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Notes -
What live music/arts events have you attended recently?
Last weekend was pretty packed for me. On Friday I saw a production of Swan Lake by the World Ballet Company, an international troupe staffed mostly by Russians. It was really incredible; the costumes and sets were elegant, traditionalist, and sumptuously beautiful; the dancing was significantly above the level I’m accustomed to from my times seeing the San Diego Ballet Company - the woman dancing Odette/Odile was particularly spectacular - and everyone was good-looking, conventionally-gendered, and either white or Central/East Asian.
On Saturday afternoon, I attended a production of the musical Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, an adaptation of a segment of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, at San Diego’s Cygnet Theatre with a group of friends who wanted to see it. Personally, I didn’t care for the show. It’s sung-through (meaning that all dialogue/exposition is done through singing, with no spoken lines) in the style of an opera, which makes the plot more difficult to follow. Certain musicals, such as Les Misérables and Rent, can get away with this by ensuring that all of the music is melodically interesting and memorable; if the music is tuneless, then one is left with the impression that they’re singing just to sing, and that was certainly the case with this show. Many of the actors were individually quite talented - one of the gimmicks of the show is that many of the actors also play guitar and/or accordion, and I have to commend the hard work which must have gone into teaching these actors how to play those instruments - but the show itself is just not that interesting. (The whole plot is about a love triangle between a pouty aristocratic heiress, the caddish lothario who seduces and abandons her, and her absent soldier boyfriend who is barely onstage for 80% of the show.) Also, this production featured multiple racially-inappropriate actors playing 19th-century Russians, including an overweight black woman with a septum piercing and multicolored hair, in the role of the “beautiful and sexually alluring” character Hélène. Spare me.
Then on Saturday night, I attended a performance by the San Diego Symphony Orchestra at the Rady Shell, a waterfront venue downtown. The first half of the program consisted of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, ably performed by a precociously talented young man. The second half consisted of the entire first act of Wagner’s Die Walküre, a part of the epic Ring Cycle, performed by the orchestra with three top-notch operatic soloists. Sadly, the first half is not the part that includes the famous “Ride Of The Valkyries” which even the common man would know from that one Bugs Bunny cartoon, but it was still a gorgeous performance, complete with sets, props, and a real fire onstage.
Tomorrow night I’ll be seeing the same orchestra again at the same venue, this time performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 and the complete score to Stravinsky’s Firebird, accompanied by animated projections representing the characters from the ballet.
A few weeks ago, I attended the NY Philharmonic rendition of Mozart's Symphony No. 35 and No. 39 and Beethoven Ah! Perfido! It was lovely, as usual.
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