Latest news with #TheFirebird
Otago Daily Times
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Outstanding night of dance from RNZB
The Firebird with My Brilliant Career What a superb night of dance. These two ballets delivered a beautiful contrast in style and rhythm, but shared the theme of featuring strong female characters and exquisite dancers, with standout performances by Katherine Minor and Jennifer Ulloa in My Brilliant Career and Ana Gallardo Lobaina in The Firebird . Written in 1899 by the then teenage Stella Franklin, My Brilliant Career tells the story of a young rural Australian girl, Sybylla, who is in a state of conflict. Two distinct "sides" of her personality play out her dilemma: is she destined to be a country girl looking after her siblings, or does life hold a brighter future for her? Choreographer Cathy Marston has created a true delight — the audience can feel the conflict in Syb and Bylla, and it is a feeling that most women can appreciate with the pressures that life inflicts. Minor (Syb) and Ulloa (Bylla) play out Sybylla's complexities and struggles with delicate tenderness, but also great resolve. Guest principal artist Victor Estevez's Harry Beecham is charming and provided a great match for Minor and Ulloa; their pas de trois were an alluring narrative. The second work for this double-bill is The Firebird . A force to be reckoned with — like Lobaina, who portrays her for the second time since choreographer Loughlan Prior envisaged her in this role — the Firebird is the guardian of the natural world and protector of life. Created at a time when the classical greats ( Swan Lake , Sleeping Beauty etc.) reigned supreme, The Firebird was a complete departure from the world of traditional fairy tales, and a welcomed one at that. The world is on the brink of destruction and The Firebird is a warning that nothing should be taken for granted, least of all the Earth — perhaps a prophetic one in today's environment, I said after the first time I saw Lobaina in this role that she is the powerhouse of this company. The role of the Firebird is not one for the fainthearted, and Lobaina has the strength, grace and agility to make this her signature role. Stravinsky's iconic score underpins the intensity and weightiness of this work. Prior's vision for this ballet — along with Tracy Grant Lord's stunning costumes and John Buswell's atmospheric lighting in tandem with POW Studios' intense visuals — immerse the audience in a world where water is the most precious commodity; let's hope this vision doesn't become a reality. Again, what a superb night of dance; I'm loving the direction this company is heading in. Review by Penny Neilson
San Francisco Chronicle
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Esa-Pekka Salonen's final S.F. Symphony concerts off to a dramatic start
Esa-Pekka Salonen and the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony are making the most of their remaining concerts together. That much was clear on Friday, May 23, at Davies Symphony Hall, as the outgoing music director led the first in a monthlong series of performances marking the end of his tenure with the orchestra. The weekend's program, which repeats through Sunday, May 25, is anchored by a dramatic but nuanced reading of Igor Stravinsky's 'The Firebird' and highlighted by soloist Isabelle Faust's beautiful and well-characterized playing in Alban Berg's Violin Concerto. Like he did in 2022 performances with the Symphony, Salonen has elected to present Stravinsky's complete ballet score, rather than the popular suite from 1919 that cuts about 25 minutes of music. This decision means scenic moments that require inventiveness to pull off in concert feature alongside musical highlights. More Information Esa-Pekka Salonen's Final Concerts Salonen Conducts 'The Firebird': San Francisco Symphony. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 24; 2 p.m. Sunday, May 25. $49-$199. Esa-Pekka Salonen & Hilary Hahn: San Francisco Symphony. 2 p.m. Thursday, May 29; 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 30; 2 p.m. Sunday, June 1. $49-$350. Salonen Conducts Sibelius 7: San Francisco Symphony. 7:30 p.m. June 6-7; 2 p.m. June 8. $49-$179. Salonen Conducts Mahler 2: San Francisco Symphony. 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, June 12-14. $145-$399. All shows are at Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-864-6000. