detail of Ganymede, attributed to Baldassarre Franceschini, now in the Legion of Honor, San Francisco
27 March 2023
26 March 2023
William Kentridge: SYBIL
As part of William Kentridge's residency at UC-Berkeley, Cal Performances presented the American premiere of his stage work SIBYL over a three-day run in Zellerbach Hall. The attendant Gala on the first night meant that, unusually for Cal Performances, the show did not have a ridiculously late start time, so that was the performance I went to (I did not, of course, attend the Gala).
SIBYL is based on a legend of the Sibyl of ancient Cumae (near present-day Naples): she would write your future on an oak leaf & lay it on a pile with other such futures. As you went up to retrieve yours, a wind would rise & shuffle the leaves, so that you could never be sure if the future you were holding was your own or someone else's. This is certainly a resonant parable, suggesting both the inevitability & the uncertainty of our destiny.
The first half is anchored on a short film, The Moment Has Gone, which explores in Kentridge's familiar style of feathery charcoal drawings, constantly erased & redrawn. the story of a Kentridge-like figure going to an art museum & simultaneously the life of a marginal mining operation. Scenes flow naturally with oneiric logic into one another. There is also a live score by Kyle Shepherd & an all-male chorus of African men headed by Nhlanhla Mahlangu. After an overly long intermission, which I would have preferred not to have (intermissions break the flow, especially for an audience a large number of whom are clearly just waiting for the after-party, & I didn't see that any set-up was needed for the second half), we have a short chamber opera, Waiting for the Sibyl, a collection of scenes that do not each end so much as continue in some other universal space after the curtain drops on them. There is no resolution other than reinforced ambiguity.
There are gnomic, possibly gnostic, brief sentences or saying that are broadcast on the back walls (partially obstructed from my right front orchestra seat by the placement on stage of the chorus, & of a large megaphone-like device, but they are also spoken aloud & repeated, so I was given most of them). In one of the scenes a man tries to sit down, only to have the chair pulled away from him mid-descent; after several attempts, he manages to sit down, only to have the chair collapse. It is a scene redolent of both the silent comedians & Beckett (who, of course, admired those comics; Keaton & Chaplin are really some of the underacknowledged springs of the twentieth-century avant-garde). In another scene, an African woman sitting on a chair (chairs keep recurring) is slowly revolved around; on her shoulders she carries a long stick, one side of which has a sign saying Dreams & the other a sign saying True, & both the signs also rotate slowly. Is True a noun, opposing itself to Dreams, or an adjective, modifying Dreams? What are True Dreams? Prophetic ones? Later, one of the repeated sententiae is None of Our Dreams Came True – is that what was suggested here? Or possibly all possibilities are, you know, always possible.
A reference to the circles of Hell recalls a thought that some of the portraits in the film looked like Dante, or someone Dante-esque. The singing, choral & solo, is constant, & an enchantment, but the words are not in English & not translated; one section involves clicking so I am assuming there is an African language involved there. Sound & meaning do not always coincide, at least for some of us. The megaphone gets used to repeat some of the slogans we've seen projected, ending with the pronouncement, over & over, Starve the Algorithm repeats into the darkened auditorium. A woman in the back shouts Yes!, which seems a bit . . . sure, it's what people who attend performances in Berkeley are currently thinking, but these are also the people who whip out the inevitable mobile phone as soon as they can, & put them away as late as possible, so what does it mean for us to think this?
I would love to have seen this show over & over; I think each viewing would reveal new connections & deeper richness, but of course that would be missing the point of a stage work, which gives us moment-by-moment & then passes away into memory before the curtain falls: uncertainty & ambiguity rule us, & part of what makes beauty beautiful is that we know it is fleeting. SIBYL is another astonishing work from Kentridge.
24 March 2023
20 March 2023
17 March 2023
13 March 2023
Museum Monday 2023/11
detail of The Triumph of Justice, an early 16th-century Flemish tapestry now in the Legion of Honor, San Francisco
12 March 2023
Harry Bicket & the English Concert: Handel's Solomon
The first CDs I ever bought were Philip Glass's The Photographer & the John Eliot Gardiner recording of Handel's Solomon, & the Internet tells me that was 38 years ago, but neither before nor after that momentous purchase had I heard the oratorio live, so when Harry Bicket & the English Concert stopped at Cal Performances & Zellerbach Hall last Sunday on their Solomon tour, I made sure to be there.
