Latest news with #CarlOrff
The National
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Carmina Burana review: Modern take on medieval musings is raw, ungainly, but ultimately infused with joy
You don't have to be a ballet buff to recognise the opening bars of Carmina Burana, currently being staged at Dubai Opera until May 24. Ominous and powerful, the music of O Fortuna - that opens and closes this ballet - has become instantly familiar thanks to its overuse on the silver screen. It has been used in Excalibur (1981) The Doors (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994) - plus countless advertisements, from instant coffee and Old Spice aftershave to Gatorade. So famous is its opening fanfare, in fact, that any performance risks being upstaged by its own overture. Yet, at Dubai Opera — where Carl Orff's piece is being staged by Edward Clug, the artistic director of the Slovenian National Ballet — the sparse, sinuous production ignores the cliche and returns the music to what it is: an exploration of the human spirit. Clug's interpretation is so visually and emotionally arresting that he is able to restore the music to its rightful place of being terrifyingly beautiful. Composed in 1936 by Orff, Carmina Burana is inspired by 11th and 12th century Bavarian manuscripts, written by hedonistic, wandering student-poets known as goliards. Although scholars now question this attribution, it remains a meditation on the human experience: the intoxication of love and the absurdities of life, against the omnipresent hand of fate. Divided into chapters, each deal with a different emotion that remains as relevant today as when it was written 700 years ago. Love, sensuality, the awakening of earthly pleasures, as well as cynicism, spiritual desolation and parody, are all overshadowed by fortune's wheel that hangs menacingly over the stage. This circular motif is repeated through the dance too - as a tightly packed circle, each dancer leaning on the next; as a vast loop covering the stage, the dancers linked just the tips of their fingers; or as individuals, who spin in tight, compact spirals. It signals the ticking of time and a continuous thread that binds us all together. The entire set is likewise a giant circle, part halo, part enclosure and ever-present. Sometimes playful, as when two dancers embrace in a field of legs, moving in the breeze. It can be foreboding, descending almost onto the dancer's heads, this reduction echoing the poem's monastic origins. Yet, despite the brevity, this is a work of surprising tenderness and sensuality, as well as wit, such as when the dancers shiver with insect-like twitches. Clug's taut choreography is beautiful, as a tender embrace, and also difficult to watch, as awkward flailings or rigid tension. It is also demanding, with the dancers, led by Evgenija Koskina, and a 30-strong cast, including Asami Nakashima, Catarina De Meneses and Tijuana Krizman Hudernik, on stage almost every moment. But the raw essence of humanity being laid bare before us is what makes Clug's staging so powerful – it is raw, ungainly and ugly, but also exquisite and infused with joy. Despite the incidental fame of O Fortuna, the rest of the piece is grounded in an almost medieval spirituality that is powerful and sinewy to behold. Clug's work is a reminder that great art, when entrusted to the right hands, will always be astonishing. Carmina Burana is at Dubai Opera until May 24.
Korea Herald
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Dance takes over Busan beaches as International Dance Festival returns in June
For five days in early June, Busan will transform into a sprawling stage as the 21st Busan International Dance Festival brings contemporary movements to its beaches, cinemas and cultural centers. Running June 4 - June 8, the festival is set to fill the city's early summer beaches and urban landscape with the vibrant energy of dance from around the world. This year, more than 30 works will be performed by approximately 300 artists from 10 companies representing 15 countries. Performances will take place at landmark venues including a special stage on Haeundae Beach, the Busan Cinema Center, Gwangalli Beach and the Busan Education Arts and Culture Center for Students. Headlining the festival is "Carmina Burana," a dramatic work set to the music of Carl Orff and choreographed by the internationally renowned Tamas Juronics. The piece, performed by Hungary's celebrated Szeged Contemporary Dance Company, will be staged three times from June 5 to 7 at the Busan Cinema Center. "Carmina Burana" tells the story of a young woman fated to a short and harsh life, who dreams of a new world after encountering the unexpected gift of love. A signature work in SCDC's repertoire, "Carmina Burana" has been performed over 500 times worldwide and has drawn more than 200,000 audience members. Its Busan stage marks its Asian premiere.