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit On Friday, these extended scenes crackled with energy and purpose, driven by Salonen's vivid dramatic imagination. The performance brilliantly elucidated the work's overall structure, with the conductor masterfully restraining even the fully orchestrated moments. This careful pacing built tension until the inevitable climax in the 'Infernal Dance,' which the musicians delivered with maximum ferocity. Although interpretations generally adhere to Stravinsky's plentiful metronome markings, Salonen pushed the tempo at the acceleration into the fast coda of the dance, adding to the excitement. Alternatively, in the finale, he slowed the tempo down to the specified molto pesante (very heavy) but held the last chord for almost a full 10 seconds as the orchestra built the sound in a finely graded crescendo. In the concert's first half, Salonen conducted the first Symphony performance of 'Chorale,' a 2002 work by his longtime friend and fellow Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg, who conceived the piece as an intro to Berg's Violin Concerto. It takes off from the same J.S. Bach chorale harmonization that Berg used, but Lindberg reimagines it with a dense and intricate orchestration style that is characteristic of his work. Salonen imparted refinement to a score that could easily suffer from being overplayed by a less attentive conductor. The orchestra handled the incredibly difficult runs in the woodwinds and strings with utmost clarity. The work concludes with a beautiful if unconventional cadence to a sustained major chord, anticipating exactly the manner in which Berg ends his piece. The Austrian composer's 1935 concerto demands a soloist like Faust, who was all in on characterizing the musical material and sharing it, rather than seizing control and showing off. The piece is a portrait of Manon Gropius, who died at 18; she was the daughter of architect Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler Werfel (composer Gustav Mahler's widow). In a performance as good as Friday night's, the music captures the moods and manners of the girl so vividly that a listener can almost see her. The passionate but highly contrasting first movement played to Faust's strengths. From the opening arpeggios, rendered almost shyly and with minimal vibrato, she deployed a variety of tone and phrasing that Salonen and the orchestra only amplified. This performance had exquisite balance and clarity, with even the forceful brass-heavy moments making their point without going over the top. The second movement opens wildly but shifts in the middle to a set of variations on the Bach chorale 'Es ist genug' (It is enough). Though mainly quiet, this is the emotional center of the piece, played here with extraordinary intensity. Toward the end, concertmaster Alexander Barantschik took up the theme and then handed it off seamlessly to Faust, who extended the melody into her instrument's upper reaches as the orchestra sank down to a cadence. It was a breathtaking way to take leave of Berg's masterpiece. As is his custom when acknowledging applause, Salonen joined the first row of violins, rather than standing in front of them. But during Friday's encore bow, the orchestra didn't stand as requested, giving him the solo moment he had tried to dodge. He seemed a bit surprised, but he shouldn't have been. The Symphony musicians know how special this time with Salonen has been, and they're marking the end of an era in the best way they can. Up next, Salonen partners with violinist Hilary Hahnr in concerts Thursday-Sunday, May 29-June 1, followed by the conductor leading Jean Sibelius' Symphony No. 7 on June 6-8.
Otago Daily Times
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Ballets demonstrate powerful storytelling
Royal New Zealand Ballet dancer Ana Gallardo Lobaina performs in The Firebird, which will be staged at Dunedin's Regent Theatre on May 24 and 25. PHOTO: STEPHEN A'COURT The Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB) returns to Dunedin this month with two major ballets — the powerful The Firebird and the evocative My Brilliant Career, presented in association with Avis. Created by choreographer Loughlan Prior in 2021, The Firebird is a reimagining of the Russian fairytale, in a dystopian desert world where water is more valuable than gold. The production is making its debut in the South Island, and will be staged at Dunedin's Regent Theatre on Saturday, May 24, at 7.30pm and Sunday, May 25, at 1.30pm. In The Firebird, Prior's expressive choreography, set against Tracy Grant Lord's striking costume and set designs and enhanced by immersive projections from POW Studios, brings to life a world both magical and perilously real. The Dunedin performances will be accompanied by a recorded version of Igor Stravinsky's sweeping score. Complementing it is the New Zealand premiere of My Brilliant Career, choreographed by Cathy Marston now performed by the RNZB for the first time. Based on Miles Franklin's novel, this one-act ballet explores the fierce independence and passion of a young woman determined to carve her own path in life. RNZB artistic director Ty King-Wall said in a statement the company was delighted to be presenting ''a pair of contrasting, but equally thought-provoking and emotionally charged narrative works'' which demonstrated the immense storytelling capacity of ballet. Together, the performances make for an unforgettable dance experience.
