From films to musicals
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A scene from Little House on the Prairie, the musical
Rachel Portman is used to writing music for the movies. The 49-year-old British composer has scored more than 50 movies, including Chocolat, Cider House Rules, The Lake House and Emma, which in 1996 won Portman the first Oscar for Best Original Score ever awarded a female composer.
She’s still writing music that helps tell a story, but instead of notes to backdrop spoken dialogue, Portman is composing music to be sung. Operas and musicals are her new world.
“I come from crafting subtle musical cues for film,” says Portman by phone from London.
“In the movies, music has a supporting role.”
But on stage, sung music moves plot forward, exposes characters, delineates themes. In Little House on the Prairie, the musical based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s famous novel (which plays through Sunday at ASU Gammage), she supplies music that fulfills a double, and seemingly contradictory, purpose:
“In a musical, the songs step out of the drama, even though they’re still part of it. Bizarrely, it seems to work. It’s the most amazing form, because you’re stepping into the spotlight each time, but you’re also moving the drama forward, making the audience feel something has happened.”
Before Little House, Portman composed an opera based on Antoine Saint-Exupery’s famous children’s novel. Of the difference between opera and musical, Portman notes:
Musicals are driven by commercial interest, operas aren’t. That gives the composer a lot more freedom in opera. In an opera, it’s up to the composer and librettist to decide everything. With a new musical, there’s all sorts of input from directors and producers. I come from working in films, and in film, you want your pieces of music to disappear as gently as possible. You let the music slide away. In musicals, that kind of training was no help at all. It’s all about how the songs ends, so as to make the audience applaud.”
Despite the challenges of the form, the musical has taken Portman away from film, at least for the present. Her next project is another musical – on a subject she’d rather not discuss until all the production details are in place.
Snow Queen is 19
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Amber Robins in the title role of The Snow Queen
Nineteen years ago, Frances Smith Cohen had the idea of blending Hans Christian Andersen, Sergei Prokofiev and Center Dance Ensemble into a holiday meal called The Snow Queen. The work, which began as a smallish one-act with no set, is now a staple of December in Phoenix.
A modern-dance alternative to ballet’s annual cash cow, Nutcracker, The Snow Queen relates Andersen’s tale of a love lost to the evil title character and a love regained by a young woman’s true heart.
The genesis of The Snow Queen is shrouded in two decades of changes. Cohen recalls choosing the story as holiday fare because of its relationship to winter. But she can’t remember why she chose Prokofiev’s music for the ballet, The Stone Flower, as backdrop to the story’s colorful parade of children, villagers, animal spirits, enchantresses and robbers.
“I heard the music on the radio, and in 1990 there was no CD of the score,” Cohen says. “I had to go to a record finder in New York to get it on vinyl.”
She set Snow Queen’s choreography to the vinyl, and today, though CD versions abound, she sticks with a tape of the LP because the dancers of Center Dance Ensemble are used to the tempos in that performance.
“Every once in a while, you hear a crack or a pop,” Cohen says, apologizing for the soundtrack.
By its third year, Snow Queen was a full-length piece, employing dozens and dozens of children on the stage of the Herberger Theatre. A lavish set was added in the late 1990s. As the years went by, characters came and went, choreography mutated, and dancers moved on. None of the original cast is left among the current crop of 15 adult dancers.
The children are the most ephemeral of all. This year alone, 165 of them from 47 different Valley dance schools, ages 7 to 18, will slide across the stage at some point in the three-week run.
Cohen’s choreography is at last in final shape – the “Lady Autumn” dance added five years was the last major change – but this year will bring some new costumes.
Snow Queen is a unique Phoenix dance experience. Says Cohen:
“To the best of my knowledge, no one else in the world does this story in dance.”
“It’s like he tried to fit three hours of opera into an hour and forty minutes,” says Arizona Opera artistic director Joel Revzen, talking of Richard Strauss’ Salome.
