If You See Only One Bollywood Musical ...
... make it Raavanan. It's coming to the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival on
It is the epitome of the genre, only bigger and more spectacular, and with better music than any other. As are all Bollywood epics, it’s also overblown, silly, and excessive, but it's so big — think Avatar without blue people — that it's not to be missed.
As far as the music is concerned, "excess" here is all to the good. Global-power composer A.R. Rahman is continuing in a secular setting Fateh Ali Khan's Qawwali ecstasy, as exemplified in his Jodhaa Akbar, but in Raavanan it's all on steroids and rocket fuel.
Invoking stories from the Ramayana (of Ravana, who kidnapped Rama's wife Sita) that depict jungle warfare between modern-day oppressors and the oppressed, and then bursting out in song and dance, the movie can’t skirt aspects of the farcical. Still, it's in the context of what has rightly been called "virtuoso kinetic filmmaking in whirling brilliant colors," on top of the quality of the music: so go!
Director Mani Ratnam made Tamil and Hindi versions of Raavanan, with a remarkable cast. Vikram has only one name but, portraying Veera, the bandit king, he is brilliantly multitalented. His opponent is a police inspector, played by the matinee idol (and minor thespian) Prithviraj.
Photo by Hoku Uchiyama (director of Upaj)
The inspector's wife, who is abducted by Veera, is Aishwarya Rai, a constant and glorious presence in Bollywood, only 37 but with a career of almost two decades. Rai is to Indian movies what Gong Li and then Zheng Ziyi have been in China, put together — seen at all times and everywhere.
Rai is at her usual best. It's not her fault that whenever she suffers a deep wound (there are a lot of those), in the next scene her (former) Miss World skin is intact. There are also flashbacks galore, to a fault. Ah, but the music!
Upaj
Also at the festival and also relating to Indian music, but with a different twist and from local filmmakers, is the world premiere presentation of Upaj (meaning improvisation) on March 18 in San Jose's Montgomery Theater.It is a brief, fascinating documentary about the intersection of Katakh and tap dance. Local Katakh dance master Chitresh Das, who is 63, and New York tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith, 23, link up for the India Jazz Suites tour, an artistic collaboration going beyond barriers of age, race, and culture.
Shot backstage as well as on the streets of India and the U.S., the film documents the tour and their ups and downs of the relationship between the two dancers. After the San Jose world premiere screening, Chitresh Das and Smith will perform on stage, and then engage in conversation with the audience.
Surrogate Valentine
Another music film at SFIAAFF is David Boyle's Surrogate Valentine, in the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas on March 17, and at San Jose's Camera 12 on March 20.It’s a "mock-rockumentary" about a guitar teacher by day, indie rocker by night, called "Goh." The role is taken by composer/performer Goh Nakamura, who is all that the fictitious Goh is. With "Daylight Savings," "Ulysses," and many other songs and albums, Nakamura is among the best, most widely appreciated indie rockers.
In the movie, he embarks on a strange, compelling journey, taking a Hollywood actor along and reconnecting with a friend, played by Lynn Chen, star of Boyle's previous SFIAAFF hit, White Rice.
Will Alsop Stay with Cabrillo Festival?
Approaching her 20th year as music director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Marin Alsop has always been a multitasker. After leaving the Colorado Symphony (1993-2005), she remained its music director laureate; following her 2002-2008 stint with the Bournemouth Symphony, she was named its conductor emeritus, even while becoming music director of the Baltimore Symphony in 2007.
But now, there is a challenge of long-distance travel, for last week she was appointed to the post of principal conductor of the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra in Brazil, succeeding Yan Pascal Tortelier. With up to 16 weeks in Baltimore, and 10 weeks in Brazil, in addition to guest-conducting in many venues, will spending a month in Santa Cruz be feasible for her?
Neither the 16 weeks nor the 10 are likely to be in one block, and the distance between the two locations is about 5,000 miles — 10,000 miles roundtrip. From Brazil to San Francisco, it’s another 6,500 miles. Alsop may well have the oomph to circle the world and conduct everywhere, but will she? Probably, at least for a while.
Great Orchestras in Service of the Young
Just as Berlin Philharmonic's Simon Rattle took time out during the orchestra's last visit to work with the students of the S.F. Conservatory of Music, the touring Vienna Philharmonic is sharing the wealth of its knowledge with UC Berkeley students while appearing with Cal Performances Feb. 25-28.
At Cal, Director Matías Tarnopolsky and the visitors from Vienna set up an extensive program for the benefit of the UC Berkeley and other music students from the area, teaching sectionals and master classes, and inviting them to a closed rehearsal of the Philharmonic with Semyon Bychkov. At the end of the event, students will have the opportunity to speak with the musicians.
For the Philharmonic's three Berkeley concerts, tickets are priced from $65 to $225. Back home, the orchestra's famed New Year's Eve and New Year's concerts have top prices of $1,168 and $1,525, respectively, so don't feel bad.
There are ways around the necessarily high prices: Half-price tickets are available to UC Berkeley students. Rush-ticket performances are not available for special events, but more $65 tickets have been made available, based on the principle Tarnopolsky explained in his interview with S.F. Classical Voice.
California Winners of YouTube Orchestra Auditions
California and New York tied for the largest number of audition winners to participate in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra performances next month in the Sydney Opera House, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. The 101-piece orchestra will spend a week of rehearsals and concerts March 14-20, with a final performance on March 20, which will be live-streamed around the world.
