Latest news with #Eurydice
Scotsman
30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
EIF opera Orpheus and Eurydice to feature 'acrobats doing very dangerous things'
If you think opera staging is mannered and boring, wait until you see this production of Orpheus and Eurydice, writes Ken Walton Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Yaron Lifschitz has serious issues with opera. 'Some of it is excruciating,' he declares, which you'd reckon should worry the pants off the Edinburgh International Festival. After all, the affable founder and director of the Australian contemporary circus group Circa is the mastermind behind this year's flagship opera production of Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice, and here he is, revealing his 'dirty secret – that I've no knowledge of Debussy past 20 minutes of Pelléas et Mélisande because I've never remained awake long enough to hear it. I get bored very easily.' The thing is, it's not so much opera that's the problem as its mannered traditions, Lifschitz argues. 'Opera at its core is a covers band, people doing other people's music, singing in a way they were told to sing, about stuff they were told to do with a great apparatus and significant amount of funding, devoted to essentially keeping the art fairly sclerotic, inured to change. It's not the operas that are boring, but the lack of compelling ways to do them.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Orpheus and Eurydice Received wisdom, he suggests, has stifled instinct. 'I love working on Monteverdi, for instance, and one of the things I used to ask was, how could there be a set way of singing this if it was the first of its kind? Back in the 17th century it would just have been people who sang as they felt inclined, so maybe we should just go back to that rather than everyone sounding like they went to the same academy for stifling joy and creativity. I have to say I was howled down by a bunch of people who'd been to that academy and in some cases ran it.' So yes, Lifschitz is a maverick, an inquisitive free spirit who has nonetheless proved his worth in imaginative cross-genre productions that challenge the norm, including this collaborative Orpheus and Eurydice. Unveiled in Brisbane in 2019, this summer's European premiere production at the Edinburgh Playhouse draws together the original combined resources of Circa and Opera Queensland with Opera Australia, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Scottish Opera Chorus, conducted by period music specialist Laurence Cummings. That Gluck himself was a reforming phenomenon, freeing 18th century opera of its stilted affectations and even adapting his most famous opera to suit opposing Viennese and Parisian tastes, clearly appealed to Lifschitz, and needless to say, he's taken brazen liberties. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The traditional frontline cast of three has been reduced to two, the role of Eurydice (Australian/British soprano Samantha Clarke) now conflated with that of Amor. The first sighting of Orpheus (countertenor Iestyn Davies) is in an asylum. 'My basic interpretation of the piece is that on their wedding night Eurydice dies, possibly at Orpheus's hands,' Lifschitz explains. Orpheus and Eurydice 'I'm not suggesting any ill will. Maybe they took the wrong substances to celebrate their wedding night; he wakes up in a mental institution and has no recollection of what happened. It becomes a process of memory, journeying into the Underworld. Every woman looks like her, every man is an extension of him and it probably doesn't end well. I don't want to give a spoiler, but it's opera: generally she dies, and he might.' What then of Circa's circus performers, whose virtuosic acrobatics – devised jointly by Lifschitz and fellow choreographer Bridie Hooper – provide an aligned counterpoint to the entire piece? They are, says the director, essential to his 'poetic' vision of the opera, part of 'a constant play with foregrounding and backgrounding' that respects both the polished classicism of Gluck's piece and its emotional volatility, 'that mixture of hope and fear that reminds us we're alive'. 'Working with the artists back in Brisbane on the physical embodiment of the production, the thing I keep coming back to is you have to feel a lot and show very little. Sometimes it just oozes out, sometimes the floodgates open and explode into acrobatics, but then it very quickly turns back into its classical form.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Of course, that's just the circus contingent. Is Lifschitz also expecting his singing cast to turn cartwheels? Opera Australia; Orpheus + Eurydice; Dress Rehearsal; JST; January 2024 'We're putting very experienced opera singers in fairly uncomfortable and difficult positions, very close to acrobats doing very complex and dangerous things,' he admits. How does that go down with Iestyn Davies, appearing in his first ever staged Orpheus? 'I've watched a video of the original production and know that late on in the show I have to stand on someone's shoulders,' says the English countertenor, who will eventually join the troupe for a final nine days of rehearsal. 'The biggest challenge for any singer in such a physical show is getting the breathing worked out.' Working with new people is healthy for the production, Lifschitz believes. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Every staging is different. They're all based on the same choreography, the same ideas, but when only half the artists have performed this production before – as in Edinburgh – you use that opportunity to freshen things up.' Is there one thing he'd like audiences to take away from this Orpheus? 'That's something I've thought about very carefully,' he says. 'Circa brings a show to the Fringe every year – this year we're bringing Wolf – and we have a specific following. But for an International Festival production like this I feel we have to appeal to two different audiences simultaneously. 'I'd like an opera audience to come along and think 'Wow, this is so alive', where the operatic norms of music meeting dramaturgy exceed and challenge expectations. And I'd love circus audiences to go and sense that this is richer, touches bigger emotions, moves them even more profoundly than straight circus. I want everyone to walk out of the performance at the end of the day and think it would be difficult to figure this opera any other way. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad And the litmus test? 'Circus is written with one huge commandment – Thou Shalt Not Bore! When you come out of Orpheus you may love it, you may hate it, but you won't be bored.'
