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What is Criticultura?

Criticulture returns, from Portugal

Welcome to my culture blog. I enjoyed writing this when I lived in New York City (you can research my countless reviews in the archives). The abundant culture there gave me lots to think and write about. Sadly, Covid put a pause on that vibrant culture, at least for a while, and so ended my blog. But I am ready to return, now from the lovely beach town of Cascais Portugal. I moved here with Max the cat three weeks ago. Cascais is near Lisbon, which will provide an easy hub for me to report on the vibrant cultural scene there, but also throughout Europe. That's what I plan to do in this reboot of Criticulture , now called  Criticultura .   I will blog every 1-2 weeks. For those of you new to this blog format, the platform includes options for translation, as well as the option to subscribe using  a feed reader. The prior option to receive email reminders has, sadly, been terminated.  I hope you will be a regular reader, and offer comments as well. I tend to be opinionated, and may t
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Mahler in Dresden, Tchaikovsky in London

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 A benefit of living in Europe is being able to duck in on a variety of big musical events when I go sightseeing. In the past couple months two such experiences proved particularly memorable.  In London I saw Swan Lake at the Royal Ballet in Covent Garden. As one would expect from this august company, the solo and corps dancing was superb and expressive. The sets were a bit musty and dowdy-appearing, even though designed during this century. The true star, though, was Tchaikovsky's dazzling ballet score. If Mozart was at heart a great opera composer, Tchaikovsky was at the core a top dance composer. It's in his ballet scores, esp. Swan Lake and  Nutcracker, that we can best hear his varied orchestration and relentless forward motion and pulse, essential in the dance. In this Swan Lake  the two principal soloists, Fumi Kaneko as Odette/Odile and Vadim Muntagirov as Prince Siegfried, acted and danced beautifully. They even made the confusing ending of the ballet work. Depending o
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Marvão Summer Music Festival, Part 2: Opera

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The highlight of my Marvão Festival weekend was the semi-staged version (acting, minimal sets) of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio , an overall musical and dramatic delight. I've always found Mozart to be a compelling opera composer, especially when his works are performed with lightness of touch and a bit of vulgar wackiness. He perhaps used humor to reveal human emotion and behavior better than any composer. This opera, composed in 1782 when Mozart was 26, is a lot of fun. The plot is more lucid than many from this era, involving the efforts of two young men to abduct their girlfriends who have been captured by the Turks and then imprisoned in the Pasha's seraglio (harem). The Turks were always on the minds of the Viennese, especially since the 1529 Siege of Vienna, in which the Viennese repulsed the Turks' efforts to capture the city (and western Europe). The siege remains as a prominent bit of European history, as you can see in museums throughout Austria and so
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Marvão Summer Music Festival, Part 1

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This is the time for summer music festivals, a ubiquitous and often-entertaining tradition that keeps European musicians employed in the off-season. Portugal has several, and last weekend I had the chance to sample the festival at Marvão, a small citadel town near the Spanish border. The festival is set in a scenic old fortress town with only 90-100 regular inhabitants. But the town's population swells due to tourists, especially during the two week July Music Festival, when concerts are held in various baroque churches, and large concerts in an open-air space in the castle, seen at the tip of the hill below.  I saw four concerts, all very affordable at 25 euros per ticket. Least memorable were the two chamber concerts held in churches. The "Concerto Barocco" by the Portuguese early instruments ensemble Os Musicos do Tejo featured pieces for instrumental ensemble and voices, mostly by Portuguese composers who were contemporaries of JS Bach (early 18th century). It's g
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Contemporary Theater in London and Lisbon

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On a recent trip to London I got caught up on some well-reviewed English language theater, infrequently available here in Portugal. At the Donmar in London, Anton Chekhov's  The Cherry Orchard , directed by Benedict Andrews, used judicious language updates to make the 1903 play more topical for today. There were allusions to Brexit, anti-immigrant bias, and income inequality. All were appropriate in a play that deals with a decaying aristocracy in the face of middle class opportunism. The plot deals with the threatened conversion of an estate's beloved cherry orchard into subdivided homes. Chekhov creates tension between the generational differences between the older aristocrats and the younger go-getters, and often shines a negative light on both groups. The play was set in an audience-surround style, with bright orange tribal-looking sets that appeared like something out of the Nijinsky Rite of Spring, and the characters dressed as aging hippies. I am not sure about the point
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Bach, Mozart, and Philip Glass in Sintra

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 Sintra is a delightful hill town west of Lisbon and a few miles north of my home in Cascais. It's home to many fancy palaces, where the royals and wealthy of Lisbon went in the past to escape summer heat.  Now Sintra is a suburban community that hosts lots of tourists, as well as an annual summer music festival. I recently saw two VERY different concerts there. The renowned pianist Andras Schiff is a Hungarian-born British pianist, now in his 70s, who these days specializes in Bach.  His Sintra recital featured Bach in the first half, and Mozart pieces mostly influenced by Bach in the second half. The recital was superb. Schiff uses very clean articulation and minimal pedal. While he cannot make the piano sound like a harpsichord, he accomplishes the clarity of its inner voices really well. There was no  printed program, and Schiff introduced each piece verbally (in English) in an engaging and intimate way, complete with little examples to explain what we were about to hear. This
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