and skeletons in the demonic gambling den at the end signifying all the neurotic pathology of the work – he held the position of director of productions there from 1994 to 2000. In this role, he led the company in the new house with Eugène Onegin who emphasized non-isolation. only Onegin but also Tatiana and Olga. Other Glyndebourne productions include the UK premiere of Cavalli’s Hipermestra (2017), which touchingly affirmed the power of music in the face of inhumanity.

Hipermestra by Francesco Cavalli in Glyndebourne, directed by Graham Vick, 2017. Photograph: Tristram Kenton / The Guardian

Born in Birkenhead, Merseyside, Graham was the younger of two sons of Muriel (née Hynes) and Arnold Vick. He had a formative experience at the age of 12 when he saw Tito Gobbi on television tap into the resources of makeup and acting to become the character of Gianni Schicchi or Scarpia. He was “hit, totally and totally,” he recalls. He later enthusiastically attended touring productions by Glyndebourne, Welsh National Opera and Sadler’s Wells. Graham attended Birkenhead School and trained as a singer, serving as a bass clerk at Chester Cathedral. He then studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, with the aim of becoming a conductor.

Joining the Scottish Opera as a producer, he founded an initiative called Opera Go Round, which took opera accompanied by piano by bus to remote areas of Scotland. He was also briefly associate director of the English Music Theater (which emerged from the English Opera Group) under Colin Graham until the company’s dissolution in 1980.

While the boundary-pushing productions he made for Scottish Opera and later for the BOC allowed him to indulge his passion for socially useful, adventurous and stimulating work, he was also ready to step into the citadels of privilege he so fervently denounced – even if only to subsidize the least lucrative projects. There too, his productions could be daring, even if they were sometimes disappointingly conservative.

His work for ENO was generally high profile, with Ariane on Naxos, Butterfly, Eugene Onegin and The Marriage of Figaro, under the title Figaro’s Wedding (the latter being most memorable for his playing of the charades of the final act in just one imaginary darkness, so that the audience can observe the stumbles and gropings) among his finest achievements.

His Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg for Covent Garden in 1993, which was frequently repeated, however, had more mixed success. The staging of the riot in Act II was undeniably a tour de force: bodies writhing as if a painting by Hieronymus Bosch had come to life, some springing from the foreground, others coming to life. dangling dangerously from the ceiling. But for all its acrobatic virtuosity, the production surprisingly lacked convincing staging. He also did not engage in the darker undersides of the work, potentially toxic nationalism and racial exclusion.

Another notable Wagner production was that of Tristan und Isolde, unveiled at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin in 2011. An ingenious division of the stage involving glass doors and skillful lighting suggested a transcendent inner world, an alternate reality to the mundane domestic sphere. with leather sofa and kitchen table.

Other productions for Covent Garden included Mozart’s Mitridate (1991), the exaggerated basket skirts conveying more than a hint of caricature, a contemporary realization of Tippett’s Midsummer’s wedding (1996) and a boisterous and screaming Falstaff (1999), with Bryn Terfel Supreme in the title role. He has also worked on many major international stages including the Metropolitan, New York (Lady Macbeth de Mtsensk), La Scala (Macbeth and Otello), the Mariinsky, the Paris Opera and Rome. His life-size ring has been seen in Lisbon and Palermo. His new production of Das Rheingold for BOC is expected to open at the end of this month.

His many honors included a knight awarded in this year’s New Year’s Honors List. The choreographer of many of his productions was his surviving life partner Ron Howell, as well as his brother, Hedley, a former member of the pop group Swinging Blue Jeans.

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Opera music

Florida Grand Opera announces 80th anniversary season

by Maria A. Rodriguez on July 20, 2021

Florida Grand Opera (FGO) has announced its upcoming 80th anniversary season. The season will open in January 2022 with A Streetcar Named Desire. The rest of the range includes Rigoletto, Fellow Travelers and Agrippina.

Find out more about the productions and buy tickets on https://tickets.fgo.org/subscriptions/index.aspx.

Check out the full lineup below!

A tram named Désir

By André Prévin

“Stella!” … The first thing that comes to mind when you hear the title A Streetcar Named Desire. However, rest assured that André Previn’s lyrical adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ famous play will leave you with a lot more. The opera follows the downward spiral of former southern beauty Blanche Dubois, who after suffering a series of personal losses, leaves behind her wealth and privileges and moves into a dilapidated apartment with her sister and brother-in-law. Filled with soaring melodies and an orchestral score that plunges you right in the middle of New Orleans during a hot summer, A Streetcar Named Desire is a masterpiece of contemporary verism.