Forbes
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Carlie Hoffman's One More World Like This World
One More World Like This World by Carlie Hoffman The trouble with reviewing One More World Like This World, poet Carlie Hoffman's third and most ambitious collection, is that what Sir Christopher Ricks calls 'reviewery' is in trouble. Hoffman has numerous accolades including the Discovery/Boston Review Prize, Poets & Writers Amy Award, and National Jewish Book Award, so her work garners the attention it should, but the American literati is strangely apt to describe even established poets' work in terms of simple themes, cultural politics, and gnomic non-sequiturs that border on Tarot. While this might be tempting in One More World's case – the book's central conceit involves the Eurydice myth – it misses what the book actually does. One More World is a sustained experiment in constructing a coherent personal register from grand forms – technical, sacrificial, mythological, memorial – and its accomplishment involves the translation of High Modernism into a lyric mode. Poet Carlie Hoffman Consider Eurydice. For one of Hoffman's reviewers, her use of 'mythology illuminates the timelessness of female oppression.' This reading reduces Euridice to the allegorical and therefore to the banal, quite the opposite of what Hoffman does. Such an ambitious critical veiling of the text, incidentally, is also part of why people are often convinced that they do not 'get' poetry. Most of us do not need poems to illuminate obvious truths, and so if that is all that poems are for, why do we need them at all? Another critic ties One More World's Eurydice persona to mystifying claims about 'our embodied state' and how poems 'let us transcend that embodiment' to 'underlying but essential truths.' Is 'embodiment' bad? Hoffman's book makes no such claims. What 'essential truths' ought to be made available? How, except perhaps in Eurydice's Hades, would I 'transcend' to the 'underlying?' I am unsure of what such statements mean other than that Eurydice must mean. Eurydice (played by soprano Iris Kells) is entranced by Jupiter in the form of a golden fly in the ... More Sadler's Wells production of Offenbach's opera 'Orpheus in the Underworld', London, 19th April 1962. (Photo by Erich Auerbach/) But must she? 'You must imagine Eurydice / happy,' Hoffman writes in 'A Condo for Sale Overlooking the Cemetery in Kearny, NJ.' Like a poem, happiness is under no onus to mean something other than itself. To borrow from Archibald MacLeish, it need 'but be.' An endnote identifies this line from 'A Condo' as an allusion to Camus's 'The Myth of Sisyphus,' in which Camus tells us to imagine poor Sisyphus happy. For both writers, the hinge term is 'imagine.' Camus approaches happiness as an aesthetic production through descriptions of how 'each atom of that stone, each mineral flake […]Sisyphus. Found in the collection of Museo del Prado, Madrid. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage ...) One More World is rife with references to and poems written 'after' – among others – Celan, Buber, Lermontov, Auden, Borges, Heaney, the Old Testament, and Rose Ausländer, who Hoffman has elsewhere translated. Why does this matter? 'Human beings are difficult,' the poet, Geoffrey Hill reflects. 'We're difficult to ourselves, we're difficult to each other. Ane we are mysteries to ourselves.' In 'The Townspeople Contemplate Eurydice,' Hoffman compares 'the woman' – who is and is not Eurydice – to 'that Russian poet / who wished / to be buried / alive / beneath an oak tree. Unusual / desire, even for a Romantic.' The triangulation of 'the woman,' Eurydice, and 'that Russian poet' who happens to be Mikhail Lermontov is less important in terms of thematic 'timelessness' or parsing references than it is as aesthetic texture, a means for making a difficult representation of difficult selfhood possible. The Family Tree of Mikhail Lermontov Something similar might be said of One More World's Jewishness. The Los Angeles Review of Books's pairing of One More World with Marcela Sulak's The Fault is clearly on account of both authors' Jewishness, which makes LARB's simultaneous disengagement from poems like 'Myth of Icarus as a Girl, Leaving' – one of the collection's strongest – quite baffling. 