And he succeeded. In Salome (1905), his breakthrough opera score, Strauss put such explosive gestures into so compact a space that experiencing Salome feels like is like being part of some earth-shaking event unfolding before you. The Biblical story of the young temptress who asked Herod for the head of John the Baptist was first a play by Oscar Wilde before Strauss musicalized it.
At under two hours, in one long act without intermission, Salome fits the timing expectations of movie audiences perfectly. Even opera audiences don’t need more.
“The audience for Salome really feels it has had a whole evening of opera,” Revzen says. “At the end, they are emotionally drained.”
Revzen conducts Arizona opera’s current production, which plays Phoenix Symphony Hall today through Sunday. Though he has conducted other Strauss operas, including Der Rosenkavalier and Ariadne auf Naxos, Revzen has never before essayed the dense labyrinths of the more harmonically adventurous Salome.
“It’s a brilliant score, and so challenging technically for the orchestra. I must say they have risen to the challenge extremely well,” Revzen says.
Arizona Opera is alone in the nation in servicing two cities: Tucson, where the company was founded in 1971, and Phoenix. The company’s business offices are in Phoenix, but its set-building studio is in Tucson, and most productions start their run in the Old Pueblo before heading north.
Coming from Tucson to Phoenix with an opera presents unique challenges:
“When we get into Phoenix Symphony Hall, there won’t be time for an acoustic rehearsal. We’ll have to make the adjustments to a new hall very quickly.”
Salome is known for its Dance of the Seven Veils, in which the title character performs opera’s best-known strip tease. The most sensuous – and last explicit – version available on the Internet is linked above.
But that’s not the killer scene for Revzen:
“The nudity at the end of the dance” – when there is any – “lasts only about six seconds. What is riveting is the final scene, when Salome talks to the severed head of the Baptist.”
Sex and violence – the very stuff of opera.
Opus 131
By · CommentsAbove: Paul Taylor’s take on songs from the Great Depression
What is the secret of conductors and choreographers? Dancers retire young, actors lose roles as they age, and singers generally peak around 50-60. But conductors wave the baton into their 80s, and choreographers make dances seemingly as long as they have breath. Witness Paul Taylor, 79, who started his own company in 1954 and swiftly established himself as one of the true greats of modern dance.
Since that beginning 55 years ago Taylor has created 131 dances. The 131st, Brief Encounters, will be performed Wednesday, Nov. 18, at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts as part of the first-night program of the Paul Taylor Dance Company. The company will dance a second, totally different program Thursday night. For complete info, go here.
Taylor’s work was an early inspiration to me in my discovery of modern dance. His Arden Court showed that nonstop energy onstage might, given the right artistry, amount to a lot more than just nonstop energy. His astounding gangland take on Rite of Spring – complete with Tommy guns – made it radically clear that a score’s gestures, and not its sensibility, are a choreographer’s most essential musical requirement.
Of Brief Encounters, premiered earlier this month in New York, The New York Times says:
“The dancers, beautifully adult and near naked in trim black underwear (by Santo Loquasto), passed through transient scenes of sexual desire, emotional perplexity and more…. I wanted Brief Encounters to last twice as long; certainly I am impatient to see it a second time…. An essay in the very stuff of theater poetry.”
I suspect we will be seeing Paul Taylor’s 155th work ten years from now.
Happy Birthday, ShowUp.com
By · CommentsWhen I first moved to the Valley, almost two decades ago, I kept running into people who didn’t know Phoenix had an opera company, a symphony orchestra, professional theater or a major art museum. I don’t meet such folks anymore, and I suspect ShowUp.Com is a major reason. When it started up five years ago this month, ShowUp.Com was a site to go for info on local arts. Now it’s a place to spend time, swim around, explore what’s going on – and what else is going on. It’s a picture of the Valley arts scene, a scene that’s constantly growing.
Happy birthday, ShowUp.Com. Five years is a good start.
Arizona Cottontail
By · CommentsYoung Sounds of Arizona, the Valley’s premier youth jazz band, in concert from the spring of 2008. Latest in the series, “Arizona Artists on YouTube.”
