Mozart’s early opera, ABDUCTION FROM THE SERAGLIO starts out light and comic, gradually grows deeper, more melodic, and more profound, and ends in perfect harmony. He wrote in 1781, at the age of 25, bringing together elements of high art and melodrama into a new form that transcends them both. “It was a breakthough for Mozart,” says Martin Pearlman, conductor and director of the Boston Baroque.
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CHRISTOPHER HOGWOOD has stopped conducting in the traditional “stuffed shirt” tails and white tie; he now wears a black silk shirt. It gives him the air of an artist — or a monk. The Maestro’s new clothes are a metaphor for his approach to music: not a dusty, lifeless tradition, but something authentic, full of meaning, and alive.
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When I was young, ARETHA FRANKLIN and DIANA ROSS represented the two poles of women’s experience. Diana’s sweet, lyrical voice celebrated a woman’s capacity to abandon herself completely to love. Aretha’s “Respect” was the ultimate expression of a woman’s righteous anger and self-respect. Now I see them both as present-day embodiments of ancient Goddesses, projecting dazzling images of beauty, power, glamour, self-possession, and grace.
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The beautiful, beloved voice of LORRAINE HUNT began to rise and spread out through the room, in sweet, sad layers of sound, accompanied by a visual chorus of flashing colored lights, magically transforming the empty, mechanical space into a few moments of unearthly beauty.
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Dancer Beth Soll and Composer Richard Cornell are working together on a dance inspired by a book by West African poet Amadou Hampate Ba. “It’s a long tale, an initiatory allegory, a triumph of knowledge over fortune and power,” says Cornell. “A quest for God and wisdom,” says Soll.
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“It begins with a funereal chorus in the antique style, with cornetto and trombones. And then Orpheus comes in, lamenting his lost love, and sings one single word. Eurydice. He sings it three times. He doesn’t say much, but he says everything he needs to say, and the third time he sings it, it sends chills up your spine.””
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“Sound art is more open and much closer to life than music. Music is a filtered experience. I’m not a composer. I don’t want the emotional view bound or directed in any one direction. I want to keep it open. I’m always trying things out. I hear something and I can pick it up and react in minutes. I’m interested in everything that makes a noise.”
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Madame de Pompadour always managed to look graceful, even in the most constricting clothes — corsets, bustles, and stays. Like Madonna, she created a Look that was supremely artificial — the powdered hair, the heavily applied make-up, the elaborate gowns. Like Madonna in her John-Paul Gaultier bustiers, La Pompadour in her negligée proudly displayed her sexuality as the source of her power.
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