The Hindu
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Review of Playworld by Adam Ross
The very opening of Adam Ross's novel Playworld seduces you fatefully: 'In the fall of 1980, when I was fourteen, a friend of my parents named Naomi Shah fell in love with me. She was thirty-six, a mother of two, and married to a wealthy man. Like so many things that happened to me that year, it didn't seem strange at the time.' Just as biting is the mother's response that comes after 20 years: 'Two decades later, when I finally told my mother — we were on Long Island, taking a walk on the beach — she stopped, stunned, and said, 'But she was such an ugly woman.'' The narrator is unruffled: 'The remark wasn't as petty as it sounds. If I was aware of it then, it neither repulsed me not affected my feelings for Naomi. It was just a thing that I took for granted, like the color of her hair.' But the body that is laid bare and put to auction through the novel is not that of Naomi, but of the actor as a figure of precarity. It is the male actor, boy to man, who vends his ware, voice or smile or role, to get bread, school, and sex. That sounds more brutally vulgar than the complex narratives that make up this 500-page novel, but somewhere deep down, this is its truth. Deceit and shame The gossip, manners and role-play from the world of performance are what get Griffin, the boy-narrator, the erotic attention of his older lover for the first time when they are alone in a room in a party. As she doubles over in laughter at his anecdotes from theatre, he renews her amusement by mimicking her: 'She had the classic up-Island accent, one I could mimic on command: 'A vawhdville act, this kid is,' I said, imitating her, 'a regular prawdigy'.' Griffin is fated to perform — for attention and a living — as that is his family inheritance and the life to which his boyhood is shackled. While he gets Naomi's interest, his father Shel revels in the attention of her rich husband, Sam. As Sam takes out Shel and his two sons, Griffin and Oren, for a spin in his oyster-gray Bentley, Shel fiddles with the car radio to bring it to the station that belts out a beer commercial in his voice. Sam is delighted to hear Shel's voice, but Shel shrugs and acts cool, secretly delighted by the rich man's appreciation. But nothing his hidden from his sons, who are mortified by the games played by their father. The vulnerability of the actor, at once comic and tragic, animates this novel and hits me hard because of dark reasons of my own. Griffin's fate threatens to invoke my own childhood — my mother, who died young, was a theatre actress in a society that was suspicious of women who performed. But unlike Griffin in Broadway-loving New York, my line between art and life was both shape-shifting and dangerous in Calcutta, and the child-memory of the reality on and off-stage drove me to write my second novel, The Firebird (2015), from the wings and the greenrooms of theatre. Damning reality Griffin's vulnerability, shared with the farcical vulnerability of his father, binds me in primitive glue. But the actor's performance makes a gallery of society at large, and Playworld never lets us forget that. Much later in the novel, when Griffin is out for dinner with a girl he wants to date, along with her father, Dr. West, a pompous English teacher, and his much younger girlfriend, he suffers through West's lecture on Shakespeare's As You Like It, and on his abject failure to get 'even a rudimentary grasp of the play's rhetorical architecture'. Is that lack of 'understanding' a damning reality for the actor, or is it his great redemption? That it leaves this question unanswered is the generous enigma of Ross's beautiful novel. By performing his role, in his innocence of any critical understanding of the play, Griffin embodies the visceral internalisation of character that shapes the actor. But it also keeps the figure of the actor — including Griffin who pays for school with his theatrical income, and his father whose career is forever defined by what he failed to become — in the margins of a ruthlessly oligarchic society where rich people like Sam Shah have the last laugh. Their triumphal moment is the delight they take in the anti-labour politics and tax cuts for the wealthy by an incumbent Republican government, which feels eerily resonant today. The reviewer is the author of five novels, most recently, 'The Remains of the Body' (2024). Playworld Adam Ross Knopf ₹944 (ebook)