I should start off by making it clear I enjoyed it immensely, but there may be reasons beyond the large forces called for that make this oratorio a relative rarity. It lacks the sweep & tragic intensity of such works as Jephthah (my favorite), Saul, or Belshazzar; I wouldn't call it static, but it's not exactly action-packed. I knew this going in, thanks to John Eliot Gardiner (though this performance included a couple of arias that were not in his edition), but I think some of those around me did not; I heard some observations, clearly meant as complaints, that "it was long", & at three & a half hours indeed it was, but if you surrendered to the grandeur it was also quite radiant.
Some of Handel's oratorios are virtually operas & can be staged as such, but Solomon is more like a pageant or masque. It opens with praise of God & King Solomon, with many dazzling choruses (superbly sung by The Clarion Choir, led by Steven Fox), ending with Solomon's unnamed (&, contrary to the Bible, singular) Queen praising their nuptial bed. This was one of several passages in the anonymous libretto that led to much chuckling from some of the people behind me – "bosom" was another word that set them off. You'd think they were middle-schoolers, & not particularly mature ones at that, rather than a couple of wrecks clearly teetering on the brink of the grave. I was glad when they left after the second intermission.
The second part contains a dramatic interlude, the famous dispute over a baby by two women (called "harlots"; the program tells us Handel objected to the term but it doesn't tell us why or what form the objection took; the King James translation does describe the women initially as harlots but thereafter refers to them just as women), with "divide the baby" as the judgment designed to reveal the true mother. Handel's deftness as a dramatist certainly comes to the fore here, with the Second Harlot's sharp interruptions of the First Harlot's laments making a particularly striking deviation from the usual circumspect forms of baroque oratorio. The part concludes, after the judgment & Solomon's assurance, in case you were worried, that he never meant to actually kill the infant, with a bit of gently melancholy pastoral ("Beneath the vine, or fig-tree's shade / Every shepherd sings the maid / Who his simple heart betrayed") & further praise of Solomon.
The third & final part begins with what is, or used to be, one of the best-known orchestral interludes in Handel, the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, who has come to see the glorious sights & generally bask in the wisdom & benevolence of the celebrated Solomon. He treats her to a series of tableaux illustrating the variety of music's emotional powers, to rouse us to martial feelings, to inspire & console us for melancholy love, & so forth (similar in spirit to the Handel / Dryden Alexander's Feast). When she departs, Sheba thanks Solomon for the unforgettable wisdom he has imparted, but it's actually not quite clear what actually constitutes this "wisdom"; for all the praise of the King, & of God, you can't help feeling that in this section Handel is slyly pointing out the superior power of the Composer, among whose powerful creations are not only martial spirit & gentle love, but Majesty & Deity.
As is frequently the case with Handel's oratorios (as opposed to his operas), the chorus plays a major part, & as noted above they were superb & tireless & expressive in all ways, from the ethereal benevolence of the "Nightingale" chorus to the rousing, timpani-studded swells of praise for God, King, & Music. Bicket led the sumptuous band at a pace that never felt either delayed or rushed, & the soloists did not let down either chorus, orchestra, or audience, starting with mezzo Ann Hallenberg as a dignified & intelligent Solomon. Mezzo Niamh O'Sullivan made a fierce Second Harlot, as the Queen of Sheba soprano Elena Villalón's voice was as rich & golden as her floor-length one-shouldered sheath, &, in smaller roles, bass-baritone Brandon Cedel as a Levite & tenor James Way as Zadok the Priest were both smooth & forceful. But it was soprano Miah Persson, as Solomon's Queen & as First Harlot, who, in her pastoral interlude (the one mentioned above, where every shepherd sings the maid who his simple heart betrayed), managed, among the pageantry, to reduce me to tears.
10 March 2023
Friday Photo 2023/10
Market Street, San Francisco: Native Sons of the Golden West fountain commemorating the admission of California to the Union
06 March 2023
Museum Monday 2023/10
detail of Courtyard, Casa del Chapiz by John Singer Sargent, currently on view at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco as part of the special exhibit Sargent & Spain
03 March 2023
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