George is Dead, but traveling the country
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There was a time, not so very long ago, when Broadway-bound plays and musicals stopped briefly in Boston or Philadelphia on their way to New York. A month or six weeks out-of-town, a little retuning, and a show was ready for the Wintergarden or the Music Box. In 1943 a show went into Boston called Away We Go!, and came out a month later with a few small changes and a new title: Oklahoma!
The process is a lot more complicated now. It’s not unusual for a play to go through many incarnations before getting to New York, traveling a lot further afield than Bean Town. And that’s good news for Arizona. George is Dead, the new play by Elaine May (screen credits: The Birdcage, Heaven Can Wait) was originally one of a set of three one-act plays done in San Francisco in 2006. Several rewrites later, it’s arrived as a full-length comedy starring Marlo Thomas and Don Murray, presented by Arizona Theatre Company. After a run in Tucson, George is Dead comes to Phoenix.
“One way or the other, I’m going to see the United States,” jokes Julian Schlossberg about his peregrinations as Elaine May’s producer.
“Elaine is a very special writer. We’ve always felt this was a terrific play but it needed to be developed in a way that prepares it for Broadway. That’s the ultimate goal.”
Getting there may require taking the long route, Schlossberg says, but it’s worth it for the sheer quality of the journey:
“When you’re dealing with someone like Elaine, you just hope you don’t become too smart for the room. Some people dumb down (to get laughs). Elaine couldn’t do that if she wanted to. She’s funny but never moronic.”
Schlossberg, whose credits range from TV to movies to the stage, considers himself a producer in a sense of the word now fading from view:
“Producing has become a very strange credit. These days, if you can write a check, you’re a producer. Still, in every show there’s a lead producer, and if he does his job well he will find the property, the director and the cast, and he’ll work with the writer and director to make sure there’s a certain vision of what’s trying to be accomplished.”
It’s the lead producer’s job to watch the play like a hawk to make sure the vision is fulfilled.
“If we go awry, I as the producer will say ‘Wait a minute, we’re off task,’ and call a meeting.”
The number of straight (non-musical) plays being done in New York has increased over the last few years, and Schlossberg believes he knows why:
“Because there are more and more major stars willing to go on stage, and while they can’t sing or dance, they can act. Marlo Thomas had a major hit TV series (That Girl in the ‘60s and ‘70s) but she went back to study with Lee Strasberg,” the famed acting teacher.
“All the really smart TV and movie actors go back to the stage. Henry Fonda did it. Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman, too. Without appearing before a live audience, an actor can become a caricature.”
Music has wings…
By · CommentsRosie’s House student Jamil Muhammad playing Liszt
Venezuela’s El Sistema has swept the musical world. The system of universal music education for underprivileged children has led, over the 34 years since its founding, to the emergence of Venezuelans as major players on the classical music scene. The recent appointment of Sistema graduate Gustavo Dudamel as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic is only its most visible result.
More than that, El Sistema has empowered millions of Venezuelan children to rise above poverty and the hopelessness that poverty generates. Almost 250,000 Venezuelan children are currently enrolled in the El Sistema’s vast network of youth orchestras.
The Valley has a small-scale counterpart to El Sistema called Rosie’s House. The non-profit school has functioned since 1996 as a haven for children who want to learn strings, woodwinds, brass, guitar, piano or voice, but who come from disadvantageous circumstances. Like El Sistema, Rosie’s House provides everything free of charge, including lessons and the use of instruments. Unlike El Sistema, Rosie’s House is not publicly funded and requires individual and corporate giving to keep it going.
The school was started by Rosebell “Rosie” Schurz and her husband, Woody. Growing up in Germany in the devastation of World War II, Rosie found music to be a great consolation, and in 1992 decided to bring that same consolation to the underprivileged children of her adopted home, Phoenix. She and Woody began what was then called “The Christmas House” (named for her favorite holiday) in a small South Phoenix house with a handful of donated music instruments, a few teachers and a couple dozen students. Today, relocated to Central United Methodist Church in central Phoenix, the renamed Rosie’s House provides music education to more than 300 students, ages 5 to 18,
Rosie and Woody are still around, albeit on the sidelines now, cheering everyone on.
