Music
More than a yard of tickets to the Proms!
This was one of the really memorable night’s promenading, a privilege to hear Dvořák’s and Smetana’s music close up to an inspired orchestra and conductor. This is Prom 2 but my first this year. The very British queues for promenading as good-humoured as ever along with an equally strong and British sense of turn and order, aided by the redoubtable staffers from the Albert Hall.
The bridge across Floral Street between the opera house and the support building, its tortured architecture a metaphor for the role of Boris Godunov in Modest Musorgsky's operatic workout on Russian history.
Glorious evening of Miami Sound Machine’s crossover Cuban beats that enthralled us in the Eighties. Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine had to fight racial discrimination back then to get heard, but they were and had a successful world tour as a result. That was the era of classic music divas and the emergence from the ghettos of High Energy, Chicago House, Hip hop and many others. So many forgotten songs and beats.
Read more: On Your Feet! - the story of Emilio & Gloria Estefan
The medium of abstract dance communicates emotions and ideas but without words, along with the grace and power of the human body working to its maximum. There’s a parallel with idea-based art: as a non-verbal language, dance has the capacity to communicate with us directly at a lower level than our verbal skills. It sometimes takes time for the full realisation to sink in, and the language of dance is the more powerful and direct because of this.
ENO bringing Egyptian archaeology to life on stage with Philip Glass’ opera Akhnaten. ENO encourages photos of their theatre’s interior and the curtain-calls; my phone’s lens gives just a taster of this production’s sumptuous costumes and props. #enoakhnaten
Philip Glass - Akhnaten
Thirty-five years or so on from the premiere of Akhnaten, Philip Glass’ opera about the Egyptian sun god, we are much more practiced at reading symbolism and conceptualism on stage. This now seems like a period piece, rather grand and indulgent but still at first sight, also rather vacuous. The thrill is in seeing Egyptian archaeology come to life on stage with so much precision movement and synchronised juggling which reflects Philip Glass’ minimalist music composed of so many repetitive structures.
