Thursday I went to the Paris Opera performance of Falstaff!!! Like Live at the Met in N.A. Singapore Lyric Opera sponsored the showing of Falstaff at the Paris National Opera in a movie theater here. There were 10 of us there! It was just fabulous to see.
I have to say the N.Y. production is much better. Here it was not high definition. Makes a huge difference. The shots are so close up it is great when they are so clear. The quality of singers was great. Marie-Nicole Lemieux (Canadian- Quebec) was Mrs. Quickly. She was superb. A great singer, a wonderful actor, and a hilarious comedian.
Falstaff is the last opera of Verdi's, taken from the Shakespeare Merry Wives of Windsor. I have to say I was constantly comparing to N.Y productions, and that is a VERY high standard. Just know that those gems in the theaters back where you are, are the best! I don't want to be negative and compare. It was sooo wonderful to see opera. I will devour every performance I can get here. The next production is a ballet set to Mahler's Third Symphony. New to me. I want to see them stuff the orchestra they will need in to the pit!
Friday I went to the symphony. The SSO did Elgar's violin concerto and Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss. The Elgar was good, great soloist but the Strauss was superb. This is a really good orchestra, and the hall is so good acoustically, that it sounded wonderful.
I love that piece. It is very challenging for all players. You can bet passages from this piece are on auditions. Technically very difficult. For the basses, aside from being a mitt full, leaps in to "nose bleed land" (very high on the fingerboard) Strauss wrote solo parts for all the string players. So at one point, the last stand of bass players are playing a SOLO! No one else, just the two bass players at the back of the section. You hardly can know where the sound is coming from. Then the next stand enters, and now the 4 are playing individual lines. Then on through the section and by the end he has added all the string players, and many individual voices, so the texture it magnificent. But for a bass player, particularly at the back of the section to have a solo!! Well!!!
Then, Saturday, a friend asked me to go to an art showing with her. At an amazingly gorgeous posh hotel downtown. On Sentosa Island. Think Toronto Island but wratch it up to megabucks. An artist from Israel, Yaacov Agam. He was 85 yesterday and on his 85th birthday gave a 2 hour talk on his art. It is difficult to describe, but absolutely fabulous. Maybe you can google him and get an explanation of what he does. Suffice to say he deals with time in art. "Now" is so fleeting. So if you look at a piece of his from the extreme left, you see something, then as you walk in front it changes, and to the right, a whole different thing. He uses 3 dimension in the piece and the idea is like a holograph. He calls then Agamographs. His mind is amazing!
He has done painting on buildings. So as you drive by, the painted wall changes colour. What you see in a split moment changes the next second! I was holding my friend's baby and rocking him, standing in front of one piece, and as I rocked back and forth, the piece of art wavered in to different colours.
He has done things on the computer, where you run your finger over the screen and coloured shapes sound a note. As you move your finger over the screen, the colour moves and passing other patterns on the screen, new sounds are made. So you can compose visual art and music, and it will never be the same twice. Not very good descriptions but amazing. Watch for Yaacov Agam coming to an art gallery near you!
Sunday a quiet day off. Mom here, missing her children on Mother's Day. Oh.
Ha, when I went off downtown to the concert, I grabbed some shoes out of a drawer to wear. Some cheapo H&M but I rarely wear closed shoes, and thought I would dress up for the concert. Got down to the bus, and saw I has a costume malfunction. The shoes were disintegrating on my feet. I guess it had to do with the humidity, but it was pretty funny. Dressed up for the concert and this is the best I can do!
I don't know if you can get the idea, but Agam's art was fantastic.
This one is called Galaxy and the circle is white as the moon, and then as you walk on, it becomes a rainbow.
Tomorrow I go to a lecture on Burma. Culture vulture I am.
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