Sung in English with projected translations in English and Spanish

MIAMI
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts
Miami-Dade County / Ziff Ballet Opera House
January 22, 2022, at 7:00 p.m.
January 23, 2022, at 2:00 p.m.
January 25, 2022, at 8:00 p.m.

FORT LAUDERDALE
Broward Center for the Performing Arts / Au-René Theater
February 3 and 5, 2022, at 7:30 p.m.

Rigoletto

By Giuseppe Verdi

A staple in the lyrical repertoire the world over, Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto is a timeless story of betrayal, shattered dreams and mistaken identity, worthy of the best cinematic thriller. Rigoletto follows the conquests of the racy Duke, who survives plots and vengeance schemes along the way. Gilda, whom he betrayed and abandoned, saves him in the opera’s final scene by sacrificing his life, leaving his own father broken and alone. Containing some of the most recognizable tunes, a gripping storyline and intense emotions, Rigoletto is sure to delight everyone, whether opera lovers or newcomers. Sung in Italian with projected translations in English and Spanish

MIAMI
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts
Miami-Dade County / Ziff Ballet Opera House
March 12, 2022, at 7:00 p.m.
March 13, 2022, at 2:00 p.m.
March 15 & 17, 2022, at 8:00 p.m.

FORT LAUDERDALE
Broward Center for the Performing Arts / Au-René Theater
March 31, 2022, at 7:30 p.m.
Apr 2, 2022, at 7:30 p.m.

Travel companions

An opera by GREGORY SPEARS
Libretto by Greg Pierce
From the 2007 novel Fellow Travelers by Thomas Mallon

Gregory Spears’ Fellow Travelers is both a story of the heart and a tense political thriller, creating an instant contemporary classic. Set against a backdrop of 1950s paranoia in Washington, DC, Fellow Travelers follows the life of aspiring young journalist Timothy Laughlin and handsome State Department official Hawkins Fuller, who are embroiled in a passionate love affair, just at the moment when Senator McCarthy begins his hunt for “sexual subversives”. in government. As his involvement deepens, Tim struggles to come to terms with his political convictions, religious beliefs, and love for Fuller, an entanglement that ends in a startling act of betrayal. If the orchestration is extremely melodic. and accessible, this opera is further reinforced by an incredibly powerful libretto, not leaving the eye dry in the house.Sung in English with projected translations in English and Spanish

LAUDERHILL
Lauderhill Performing Arts Center
April 23, 2022, at 7:30 p.m.
April 24, 2022, at 2:00 p.m.
April 26 & 28, 2022, at 7:30 p.m.

Agrippina

By GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL

One of George Frideric Handel’s first lyrical compositions, Agrippina tells the story of one of the fiercest women in opera. Once she learns that her husband Claudius died in a storm at sea, Agrippina plots to secure the throne of the Roman Empire for her son Nero. This opera is filled with exciting music to show off the most impressive vocal fireworks, in addition to being performed by a traditional Baroque orchestra, using the instrumentation of the time. Underhanded plots, love and obsession with power, Agrippina is on par with all of today’s popular telenovelas. Sung in Italian with projected translations in English and Spanish

MIAMI
Miami Scottish Rite Temple
May 14, 2022, at 6:00 p.m.
May 15, 2021, at 2:00 p.m.
May 17 & 19, 2022, at 8:00 p.m.

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Opera singer

Obituary: Clare Peploe, director whose films were known for their quirky intelligence

by Maria A. Rodriguez on July 20, 2021

Death: June 23, 2021.

CLARE Peploe, who died of lung cancer at the age of 79, was a filmmaker with serious intentions, but whose work was endowed with a light touch and quirky acting that kept her away from the mainstream. Her three feature films as screenwriter and director were playfully nuanced studies of the rules of attraction in extremis. Although too fun to be considered arthouse, they never really found the commercial hiding place of other romantic comedies.

From her first feature film, High Season (1987), to her last directorial film, The Triumph of Love (2001), she merged the influences of late 20th century European cinema with English sensibilities and American. The results remain a bizarrely smart business.

Peploe’s cinematic work first began with Michelangelo Antonioni, whom she met when the Italian director entered the London party scene while preparing his swinging existential thriller, Blow Up (1966).

Peploe went on to become one of five screenwriters credited on Zabriskie Point (1970), Antonioni’s elementary hippie fable, which attempted to explore some of the era’s counter-cultural disaffection among young people. She also introduced him to the music of Pink Floyd, which was used in some of the film’s key moments. As a couple, Peploe and Antonioni have been together for eight years.