'I float / in the Dead Sea,' its speaker reflects, 'and become pastoral. On Ben Yehuda Street / the siren blares.' It can be helpful to think of Hoffman's allusions functioning as pastoral elements. Lyric poems produce representations of poetic speakers and their 'worlds' hand-in-hand. 'Author's Myth,' for example, presents Moses 'Before Carmel and the suicides. After / the sea. God was a fisherman above the world. The Rabbi opened his throat / and the ocean swelled. God gave you feet and you emerged in the Synagogue.' There is no 'I' in this poem per se, but rather the preconditions for one, all the allusions and elisions of Genesis, Exodus, and the Book of Kings. The 'you' evolves from the ocean in the Rabbi's throat. Similarly, a poem's Lyric I is more or less complex – it contains greater or fewer possibilities – relative to what is 'observable' in the poem. The Dura Europos synagogue is an ancient synagogue uncovered at Dura-Europos, Syria, in 1932. The ... More last phase of construction was dated by an Aramaic inscription to 244 CE, making it one of the oldest synagogues in the world. It is unique among the many ancient synagogues that have emerged from archaeological digs as it was preserved virtually intact, and it has extensive figurative wall-paintings. These frescoes are now displayed in the National Museum of Damascus. (Photo by: Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) 'Shall I set my lands in order?' Eliot's speaker asks at the end of 'The Waste Land.' There is a great deal of the 'observable' in the surrounding lines from 'London Bridge is Falling Down' to the Fisher King, Dante, Pervigilium Veneris, Gerard de Nerval, Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, and The Upanishads. What is significant is less the sources per se than their role in the production of a speaking position. 'These fragments I have shored against my ruins,' Eliot's 'I' concludes. Eliot's Modernism nearly always ends at the threshold between historical intellect and lyrical self-consciousness. Similarly, I have often thought that if fire consumed all of Ezra Pound's Cantos after Canto III, we would be left with a brilliant long lyric poem, one that produced the impression of an 'I' from atoms and flakes of the past. A lady views the exhibits at the Turner Contemporary's Journeys With The Waste Land exhibition, ... More which explores TS Eliot's modernist poem and its influence on visual arts over the past century at the Turner ContemporaryÕs Sunley Gallery in Margate. (Photo by Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images) In one sense, the arc of Hoffman's book enacts the Eurydice-as-Sisyphus narrative. The three sections, 'The Garden,' 'The Replica,' and 'Then Roses,' contain several discrete instances of restaging the same poem – 'The Twenty-First Century,' 'Author's Myth,' 'Borges Sells Me the Apple, Sells Me the World' – as Sisyphean attempts. On a grander scale, the book contrasts The Garden's loss with literature's failure to produce a 'Refurbished Eden' in 'The Replica.' In One More World, places like Kearny, NJ, Brooklyn, or 'the counter of my grandparents' / luncheonette in Liberty, New York' are 'real.' Foreclosure is 'real.' Gestures toward the 'timelessness' and permanence of fictions, replicas, refurbishments, and speech are less certain. In particular, 'The Replica' stresses the contrast between the lyrical allusion-pastoralism of the 'real' world and the artificial staging of literature as purview of the literati. Hoffman's Lyric I, for example, is 'Reading Virginia Woolf in a Women in Literature Class at Bergen Community College,' 'Teaching the Persona Poem at Ramapo College,' or 'Driving Through Maspeth, NY, After Teaching an Introduction to Creative Writing Class' in 'The Replica.' Carlie Hoffman reading In Kearny, NJ – at least in One More World – Borges, Camus, and Eurydice align just because. In 'The Replica,' this must become whatever 'literature' is supposed to mean and everything becomes gradually unbecoming, like 'stuffing the soft skins / of teddy bears […] as Hades takes Persephone / deeper inside the replica of girlhood.' In the book's final poem, the speaker reflects that 'The dream was so close to the surface, it banged its head on the floorboards. / I trespass forever in the unflinching past. / The apple's a for-sale sign swaying in the breeze.' After some great departure, some exile or accomplishment of a phantasm, can we return to Kearny, New Jersey, where 'the apple's a' and the surprise of 'a for sale sign' occur as 'real' sprung poetics? Whatever is gained by transcending that embodiment? 'This winter I want a house,' the speaker of Hoffman's first poem in the collection confesses, 'where women slide from the god's photographs,' quite aware of the difference between what she wants and 'the metaphor of this winter house.' She is 'playing music when the god is renounced.' In One More World, we must imagine Eurydice giving a backward glance, wanting in winter. More on Carlie Hoffman can be found at One More World Like This World is available for purchase here.
