Criticultura em Portugal

Tuesday’s amazing performance by Concerto Italiano of Claudio Monteverdi’s opera L'Incoronazione di Poppea (1643) at Carnegie Hall reminded me that 17 th century genius was not limited to Galileo, Newton, Caravaggio, and Shakespeare. Monteverdi is often credited with moving music from the Renaissance to the Baroque period, and if not the inventor of opera, he certainly popularized and refined it as a new art form. But of the great geniuses of music, Monteverdi often seems the most unfamiliar to modern audiences. His madrigals, rich in Italian language and nuanced phrasing, are too difficult for amateurs and school madrigal groups; only 3 of his 18 operas survive, and these do poorly in large, conventional opera houses. So sadly, Monteverdi performances are usually limited to niche early music festivals and societies. It was wonderful to see his last piece superbly performed before a large and appreciative Carnegie Hall audience, even if the venue was just a bit too large and re...

I attended a nice performance of Shakespeare's As You Like It  (ca. 1559) last week while on a business trip to Washington DC. The streets were eerily quiet, as the play coincided with the beginning of the Super Bowl, reminding me of a past trip to Paris in which it appeared the population had transiently vanished during a match of the French national soccer team. It seems that only sports get that kind of unifying hold on the general population these days. The Folger Shakespeare Library is one of the world's great repositories of Shakespeare documents, and hosts a well established theater company to boot. Performances are held in a smallish theater constructed in the style of the Old Globe, i.e. big central space (here with seats, not standing patrons), and surrounding wrap-around balconies. At the Folger the effect is rather too dark, as all the surfaces are from a dark polished wood, making the interior a bit rich for what Shakespeare would have expected for his crowd-plea...

La La Land   is making a big run at the Oscar for Best Picture this year, remarkable for a film musical, a genre that mostly expired long ago ( Hairspray and the unlikely  Björk /Lars von Trier Dancing in the Dark  are exceptions). I think this movie does a nice job of updating this form. It did not inspire me in the end, but I thought there were some truly excellent elements of it that give some hope to those of us who like singing and dancing to accompany acting.   The strongest aspect of the film is its visual look. The very opening shows us how vibrant color will be a dominant feature. Director Damien Chazelle puts his cards right out on the table by daringly beginning with a jazzy introductory production number excitingly executed on top of gridlocked, vibrantly multicolored dancers and cars framed against a grey backdrop of freeways and brown hills so familiar to those of us who grew up in LA.   When composers start us right off with an uptempo choru...