Los Angeles Times
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Everything you need to know about ‘Carmina Burana,' Hollywood's go-to music for epic movie moments
This Sunday, the Los Angeles Master Chorale will fill the sails of Walt Disney Concert Hall with that stormy, earwormy cantata by Carl Orff: 'Carmina Burana.' The chorale will be joined by an orchestra and two children's choruses, and will also perform the world premiere of Reena Esmail's 'Jahaaṅ: Five Indian Folk Songs.' 'Carmina Burana' is a mainstay of the classical repertoire and one of the most widely recognizable concert works of the 20th century. But what exactly is it — and why do choirs keep returning to this 'circle of fortune'? Here is everything you need to know about 'Carmina Burana.' Where have I heard this before? Oh, maybe in millions of movie trailers during the last 40 years (an exaggeration but barely). The marriage of 'Carmina' and cinema arguably started in 1981 with the film 'Excalibur,' which indelibly used the opening movement 'O Fortuna' as King Arthur rides into battle with his knights. The medieval context was appropriate, but it also robustly demonstrated how damned epic and cinematic this old song was — and the entertainment world, which was beginning an arms race for epicness, started using 'O Fortuna' (the cantata's most famous movement, which bookends the hourlong work) in anything and everything as basically a shot of musical steroids. Oliver Stone needle-dropped it in 'The Doors,' in a scene where Jim Morrison drinks blood in a pagan ritual. (Ironically, the Doors' keyboard player, Ray Manzarek, did a bizarre rock cover of 'Carmina Burana' in 1983.) It was used in countless trailers in the '80s and '90s — from 'Glory' to 'Waterworld' to 'The Nutty Professor.' The latter was an example of how the overuse of this overwrought oratorio made it perfect fodder for parody, and the humor of juicing something comedic with its uber-seriousness. In that spirit, 'O Fortuna' was used in a huge variety of commercials — from Old Spice to Carlton Draught beer — not to mention multiple times in 'The Simpsons.' But many artists continued to take the piece seriously and deployed it to persuade us to take them super seriously. Michael Jackson used it in a montage of his international concerts and the hysteria they produced; rappers and hip-hop artists have sampled it — see: 'Hate Me Now' by Nas — and lots of sports teams have used it to hype up the home crowd. These days, you're most likely to hear 'O Fortuna' used ironically in a TikTok video. Who wrote it: when, where and why? Carl Orff composed 'Carmina Burana' in 1936, drawing upon a disparate collection of poetry and songs, mostly in Latin and mostly by anonymous writers. Dating as far back as the 11th century, these pieces had been discovered in a Bavarian monastery in 1803. The German composer, whose work often plumbed the ancient past, came across them in 1934. He was spellbound. 'Right when I opened it,' Orff reflected, 'on the very first page, I found the long-famous illustration of 'Fortune With the Wheel,' and under it the lines: 'O Fortuna velut Luna statu variabilis…' The picture and the words took hold of me. 'A stage work with choruses for singing and dancing, simply following the pictures and text, sprang to life immediately in my mind,' he said, and he feverishly produced a musical story in 25 chapters for massive choir, soloists and bombastic orchestras. Organized in three parts — 'Primo Vere' (Spring), 'In Taberna' (In the Tavern) and 'Cour d'Amours' (The Court of Love) — it is an alternately tempestuous, frolicking and romantic tour of life, musically recalling Bavarian folk music, drinking songs and love ballads, but all framed with the pounding war cries of 'O Fortuna.' How was it received when it premiered? It was a hit! The work was premiered by the Frankfurt Opera in June 1937, with costumed performers and sets. (It eventually morphed into a pure concert piece.) The reviews in Germany were good, and it was soon given hundreds of performances in Orff's homeland. It took two decades to reach America — premiering at Carnegie Hall in June 1954 — but it quickly seized hold in the classical scene here, very rapidly becoming the most performed, and most recorded, choral compositions of the century. Why was it controversial? Orff wrote the piece in Germany during the Nazi regime, and it was very popular with the Nazis — harmonizing uncomfortably well with their testosterone-fueled propaganda. Orff was never a member of the Nazi party himself, but it's unclear how cozy he was with the people who first embraced his cantata. Another reason is that, if you can translate Latin, some of the lyrics are quite bawdy and politically retrograde. (Example: 'My virginity makes me frisky / My simplicity holds me back.') So ... should I not bring my kids? To each their own, but musically speaking, 'Carmina Burana' is one of the more accessible and infectious concert works of the last century, and it has been a gateway drug for many generations into the larger ocean of classical music. Your kids may have even heard 'O Fortuna' somewhere already, and they'll probably tell you — happily — that it sounds like movie music. What has it influenced? Not only has 'O Fortuna' been used in tons of movies, but its influence is apparent in so many Hollywood film scores, which have routinely used beefy choirs and giant orchestras to approximate a similar feeling. Think of the devilish 'Ave Satani' in Jerry Goldsmith's 'The Omen' score or John Williams' 'Duel of the Fates' from 'The Phantom Menace.' Fun fact: When Stanley Kubrick was deciding on the musical approach for '2001: A Space Odyssey,' he gravitated toward 'Carmina Burana' so much that he actually rang Orff up and asked him to compose the film's score. Orff, then 71, turned him down.