“Rosie is a constant source of inspiration,” says Becky Bell, executive and artistic director of Rosie’s House.
“It’s amazing the effort she and Woody put into founding this academy. They are both incredibly dynamic and dedicated.”
Bell sees Rosie’s House and El Sistema as having sprung from the same understanding of music as a spiritual/mental force.
“El Sistema and Rosie’s House were both founded on the principal that music education is an effective method for changing the life of a child,” Bell says.
“I see the transformation each and every day. These students learn music, but beyond that they learn discipline, confidence, teamwork, creative thinking, goal setting and achievement.”
It was qualities like these that caused Abreu to see in music-making a power far beyond music itself and to create El Sistema. Good citizenship, Abreu has said, is the real result of a solid music education.
Rosie’s House can certainly brag of some real success stories. One graduate, Diane Solario, is a senior at Stanford University; another is studying guitar at the San Francisco Conservatory. Flutist Chad Salazar, a current student, was recently featured on the public radio show “From the Top,” and has set a goal of attending the Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia.
On Dec. 17, some of the school’s top students, including Salazar, will perform in concert at Central United Methodist. It should be a chance to hear what talent might have gone undiscovered without Rosie’s House, and to wonder a little as to why, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, Rosie’s House is the only school on the United states to provide completely free music education to the underprivileged.
Phoenix Opera: From Egypt to Spain
By · CommentsAbove: a scene from Aida, in Phoenix Opera’s production of last fall. For information on Phoenix Opera’s Carmen at the Orpheum Theatre tomorrow, go here.
Magnicaballi’s Odette/Odile
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Natalia Magnicaballi, Astrit Zejnati in Ballet Arizona’s Swan Lake
The mission of Cultural Desert does not include reviews. A review is generally thought to be a big-picture, after-the-fact estimation of a performance, including comments on the various facets of that performance. But something has to be said about Natalia Magnicaballi. So while this isn’t exactly a review, it is definitely a commentary. Nothing about costumes, sets, production values, or music – just a few words about one dancer.
To see a major ballerina dance a great role is a privilege few cities enjoy. Phoenix is among those few this weekend. Magnicaballi is dancing Odette/Odile in Ballet Arizona’s Swan Lake, during the evening performances of the famous ballet at Phoenix Symphony Hall. I saw her in the production Thursday night. It is not a performance to miss.
Technique is so often divorced from expression in ordinary chatter that we don’t stop to think what “technique” means. It simply means the way of doing something; for instance, the way to convey character in ballet is through the nuances of classical dance vocabulary. When Magnicaballi was Odette, the white swan, she used being on pointe to suggest the character’s vulnerability; the height she reached on toe was an expression of Odette’s openness and trust. As Odile, the black swan, Magnicaballi used the same physical stance to convey the opposite trait: her Odile on pointe was commanding and even domineering. Port au bras – the carriage of the arms – was for Magnicaballi’s Odette fluid and seemingly unconsciously embracing, while Odile’s was purposeful, projecting exclusion. Magnicaballi danced the famous fouettés that end Odile’s scene (was there a triple early on? or was that just a very quick double?) like knives thrown into Siegfried’s heart.
The last act, with its pathos of Odette’s final moments, found Magnicaballi fairly floating above the stage. She was helped in this by Astrit Zejnati, who as Siegfried held her aloft with uncanny persistence. One supported lift seemed like it was never to end, so softly and tentatively did Zejnati lower her to the stage floor.
I can’t imagine a performance of Odette/Odile that more perfectly embodies Swan Lake’s theme of nature’s terrible hold on us than the one being danced in Phoenix this weekend by Natalia Magnicaballi.
