The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) announced yesterday that it has named Riccardo Muti, one of the biggest, greatest, names in world classical music, and former music director of Milan’s famed La Scala Opera, as its 10th music director beginning with the 2010-2011 symphony season. Muti succeeds the great Daniel Barenboim, who stepped down from the CSO music director post in 2006. This is tremendous news, again another confident and loud signal to the world that Chicago is an essential global cultural capital, or as the Chicago Tribune says in it’s headline announcing the news: “Luring of charismatic musician helps Chicago maintain hold in top tier of world culture.” Yes! I find it very amusing that the New York Times said, with a hint of barely disguised condescension (or was it envy? insecurity?), in its write-up about Muti’s new role that his coming to our fair city “(adds) a layer of luster to the city’s cultural profile.” Well, here’s a news flash to the New York Times, and to New Yorkers who still hold up their nose at Chicago’s cultural and artistic vibrancy, and to Chicagoans or anyone else who continue to live in a delusional haze that Chicago arts is an also-ran to New York’s: we don’t need an additional ”layer of luster”; Chicago already dazzles brilliantly and powerfully in the global cultural firmament, with spectacular and world-class theater, visual art, museums, opera, and symphony music all enriching the lives of its residents and visitors. Oh by the way, Muti turned down the offer of being music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2000- just a little tidbit to keep those New York arts-centric fans in line. As a warm-up to Muti’s first season, he will be conducting the CSO for the Verdi Requiem on January 15-17, 2009 and for two still-to-be-announced weeks during the 2009-2010 subscription season. Get your tickets as soon as they are available- these concert dates will probably sell out like crazy!
No, this is not a basketball-related blog post at all. Spring is annoyingly dragging it’s feet (sort of like Renee Zellweger in Christian Loubotin heels, uggh) in coming to Chicago with its lush green, its warmer weather, and its generally genial effect on a wintered-out, beaten-down populace, but the cultural hubbub has began. March is turning out to be a great month for actively engaging in the vibrant artistic life of the city. Some of my avid blog readers continuously ask which theatre, film, visual arts, or classical music/opera events I plan to go to, so as a sort of “public service announcement”, I’ll probably give a rundown of notable arts events in the city maybe once a month (of course, with my colorful, insightful commentary accompanying each one -ha!- since plain, bulleted lists are for grocery stores, not arts and culture blogs).
Sleep deprivation, brought about by having to run 1 am conference calls with Asia and the UK every night (or early morning, to be exact), has not dampened my enthusiasm to take advantage of the very active, very exciting Chicago theater winter season. Last week, I first went to Fatboy at A Red Orchid Theatre, John Clancy’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival sensation. It’s an over-the-top, outrageously bawdy, knock-you-senseless-with-its-absurdity-and-cojones updating of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, about a tyrant who literally eats and then destroys the world, and his sex-starved wife, with staggeringly magnificent performances from Steve Pickering and Jennifer Engstrom. Later on in the week, I managed to catch Shining City at the Goodman, Robert Falls’ remounting of his Broadway version of Conor McPherson’s spare, melancholy, beautifully written play about a psychiatrist and his patient haunted by visions of his dead wife, and two people in the psychiatrist’s life, re-cast with a quartet of excellent Chicago actors. I think it is interesting that both Fatboy and Shining City demonstrate the undeniably central importance of the text in any theatrical production (something I have written about in the past), in contrasting ways. In Fatboy, the visionary direction, the mind-blowingly stunning performances, and the excellent production values fail to overcome what I feel is an obvious, annoyingly repetitive, punch-to-the-gut hectoring of a script. In Shining City, despite an ending which belonged more in a Wes Craven B-movie than in a riveting stage production, the beauty of the writing- its subtlety, its reflectiveness, its honesty, its very meticulous buildup of emotions and realizations- makes the play unforgettable.
It’s the usual cold and somber January weather in Chicago, and I am on a client project with ridiculously heinous hours and expectations, but those two things won’t stop me from going to the many wonderful new plays and performances that are opening in the city within the next two weeks. I already went to a preview performance of About Face Theater’s Little Dog Laughed, the Broadway hit about a closeted gay actor whose career is threatened by his romance with a male prostitute, which won a Tony for Julie White who played the actor’s over-the-top lesbian agent. I saw the play in New York, and I think Chicago actor Mary Beth Fisher, in a classier, slightly-toned down, less fag-haggish performance in the About Face version, is a match for Julie White’s brilliance. I also saw Titus Andronicus at the Court, and it’s a stunner. This is how I feel Shakespeare should be reinvented for the contemporary audience - boldly original, but not flashy, full of interesting, at times, startling, artistic choices but yet still clearly presenting and illuminating Shakespeare’s themes. And that cast - it’s full of Chicago’s sexiest and most talented young male actors, plus the fabulous Hollis Resnik as Goth queen Tamora, which I think is a pretty unique casting choice. Hollis is more known for musical theater here in the city, and I think she brings that grace, charm and joie de vivre to a role that has potential for more campiness and overbaked acting than the lovechild of Divine and Christopher Walken. The casting works! I’ll post my detailed impressions of both soon, once they have had their press openings.
Tags: shining city
Dr. Atomic is not your grandmother’s opera, and as such might not be for all tastes. There are no dramatically back-lit heroines dying of consumption, no lush orchestrations, no grandiose and theatrical sets or stage tableaux. Instead, it has a complex, weary scientist hero, a minimalist modern score that successfully evokes paranoia and dread, and spare but dramatically effective staging, using shifting fences, pentagonal shapes, and poles, to suggest an atomic lab, an upper middle-class home, and the majestic New Mexico desert. Dr. Atomic, although as emotionally wrenching as the best staging of, say, La Traviata, is, more importantly, for me, intellectually provocative and sophisticated, asking questions about individual conscience and accountability, the moral implications of decision-making, the contradictory nature of waging war in order to create or preserve a version (someone’s version, not a universal one) of peace. It’s probably one of the most intellectually satisfying cultural events I have gone to see this year in Chicago or elsewhere.
OK, the blog post title is a little cute-sy and Marx Brother-ish. On Friday night, I attended the opening night of
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