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Uma Thurman Reveals What It's Like Watching Her Kids 'Surpass' Her in the Industry
Uma Thurman is proud that her two older kids have become actors in their own right The Kill Bill star shared with Seth Meyers that she feels like they've "surpassed" her Thurman shares Maya and Levon with ex Ethan Hawke and is also mom to daughter Luna with ex Arpad BussonUma Thurman is one proud stage mom. The actress, 55, appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Monday, June 23, and was asked by the talk show host how it feels to watch her kids become actors in their own right. Thuman shares daughter Luna, 12, with ex Arpad Busson and daughter Maya Hawke, 26, and son Levon Hawke, 23, with ex Ethan Hawke. 'I was telling you backstage, I had a nice thing happen walking down the streets of New York. I ran into your daughter Maya in the street," Seth Meyers says. "And you have two children now who are just incredibly accomplished performers.' 'Well, I have three who are very accomplished,' Thurman clarifies. 'Two who work for it.' 'I very much apologize to the one who's not putting the work in,' Meyer jokes. 'She'll get there.' Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. The comedian went on to ask the Kill Bill star what it's like watching her two older kids — Maya and Levon — take the stage off-Broadway for the first time. 'As a mother, you know, honestly, I'm so proud of them and they're so together, and honestly, seeing your kids kind of surpass you is awesome,' Thurman says. 'I wouldn't say that they've surpassed you, but they're—,' Meyers says, getting cut off. 'No, but I just think they're amazing,' Thurman explains. 'I think they're so talented. And so you're always anxious that the circumstances all support the best outcome. The only thing that makes me nervous is I want them to have the best circumstances." Maya recently made her off-Broadway debut and is currently starring in Eurydice, while Levon starred in Ghosts at the Lincoln Center Theatre, which wrapped this past April. In October 2023, Thurman got candid about how her relationship with her daughter Maya has grown. 'What isn't a mother-daughter bond?' Thurman told PEOPLE at the time. 'Good communication. That is a big challenge, to make sure we keep communication healthy, strong and open with your family.' The Stranger Things actress also cited her memories of her mother reading to her when she was a child as a key to her development. 'Being read to is so important for kids. I've now supplemented it with audiobooks in my adult life because it made such an impact on me,' Maya told PEOPLE. Read the original article on People
Boston Globe
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A.R.T. announces 2025/2026 season, will premiere new musical adapted from the film ‘Black Swan'
In a telephone interview, A.R.T. artistic director Diane Paulus said that 'Wonder' is driven by 'a very fresh, contemporary sound,' with 'equal parts catchy pop tunes and emotional heart' in the music and lyrics by A Great Big World, a duo consisting of singer-songwriters Ian Axel and Chad King. The book is by playwright Sarah Ruhl. Advertisement (Disclosure: Paulus directed my son Matt's opera, 'Crossing,' in 2015, and Ruhl collaborated with him on 'Eurydice,' an opera that premiered in 2021 and was based on her play of the same name.) The A.R.T.'s production of With music and lyrics by Dave Malloy (' Advertisement According to Paulus, 'Black Swan' will 'delve into the theme of perfection, the world of ballet, and the pressures on women.' She said that 'a story told through dance and movement' is 'right up A.R.T.'s alley,' adding: 'For me, theater as a form is physical. It's