Peploe had a similar effect on Bernardo Bertolucci, whom she met around the time her controversial Marlon Brando with Last Tango in Paris (1972) was causing a stir. She then worked with him as an assistant director on his epic historical drama, 1900 (1976) as well as on Novecento (1976). The couple married in 1978 and were together until Bertolucci passed away in 2018.

Peploe co-wrote La Luna (1979), about an opera singer who has an incestuous affair with her teenage son in an attempt to wean him from heroin. She also co-wrote Besieged (1998), about a composer who falls in love with his African housekeeper. When he says he will do anything for her, she asks him to get her husband out of prison. Peploe also worked on the film as an associate producer.

Among his own films, including Rough Magic (1995), American critic Roger Ebert best summed up his work in his review of High Season, which starred Jacqueline Bisset as an expatriate photographer in Greece. It was, he said, “an example of a rare species: the smart stupid movie.”

Clare Frances Katherine Peploe was born in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, to English parents, William Peploe, a government official who later became an art dealer and director of the Lefevre Gallery in London, and Clotilde (née Brewster), a painter. Peploe, her sister Cloe and her brother Mark grew up first in Kenya, then Florence, Italy, and finally London.

Peploe became captivated by the cinema as a child, visiting the cinema with her mother between school at St Clare’s in Oxford and London’s independent college, Westminster Tutors.

She fell in love with the work of leading European authors such as Jean-Luc Godard while studying French at the Sorbonne in Paris and Italian at the University of Perugia. In the early 1960s, his travels abroad rang with the rise of the New Wave, whose influences fueled his own work.

It was as evident in her directorial debut, Couples and Robbers (1981), as it was two decades later in The Triumph of Love. Couples and Robbers was a half-hour short film starring Frances Low and Rik Mayall as a newly married couple who became car thieves after a lackluster marriage. The film was nominated for both Bafta and Oscars, and set the tone for Peploe’s canon to come.

High Season, co-written with his brother Mark, followed. Mark had previously worked with Antonioni on the screenplay for The Passenger (1975), and would continue to work with Bertolucci on The Last Emperor (1987), The Sheltering Sky (1990) and Little Buddha (1993).

Between films, Peploe directed Sauce for the Goose (1990), which was part of Chillers, an anthology series of short story adaptations by Patricia Highsmith. It starred Ian McShane as a salon singer who incites a woman to murder her hotel husband, although it is not known whether for love or for money.

Rough Magic (1995) starred Bridget Fonda and Russell Crowe in an adaptation of James Hadley Chase’s novel, Miss Shumway Waves a Wand. Set in the 1950s, Peploe’s film saw Fonda play an apprentice conjurer, who travels to Mexico to escape her politician fiance, and meets a Mayan shaman who gives him true magical powers. What initially looks like the stuff of a romantic screw-black leaps into more fantastic, if at times eminently silly, waters.

Peploe’s last work, The Triumph of Love, was an 18th-century romantic comedy based on Pierre de Marivaux’s 1732 play of the same name. It starred Mira Sorvino and Ben Kingsley and was produced by Bertolucci. Sorvino played the daughter of a usurper of the throne who falls in love with the rightful heir.

Despite the film’s classic roots, Peploe continued to have stylistically fun with the original material, with hand-held cameras and jump cuts giving a consciously modern take on Godard-inspired procedures. Much more than a simple tribute, the fusion of French film traditions revealed a witty, sometimes unrecognized talent whose work deserves closer examination.

She is survived by her brother Mark.

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Opera song

Obituary: Edward Berkeley, opera program director at Aspen Music Festival, 76

by Maria A. Rodriguez on July 20, 2021

Berkeley was born in New York and went on to become artistic director of the Willow Cabin Theater Company and director of the Aspen Opera Theater Center where he conducted classics and championed new operas including “Eliogabalo” and “Giasone” by Cavalli and new works by Bright Sheng, Augusta Read Thomas, Michael Torke, Mark-Anthony Turnage, HK Gruber and Bernard Rand.

He has also conducted the New York premieres of plays by Derek Walcott, Israel Horovitz, Terence McNally, Leonard Melfi, Louise Page and Tennessee Williams. He has also staged the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Houston Grand Opera, the Library of Congress, the Williamstown Theater Festival, the Old Globe Theater, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Atlanta Symphony and the festivals of Spoleto and Ravinia. Most notably, he directed the cover of the Tony-nominated play “Wilder, Wilder, Wilder” in 1993.

Berkeley also taught Shakespeare at Circle in the Square Theater School and Pace University. He has also been a visiting professor for the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera and a visiting professor at Carleton College, Princeton University and Williams College. He became a faculty member at The Juilliard School in 1987.

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