Who needs a MOJITO time?- Page 177

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:10pm

I received my recording. I anticipate being released from work and listening to it soon!

[NYadgal]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:11pm

I listened to mine all weekend... beautiful.

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:25pm

perpetual anticipation

[NYadgal]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:28pm

ah, but satisfaction is sweet!

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:30pm

satisfaction is a vice, Sister Addy!

[NYadgal]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:34pm

What kind of a world are you making me live in, Cookie?

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:37pm

Sister Aloysius'

[NYadgal]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:39pm

I want no part of that world!

I want enthusiasm and art and most of all, I want FROSTY!

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:42pm

you are such a secular Mother Superior!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:43pm

Ugh. I have to go to a black-tie event tonight and listen to ENDLESS SPEECHES. And the more wine they pour, the more I'm likely to sound off to the CEO.

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:44pm

spiffy but icky, PJ?

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:44pm

Will the food be any good?

[NYadgal]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:47pm

I have rehearsal.

...Cookie, I have often felt that many secular activities are sacred.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:49pm

Addy - how often do you have rehearsals?

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:49pm

Addy: God, that's good...

[NYadgal]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:50pm

Every Monday. With additional rehearsals as the concert approaches.

My next concert is April 20th.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:55pm

Are all performances at CH?

[NYadgal]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:57pm

Cookie, my Heavens!

[NYadgal]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 5:58pm

Yes, brdlwyr, they're all at Carnegie.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 6:04pm

I assume mo mojitos before rehearsal:

[NYadgal]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 6:04pm

SHAMELESS PLUG:

April 20, 2005 – Shakespeare and Verdi

Program Notes by Robert W. Gutman
The famous folio of 1623 entitled Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies Published according to the True Original Copies included a poem by the poet-dramatist’s old friend and rival, Ben Jonson; it celebrated Shakespeare as the “Soul of the Age,” his works as destined to endure “for all time” and rival those of Sophocles. The appearance of this collection of plays established Shakespeare as England’s greatest dramatist and poet, a position thereafter never seriously challenged. Even in the face of the expurgations and additions inflicted on his texts in the course of the seventeenth century, they, whatever the version, continued to grow in favor: actors clung to his gallery of rich parts, and the public did not tire of revisiting them, an extraordinary popularity to all seeming without end: indeed, in 1750 Shakespeare still constituted a significant percentage of the repertory of London’s theaters, and, with the rise of the star actor-director-manager, David Garrick, a cult of Shakespeare – bardolatry – sprang up: Shakespeare became a craze and also big business; Shakespeare on the boards made money.

No less remarkable was the spread to the Continent of what was becoming a surging movement. Translations of the plays had begun to appear in France, Germany, and Italy. The infatuation intensified, the young, in particular, falling captive to his genius.

In Hamlet Polonius’s oft-quoted listing of dramatic genres – “tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral,” etc. – concludes with the phrase “poem unlimited,” a description of the very work in which he is a character. Hamlet represents, in fact, an ultimate archetype of Shakespearean style, which, luxuriating in diversity, contrasts acutely with the long venerated and austere classical manner associated with such masters as Corneille and Racine. Youth hastened to embrace the exciting “unlimited,” so-called “open” Shakespearean world of startling variety and inclusion. The difference between the chiseled French tirade and the tractable Shakespearean soliloquy tells this tale of antithesis strikingly.

In Italy, with the invention and rise of opera (in Shakespeare’s day), it, not the spoken play, became the major dramatic genre of the nation. If the traditional classic spirit had persisted in Tasso and Guarini, by the eighteenth century the most prominent authors of Italian drama, Zeno and Metastasio, were not playwrights but opera librettists. Their successors in the nineteenth century for the most part worked in the Shakespearean spirit. At times they turned to the bard’s plays themselves as material for musical setting, even as the translation of August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s commentaries from German into Italian further stimulated the passion for Shakespeare, and such Shakepearean actors as Ernesto Rossi and Tommaso Salvini rose to prominence. It was Salvini’s reading of Othello that inspired Verdi to turn the tragedy into an opera.

To an amazing degree, the Italian aria became imbued with the free-ranging romantic eloquence of the Shakespearean soliloquy. Here Verdi excelled, as he did in the impulsive Shakespearean thrust animating his ensembles and connecting musical tissue. Though words are short and music long, he easily reproduced Shakespeare’s fleet pace. To Berlioz and Wagner, Shakespeare was no less a god and inspirer, but Verdi, more tellingly than both, gained possession of his particular power, ardor, and aura.