visceral. It's about communication, not only through text and words and music, but the body, and movement.' Starting this fall, Paulus will direct a concert tour of 'Dear Everything,' which was commissioned and developed by the A.R.T., and premiered in concert form in 2021 under the name 'WILD: A Musical Becoming,' starring Idina Menzel. The overall picture for the A.R.T., which is based at Harvard, is clouded by the university's ongoing confrontation with President Trump, who has cut billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts to Harvard. Asked how concerned she is about the potential impact on her company, Paulus replied: 'It's a very challenging time. We are navigating changing waters on a daily basis.' 'As a theater, as a company like A.R.T., we are committed to continuing to bring people together,' she added. 'Theater is a community builder. That is our greatest role, right? Humans coming together in time and space and listening to stories that are not our own.' The A.R.T.'s season will launch Sept. 2-26 with Advertisement The season will also include Sam Kissajukian's autobiographical solo show, '300 Paintings,' scheduled to be at Harvard's Farkas Hall Oct. 1-19, 2025. Paulus said '300 Paintings' explores 'how all of the arts and mental health and creativity are in relation to one another.' Don Aucoin can be reached at
Daily Mail
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Uma Thurman and her rarely seen youngest daughter Luna, 12, support her oldest Maya Hawke, 26, at opening night of Eurydice in New York
Uma Thurman was joined by her rarely seen daughter Luna at the opening night of Eurydice at the Signature Theatre in New York City on Monday. The actress, 55, an her youngest, 12, stepped out to support her oldest daughter Maya Hawke, 26, ahead of her Off-Broadway debut. Maya stars as the titular character in Sarah Ruhl's adaptation of the classic Greek myth, which will run until June 22. Walking the red carpet head of the show, Uma looked effortlessly chic in a wool coat, which she teamed with smart trousers. Smiling for photos beside her mum, Luna opted for a black top and a pair of straight leg jeans. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. Maya looked stunning in a draped, satin midi dress which she teamed with a matching rust-coloured umbrella and heels. Uma's two older children, Maya and Levon - whom she shares with her ex-husband Ethan Hawke — are well known for having followed their famous parents into acting. But she has cultivated a far more private existence for her youngest daughter Luna, whom she shares with her ex, the French hedge fund manager Arpad Busson, 62. A rare exception occurred in 2023 at the New York City premiere of Wes Anderson's critically acclaimed comedy Asteroid City, which Maya had a small role in. Even though Luna isn't usually spotted at similar events, this time she was seen posing for photographers. While little is known about Luna, Uma previously opened up about why she decided to give her daughter four middle names. 'Maya came up with the best excuse, which was that I probably wouldn't get to have any more children, so I just put every name that I liked into Luna's,' she told Jimmy Fallon during a Tonight Show appearance. 'We couldn't quite agree on the name, so we call her Luna. She's lucky that way.' Uma and her financier ex Arpad Busson began their on–off relationship back in 2007, and revealed that they were engaged in June of the following year, but they called off the engagement in 2009. The split was short-lived, though, and Uma and Arpad reunited in 2010, with the engagement back on. Luna arrived in 2012, but her parents still hadn't married by 2014, when they called it off their engagement for a second time and seemingly split for good. In early 2017, Uma and Arpad became engaged in a custody battle over their youngest child, with The Pulp Fiction star ultimately receiving primary physical custody of Luna. Prior to dating Arpad, Thurman was married twice: from 1990 to 1992 to Oscar winner Gary Oldman, and then from 1998 to 2005 to Ethan Hawke after they met on the set of their 1997 sci-fi drama Gattaca. They welcomed Maya in 1998 and Levon in 2002, before separating in 2003. Prior to his relationship with Uma, Arpad's best-known partner was Elle Macpherson, whom he was together with from 1996 to 2005 and shared two sons.
