Tag Archives: Carmen

New York City Blog May 2 — May 9

Alwan for the Arts on Beaver Street presented an evening of Flamenco and Arab Music, We arrived just in time to get the last two seats in the room on the fourth floor. The chairs were arranged in a semicircle. The six musicians and their various instruments: ouds, guitars, violins, tablas (like bongos), riqs (like tambourines) and drums faced us and there was a tiny space for dancing. It was a perfect NYC evening: intimate, exciting, multicultural, exotic, erotic. Barbara Martinez sang and danced alone and with the percussionist and dancer, Ramzi Eledlebi. Carmen, Steve Kulchek’s long time girlfriend, danced flamenco. Steve made a brave attempt.

Flamenco dancers: Ramzi Eledlebi and Barbara Martinez
Flamenco dancers: Ramzi Eledlebi and Barbara Martinez

Late Sunday afternoon was spent at Alice Tully Hall. CMS, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, presented a Beethoven and Ligeti concert. Alice Tully Hall is a wonderful space. There is room between the seats so that people can pass others. I had heard that Alice Tully was tall and made leg room a requirement of a hall that was financed by her.

I had two book parties in one evening: Bart Boehlert’s and Father Brown’s. The first was in real life. Bart and his companion, Ted Dawson, hosted a relaxed, early evening book party at Judson Memorial Church. Surrounded by John La Farge painted glass windows and Augustus St. Gaudens’s sculpture, we sat in a cozy circle in the Meeting Room. Bart told us about his memoir, HOW I LOOK.The cover, designed by Ted, shows Bart’s very buffed back as he looks at Whistler’s Theodore Durer. Bart spoke about his own life and his mother’s early influence on his respect for American fashion, exemplified by Perry Ellis. Bart mentioned Ellis’s attention to detail. The same could be said about his wonderfully written and designed book which is available on Amazon.

Bart Boehlert's How I Look
Bart Boehlert’s How I Look

 

From a UCC church setting I went to a Roman Catholic setting. As soon as I arrived home, I switched on the TV to Channel 21’s Father Brown. Needless to say, the R.C. book signing party was bloodier than the UCC one. Being a mystery set in the 1950s English landed gentry countryside, there is always murder, but there’s always lovely fashion too.

We heard Wycliffe Gordon at Jack Kleinsinger’s Highlights in Jazz held at Manhattan Community College. The first set was great. The second set was long winded. Jay Leonhart, the respected bass player, has taken to verbal riffs that do not match the quality of his playing.

New York City Blog Aug. 3 – Aug. 9 in New Mexico

My father was a socialist and my mother a social climber. My social climber inner self was fully present at the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos. Mary Millicent Abigail Rogers (1902-1953) was the heir to the Standard Oil fortune. She was photographed by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Horst B. Horst, wore Charles James and was married many times, usually to foreign counts – soooo 1930’s. After an unsuccessful affair with Clark Gable, she licked her wounds by settling near a sacred mountain in New Mexico. Oh, yes, the museum. It was founded by the Rogers family in 1956. The original collection was from the vast collections of Millicent Rogers and her mother, Mary B. Rogers. The Millicent Rogers Museum is small by NYC standards and choice. It’s mainly Native American with emphasis on New Mexican pottery paintings, tapestries, arts and crafts, religious art. It’s chock full of treasures, but the atmosphere is one of calm, space and great beauty.

Martinez Pottery
Martinez Pottery
Native American textiles
Native American textiles

On to a local restaurant:

Hanging chilis, looking out the window at Orlando's
Hanging chilis, looking out the window at Orlando’s

Then to the Taos pueblo.The photo was taken by Michal Heron.

Taos Pueblo
Taos Pueblo

And, channeling my Catholic father, we went to a small adobe church in Chimayo.

Finally, the River Grande. God’s country?

Michal Heron's Rio Grande
Michal Heron’s Rio Grande

It was a long and satisfying day.

We went to the 10,000 Waves Japanese restaurant, Izanami, in the surprisingly green Santa Fe outskirts. I had three glasses of different kinds of saki, each paired with different kinds of American (artisan!!) cheese. Small plates of everything from pork belly to Japanese eggplant to plum saki sorbet. It was a very enjoyable evening.

CARMEN was awful. When Santa Fe Opera changes original settings the result is something only a rich benefactor could love. In 2011 I saw a real stinker directed by Peter Sellers. It was his interpretation of Vivaldi’s GRISELDA originally set in 18th century Italy. In Sellers’s version the cast were arrayed in sunglasses and carried machine guns. Move over, Sellers. The director Stephen Lawless, whose surname is singularly apt, has set Carmen in 1960’s Mexico. The only person on stage who seemed to have understood the original story was Joyce El-Khoury as Micaela. In the final act, Carmen had on a blond wig and a white fur coat. Why, Mr. Lawless?

On Friday afternoon I attended a wonderful recital (Henri Duparc, Benjamin Britten, Franz Liszt, Sergei Rachmaninoff) given by the tenor Paul Groves. For an encore he asked a colleague to join him. Who should step onto the stage? Kostos Smoignas, the bass baritone who played Escamillo as if he were Elvis Presley. He and Paul Groves sang the tenor-baritone duet from Bizet’s PEARL FISHERS and it was wonderful. Two thumbs up for recitals.