Thanks to San Francisco Symphony's Amelia Kusar, here's the list of "our winners," culled from the Web site:
Andrew Chilcote, double bass, from Irvine
Stephanie Lai, cello, from Palo Alto
Leyan Lo, violin, from Stanford
Daniel Sharp, piccolo, from San Francisco
Omar Shelley, viola, from SFS Youth Orchestra (audition here)
Junqi Tang, violin, from Los Angeles
Anna Witstruck, cello, from Stanford
Lai, originally from Taiwan, is Berkeley Symphony's assistant principal cellist, with degrees from Harvard and the Royal Northern College of Music. She has performed throughout the world as an avid chamber and orchestral musician, having served as principal cellist of the American Youth Philharmonic and the Pacific Music Festival Orchestra in Japan. In addition to her post at Berkeley Symphony, Lai also works as a grantmaking operations coordinator at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
MTT has selected Korean-German violinist Stefan Jackiw as the soloist for the March 20 concert.
Orphée Descending on Ensemble Parallèle
Novels and plays have served as the basis of music drama, especially opera, for ages. Then came something new, 38 years ago, with Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, a glorious musical version of a film, Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night. (Later, coming full circle, the musical was made into a movie, starring Elizabeth Taylor.)
Use of cinematic source material, such as Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard (1950 film into 1993 Broadway musical), has been repeated since, but it took the ever-experimenting composer Philip Glass to create an entire series of operas from classic movies by Jean Cocteau.
Before La Belle et la bête" (Beauty and the beast) and Les Enfants terribles (Children of the game), Glass first made an opera from Cocteau's 1949 Orphée (Orpheus). (Not to be confused with another French author's Black Orpheus; that was Marcel Camus.)
Orphée, which has one of Glass' more accessible scores, is presented this weekend by Music Director and Conductor Nicole Paiement's Ensemble Parallèle, directed and designed by Brian Staufenbiel. The same team's last production was Berg's Wozzeck.
Set in contemporary Paris, the movie is based on the Greek myth about the son of the god Apollo, whose most familiar exploit was to descend into the underworld to reclaim his dead wife, Eurydice.
Far from the straightforward story of the legend, the film and opera are both strange, bizarre creations. They involve a Princess (sung by Marnie Breckenridge), Eurydice (Susannah Biller), and a young poet (Thomas Glenn), along with other characters sung by John Duykers and Philip Skinner, as well as circus artists, in addition to Orphée himself, portrayed by Eugene Brancoveanu.
In one scene indicating the nature of Cocteau's approach to the story, the body of the murdered poet is driven in the Princess' car, with Orpheus and others along for the ride, as the car radio is playing abstract poetry, "in the form of seemingly meaningless messages, like those broadcast to the French Resistance from London during the Occupation."
Breckenridge, in her second appearance with Ensemble Parallèle (after singing David Conte's settings of Anne Sexton's poetry last fall), is enthusiastic about Paiement: "She breathes with the singers, infuses each phrase with feeling, and honors every note the composer wrote."
Her first role in a Glass opera, the soprano says, is especially exciting since "I get to play a regal woman who is in the driver's seat, so to speak. This gives me a break from some of the weaker, more victimized women, in my usual repertoire." Among those roles: Cleopatra, Gilda, Lucia, and Lulu — who all meet tragic ends, even while singing gloriously.
Would You Believe What an Opera-Mad Land This Is?
Opera is robustly alive around the Bay even while the San Francisco Opera is dark:
Opera San José: Rossini, The Barber of Seville
California Theatre, San Jose
Feb. 24, 26, and 27, $51 to $91, www.operasj.org
West Bay Opera: Puccini, Turandot
Lucie Stern Theatre, Palo Alto
Feb. 26 and Feb. 27, $35 to $60 [sold out], www.wbopera.org
Ensemble Parallèle: Philip Glass' Orphée
Herbst Theatre, San Francisco
Feb. 26 and 27, $25 to $85, www.ensembleparallele.com
Pocket Opera: Donizetti, The Elixir of Love
S.F. Marines Memorial, San Francisco
Feb. 27, $34 to $40, www.pocketopera.org
S.F. Conservatory of Music: Handel, Alcina
San Francisco, March 5 and 6, Free (but tickets required), www.sfcm.edu
Berkeley West Edge Opera: Bizet-Khuner-Streshinsky, The Carmen Fixation
Performing Arts Theater, El Cerrito, March 5, 9, and 13, $22 to $69, www.berkeleyopera.org
North Bay Opera: Verdi, Falstaff
Fairfield Center for Creative Arts, March 6, 10, and 12,
$10 to $42, www.etix.com
Martinez Opera: Bizet, Carmen (in Spanish)
Alhambra Performing Arts Center, Martinez, March 12,
$47 to $65, www.mtzo.com
Livermore Valley Opera: Puccini, Madama Butterfly
Bankhead Theater, Livermore
March 12, 13, and 20, $29 to $64, www.livermoreperformingarts.org
Castleton Festival Opera: Britten, The Rape of Lucretia, Albert Herring
Zellerbach Hall, UC-Berkeley, March 24, 25 (Lucretia); March 26 and March 27 (Herring)
$45 to $90, www.calperformances.org
Venerable Balboa Theater Joins HD-Nouveau
This is just a teaser because some details are still to come, but look out for a series of live opera and ballet high-definition simulcasts coming to the Balboa Theater, which is about to celebrate its 85th birthday.
Owner-operator Gary Meyer is planning to show Don Quixote from the Bolshoi Ballet (date pending); The Magic Flute from La Scala, March 24; Coppélia from the Paris Opera Ballet, March 28, coinciding with the San Francisco Ballet production. (Here, it's the George Balanchine choreography; in Paris, it’s Patrice Bart's.)
And more to come ...