It’s opera’s most predictable typecasting: every African-American baritone will eventually be asked to sing the role of Porgy in George Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess. The racially explicit casting was Gershwin’s firm instruction, but it does tend to point up how infrequently black baritones are asked to sing any role other than Porgy. For Gordon Hawkins, a 46-year-old baritone who has sung the role many times, the struggle is in finding a way to define Porgy as a man, rather than as a vaguely racist caricature. “He aims for nuance, some way to measure the man, not the facade… His Porgy has to have fire and flesh, he says. He’s not the beaten-down cripple that some find demeaning.”
Tag: 10.29.05
A Museum For All Seasons
“The National Building Museum turns a quarter-century old this fall, and tonight lots of folks will be celebrating underneath the stupendous Corinthian columns of the museum’s Great Hall. There is, indeed, much to celebrate… It is not an architecture museum. Not engineering, not city planning. Not a museum for stonemasons, sheet metal workers, steel fabricators, real estate developers, social historians, taste makers, apartment dwellers, homeowners and… the list is almost endless. But if the museum is not one of these things, it is all of them.”
East Meets West, and Art Emerges
“Natvar Bhavsar is a world-renowned painter from India whose huge, colourful canvases hang in more than 1,000 private corporate collections and museums, including the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.” But it took a while for the Western world to warm up to the American-educated Bhavsar’s work, which lean heavily on traditional Indian techniques blended with American abstract expressionism. These days, however, Bhavsar is one of New York’s most respected living artists, and his professional journey serves as a perfect allegory for the city’s legendary diversity.
The Future Of Jazz…
The hot new trend in jazz these days? Nothing, really. “Trends pass; record sales tail off, media attention wanders and the artificiality of it all is forgotten as quickly as its revealed. What’s real — the sort of jazz that goes where the musicians, not the industry, take it — is what endures.”
Batman Defeated By A Maus?
It may not be on the radar of most of the publishing industry, but a war for the hearts and minds of comic book readers is raging, pitting purveyors of traditional superhero-themed serials against the increasingly highbrow authors of book-length graphic novels. Increasingly, the highbrows are winning, and many comic sellers say that the old guard has only itself to blame. “[Superhero comics are] not being written for the traditional 13-year-old boy any more, but for a 40-year-old who wants to read what he read when he was 13… It’s still all guys in tights pounding each other.”
If It Ain’t Broke…
“At the press conference last season announcing her popular appointment as artistic director, Karen Kain was pointedly asked whether the National Ballet of Canada would be going ahead with plans to produce a new version of The Sleeping Beauty. Nimbly avoiding a definitive answer, the erstwhile ballerina reaffirmed her desire to preserve the company’s classical heritage. To some of her listeners, this was a polite way of saying no to her predecessor James Kudelka’s announced intention to re-make yet another of the full-length ballet classics in his own choreographic image… And as much as one might admire the creativity of James Kudelka, the closer we can come to experiencing such a work in its classic state, the better we are likely to understand its classic meaning.”
A Canadian Legend Says Goodbye
“William Hutt, 85, made his farewell appearance at the Stratford Festival [Friday] night, playing Prospero in The Tempest with such passion and commitment that it’s almost as if he wanted to leave a final mark that would never be forgotten on the stage he had trod for so many years. This wasn’t the tentative farewell of an old trouper heading off reluctantly to pasture or the feeble adieu of a once potent warrior. No, Hutt served notice to us all that he was leaving because, like every man, he had the right to choose his moment. His had finally arrived and he wanted it to be a memorable one.”
The 100 Scariest Things Ever
“99. Celebrities who write children’s books and celebrities who go to Iraq to write about the war… 84. David Cronenberg’s brain… 66. The chick lit avalanche… 21. Tied! Kathy Bates wielding a sledgehammer and Kathy Bates stepping into a Jacuzzi with Jack Nicholson… 7. December 1895, Paris: The Lumière Brothers give the first-ever public screening of a motion picture. A shot of an approaching train sends screaming audience members running for cover.”
The Prodigal Soprano
“When interviewing most singers, you first inquire about their roles, their interpretations, their inspiring teachers. Maybe, if you’re nervy enough, you query them about their love life. When talking with soprano Andrea Gruber, however, you first ask to see the tattoos… Gruber’s candor extends a lot further than a modest display of flesh or an admitted fondness for hip-hop.” She speaks openly of her struggles with drugs and her humiliating ouster from the Metropolitan Opera, and cites ’60s rocker Janis Joplin as one of her vocal influences. And she talks about what it took for her to leave her troubled past behind and rebuild all the bridges she had burned early in her career.
Broadway From The Inside Out
Talk to any Broadway veteran for a few minutes, and you’ll be sure to get an earful of the strange and wonderful behind-the-scenes world that most theatre-goers never get a chance to experience. So it’s almost surprising that an “inside Broadway” walking tour has only just sprung up in Manhattan. “Throughout the tour, one’s attention is brought to things even the most eagle-eyed pedestrian can miss. These include the comedy/tragedy gargoyles adorning the Lunt-Fontanne; the diminutive shoeprints of actress Helen Hayes in the sidewalk in front of the theater that bears her name; and the elaborate mural depicting various theater greats adjoining the Marriott Marquis Hotel.”