Criticultura em Portugal

The Kalevala is the Finnish national epic poem, compiled by a scholar in the 19 th century from myriad oral accounts collected from throughout Finland. It is a strange and gory epic, replete with incest, violence, heroes, and monsters. One portion of the epic deals with Kullervo, who is abused and sold into slavery by his parents, arranges for his abusive foster parents to be torn apart by wolves, rapes a girl who turns out to be his sister, and, consumed with remorse, lays waste to the countryside and finally commits suicide, falling on his implanted sword. All this carnage evokes memories of other Norse legends, Siegfried and the incestuous twins of Die Walküre . The young Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) set this tale in Kullervo , Op. 7 (1892). The work, previously unfamiliar to me, is a 70 minute orchestral tone poem in the tradition of Liszt, Smetana, and Richard Strauss, who had just completed his inaugural cycle (e.g. Don Juan , Death and Transfiguration ).  The five movem...

I have recently written acerbically about the politics dominating our modern arts scene. This is not a new phenomenon, however. On my recent trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, I saw two performances of works with clear political agendas, both at one of the famed Mariinsky theaters. One, the ballet Spartacus , fell to the level of the mediocre art on display at the Whitney Biennial (see my review here ). The other, the Shostakovitch opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District , raised political protest to the highest artistic level.  Spartacus is a bit of a relic. Set to music of Aram Khachaturian, it was a modern ballet that passed the Soviet government’s morality and political correctness code, at least on its second go round in 1968 with choreography by Bolshoi favorite Yuri Grigorovitch. This version is familiar to western audiences from frequent Bolshoi tours and TV broadcasts. But that was not the version that I saw at the St. Petersburg new Mariinsky theater. This compa...

Esa-Pekka Salonen is both one of the world's best conductors, and perhaps the best classical composer working. He is in residence in New York this year, conducting and composing. The NY Philharmonic concert Thursday night featured his conducting two "new" works, and a fine performance of Richard Strauss' tone poem  Also Sprach Zarathusra . The concert was unified by the composers' use of orchestral writing to depict natural or supernatural phenomena. The first "new" work was by Stravinsky. His Funeral Song, Op. 5 (1908) was forgotten soon after its premiere and was reconstructed from lost materials in the last decade. It had its second performance in 2016! It was composed in memory of the recently dead Rimsky-Korsakov. The 26 year old Stravinsky shows signs of his impending  The Firebird , with creepy orchestral string rumblings a bit strange for a funeral elegy, more sci fi than ceremonial. Forest: a concerto for four horns  is a new piece by British ...

The New York City Ballet has an interesting rule: it only performs works that were written for/debuted at the company. This means a focused repertory on 20-21st century works, since the company was founded by George Balanchine in the 1940's. But it is not a "modern ballet" company. Most works I have seen there have strong connections to romantic or classical ballet, reflecting the its founder Balanchine, the great 20th century choreographer who moved easily between classical and modern traditions. Many new works commissioned by the NYCB also reflect this tradition. I saw two programs this week, one of highly diverse Balanchine works, the other featuring Alexei Ratmansky (b. 1968) , perhaps the most renowned current choreographer. The contrast was interesting. Both began their careers in Russian classical ballet, both cross over between classical and modern ballet steps and staging, and both have a strong narrative sense, even in supposedly abstract, plotless ballets. Bu...

While attending the immensely enjoyable Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera, I reflected on why opera is often not so entertaining. Part of this is a mismatch of directors' vision with the essential nature of the operas. Let's take the three greatest opera composers: Wagner, Mozart, and Verdi. Wagner's operas are challenging, highly symbolic, prompt intellectual reflection, and often have too many ideas, notes, and minutes for their own good, similar to such filmmakers as Andrei Tarkovsky, Lars von Trier, and Kenji Mizoguchi. This makes Wagner's operas very open to interpretive, daring, allegorical, and symbolic productions. Mozart, much like film's Ingmar Bergman, strips his art down to the emotions and interactions of real people (Mozart much more optimistically than Bergman). Mozart opera directors are therefore wise not to interfere too much, and let us experience the human insights without over-interpretation. Verdi's operas have always seemed to me more en...