The program presented tonight by The Collegiate Chorale reveals that remarkable affinity uniting composer and poet. Verdi had hoped to set to music “all the most important plays of the great tragedian,” especially The Tempest and King Lear. But practical considerations governing opera houses precluded this ambition; moreover, in the case of his shipwrecked attempts at Lear, no doubt awe and with it a groundless sense of inadequacy carried weight. Nonetheless, what Verdi did accomplish in his communion with Shakespeare --- Macbeth, Otello, and Falstaff – offers magnificent compensation.


Program
SHAKESPEARE & VERDI: ACT ONE

Introduction – by Charles Osborne

OTHELLO: Act One, scene three (Shakespeare)

[DUKE OF VENICE: Roger Rees; OTHELLO: Richard Easton]

OTHELLO: Act Three, scene three (Shakespeare)

[EMILIA: Dana Ivey; IAGO: Roger Rees; OTHELLO: Richard Easton]

OTELLO: Act One (Verdi)

[MONTANO: Ryan McKinny, bass; CASSIO: Richard Cox, tenor; IAGO: Mark Delavan, baritone; RODERIGO: Rodell Aure Rosel, tenor; OTELLO: Lando Bartolini, tenor; DESDEMONA: Kallen Esperian, soprano; CYPRIOTS: The Collegiate Chorale]

Intermission

SHAKESPEARE AND VERDI: ACT TWO

Part One - MACBETH

MACBETH: Act Four, scene one (Shakespeare)

[FIRST WITCH: Dana Ivey; SECOND WITCH: Roger Rees; THIRD WITCH: Richard Easton]

MACBETH: Act Three, scene one, “Witches Chorus” (Verdi)

[WITCHES: The Collegiate Chorale]

MACBETH: Act One, scene five (Shakespeare)

[LADY MACBETH: Dana Ivey; MESSENGER: Roger Rees; MACBETH: Richard Easton]

MACBETH: “Lady Macbeth’s Drinking Song” from Act Two Finale (Verdi)

[MACBETH: Mark Delavan, baritone; LADY MACBETH: Cynthia Lawrence, soprano; DAMA: Susanna Phillips, soprano; MACDUFF: Richard Cox, tenor; GUESTS: The Collegiate Chorale]

MACBETH: Act Two, scene one (Shakespeare)

[MACBETH: Richard Easton]

MACBETH: Act One Finale (VERDI)

[MACDUFF: Richard Cox, tenor; BANCO: Ryan McKinny, bass; LADY MACBETH: Cynthia Lawrence, soprano; MACBETH: Mark Delavan, baritone; DAMA: Susanna Phillips, soprano; MALCOLM: Rodell Aure Rosel, tenor; GUESTS: The Collegiate Chorale]

Part Two - FALSTAFF

HENRY IV Part Two: Act Four, scene three (Shakespeare)

[FALSTAFF: Richard Easton; LANCASTER: Roger Rees]

FALSTAFF: “L’onore” from Act One, part one (Verdi)

[FALSTAFF: Mark Delavan, baritone]

MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR: Act Five (Shakespeare)

(Beside Herne’s Oak in Windsor Forest)

[FALSTAFF: Richard Easton; MISTRESS FORD: Dana Ivey; MISTRESS PAGE: TBA]

FALSTAFF: “Ninfe! Elfi!” and “Sul fil d’un soffio e tesio” (Verdi)

[NANETTA: Heidi Grant Murphy, soprano; FALSTAFF: Mark Delavan, baritone; ALICE: Susanna Phillips, soprano; MASKERS AS FAIRIES: The Collegiate Chorale]

TOAST TO SHAKESPEARE’S BIRTHDAY – in three days time on April 23rd - from “Ode to Shakespeare” (1769) (David Garrick)

[Richard Easton and Dana Ivey]

FALSTAFF: “Tutto nel mondo è burla” from Act Four Finale (Verdi)

[FALSTAFF: Mark Delavan, baritone; FENTON: Richard Cox, tenor; DAME QUICKLY: Marietta Simpson, mezzo soprano; ALICE: Susanna Phillips, soprano; PISTOLA: Ryan McKinny, bass; MEG: Sarah Bleasdale, mezzo soprano; BARDOLFO: Rodell Aure Rosel, tenor; NANETTA: Heidi Grant Murphy, soprano; FORD: TBA, baritone; DR. CAUIS: TBA, tenor; MASKERS: The Collegiate Chorale]


Dana Ivey
Broadway: The Rivals, Henry IV, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Major Barbara, Heartbreak House (Tony nomination), Last Night of Ballyhoo (Drama Desk Award and Tony Nomination), Sunday in the Park (Tony Nomination), Present Laughter, Pack of Lies, Waiting in the Wings, Marriage of Figaro, Sex and Longing, Indiscretions. Off-Broadway: Driving Miss Daisy (Obie and Outer Critics Circle Awards), Quartermaine’s Terms (Obie and Derwant Awards), Kindertransport, Beggars in the House of Plenty, The Uneasy Chair, Tartuffe, Hamlet. Regional: The Death of Papa, Antigone, Hedda Gabler, The Miracle Worker, Misalliance, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Patio/Porch, Major Barbara. Canada: The Philanderer and Great Catherine (Shaw Festival), Touch of the Poet, Electera, The Maids, The Homecoming, Total Eclipse, The Innocents, Blithe Spirit, Galileo, Charley’s Aunt. London: In the Summerhouse. Television: A Lesson Before Dying (HBO), Easy Street, Oz, Homicide, Frasier. Films: Legally Blonde 2, Two Weeks Notice, The Kid, Addams Family, Home Alone 2, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Sabrina, Simon Birch, Imposters, Mumford, Color Purple.

Richard Easton
RICHARD EASTON received the 2001 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love and later did Sir Tom’s and Andrè Previn’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favor with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Also on Broadway: The Rivals, Henry IV, Noises Off, Exit the King, The Misanthrope, The Cherry Orchard, Cock-a-Doodle Dandy, Hamlet, Back to Methuselah, The Country Wife and The School for Scandal. Off-Broadway: Observe the Sons of Ulster, Give Me Your Answer, Do; Waste; Hotel Universe; and Salad Days. Lots of Shakespeare! In England: Edgar and Claudio (John Gielgud-Peggy Ashcroft). At the RSC - Ghost, Don Armado (Roger Rees - Hamlet and Berowne), Theseus, Camillo, Northumberland, Constable of France. With Kenneth Branagh: Jaques, Claudius and Leonato. Richard II (OxfordPlayhouse), Caliban (Edinburgh). In Canada - Hamlet (twice) Aufidius, Hortensio, Roderigo (CBCTV, Othello - Lorne Greene). For Stratford, Connecticut - Claudio (Measure), Lucentio, Roderigo, Romeo, Puck, Osric, Florizel, Claudio (Much Ado) and Launcelot Gobbo (Katharine Hepburn - Beatrice/ Portia). At San Diego’s Old Globe: Macbeth (with Sada Thopmpson) Brutus, Claudius (Campbell Scott Hamlet), Gloucester, Touchstone, Henry IV, Iago, Prospero, etc. Films: Henry V, Finding Forester, Dead Again and assorted TV including Benjamin Franklin in the PBS Emmy-winning mini-series.

Roger Rees
Roger Rees’ Broadway credits include Uncle Vanya; The Rehearsal; Indiscretions, for which he earned Tony and Drama Desk nominations; and Nicholas Nickleby, for which he earned Tony and Olivier Awards, as well as an Emmy nomination. His Off-Broadway appearances include Lincoln Center’s A Man of No Importance; Jon Robbie Baitz’ End of the Day, for which he won an Obie Award; The Uneasy Chair; The Misanthrope; and Trumbo. As Associate Artist for the RSC, Mr. Rees held the title role in Hamlet and appeared in Love’s Labours Lost; Cymbeline; Much Ado About Nothing; Three Sisters; The Suicide; and Nicholas Nickleby. Other London credits include Stoppard’s The Real Thing; Hapgood; as well as in his own Double Double, co-authored with Eric Elice.

Mr. Rees was Associate Artistic Director of the Bristol Old Vic from 1985-86. Recently, he directed OZ for HBO. On stage, Mr. Rees directed Arms and the Man (Roundabout); Love’s Labours Lost; The Merry Wives of Windsor (Old Globe); The Late Middle Classes; The Taming of the Shrew; The Rivals; The Film Society (Williamstown); Mud; River; Stone (Playwrights); Here Lies Jenny (Zipper Theatre); and The Collegiate Chorale’s Kurt Weill Evening with Bebe Neuwirth, and An Evening of American Operetta with Anna Christy and Daniel Narducci at Alice Tully Hall.

Updated On: 4/4/05 at 06:04 PM

[NYadgal]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 6:05pm

Mojitos for everyone who actually took the time to read that!

*eyes crossed*

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 6:06pm

Wow -

See my post above: 7 seconds apart. (7 Seconds is a metal band that my brother-in-law toured with years ago)

I am off to the store and then home.

Sing well.

[NYadgal]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 6:31pm

*sets out coffee for everyone who went into a coma reading that post...*

See you all tomorrow. Or later.

Cheers.

[DAME]

Posted: 4/4/05 at 7:16pm

Hi Addy. How was the weekend? What was your opinion on the shows you saw?