MUSEUM

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Court & Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuks

See the Met's site regarding the exhibition...Street station.

Today was a day to explore.  The weather is in the low 70s and the sky was blue.  We rode the subway from our station at 32nd Street northward to the 5th Avenue and 59th.  That placed us at the southeastern corner of Central Park which we entered and walked northward up the center of the park to the Boathouse.  From there we veered easterly to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 5th and 82nd.

Along the way we stopped, sat on benches, ate hotdogs outdoors, and watched model sailboats on the sailboat pond.

One of the most productive periods in the history of the region from Iran to Anatolia corresponds to the rule of the Seljuqs and their immediate successors, from 1038 to 1307. The Seljuqs were a Turkic dynasty of Central Asian nomadic origin that in short time conquered a vast territory in West Asia stretching from present-day Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. The lands controlled by the Seljuqs were not a unified empire, but controlled by various branches of the Seljuqs and their successor dynasties (Rum Seljuqs, Artuqids, Zangids, and others). Under Seljuq rule, the exchange and synthesis of diverse traditions—including Turkmen, Perso-Arabo-Islamic, Byzantine, Armenian, Crusader, and other Christian cultures—accompanied economic prosperity, advances in science and technology, and a great flowering of culture within the realm.

This landmark international loan exhibition will feature spectacular works of art created in the 11th through 13th century from Turkmenistan to the Mediterranean. Approximately 270 objects—including ceramics, glass, stucco, works on paper, woodwork, textiles, and metalwork—from American, European, and Middle Eastern public and private collections will be shown. Many of the institutions have never lent works from their collections before. Among the highlights will be a dozen important loans from Turkmenistan, marking the first time that Turkmenistan as an independent country has permitted an extended loan of a group of objects to a museum in the United States.

Under the Great Seljuqs of Iran, the middle class prospered, spurring arts patronage, technological advancements, and a market for luxury goods. In contrast, in Anatolia and the Jazira (northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey)—which were controlled by the Seljuq successor dynasties—art was produced under royal patronage, and Islamic iconography was introduced to a predominantly Christian area.

Furthermore, a number of artists had immigrated to the region from Iran in response to the Mongol conquest in 1220. Because patrons, consumers, and artists came from diverse cultural, religious, and artistic backgrounds, distinctive arts were produced and flourished in the western parts of the Seljuq realm.

LINCOLN CENTER

Metropolitan Opera House
American Ballet Theater

Le Corsaire - Adolphe Adam

We have dropped back to primarily following the New York City Ballet with a subscription.  However, we're going to pick and choose the ABT productions that capture our interests.

We particularly like the smaller house of the Koch Theater.  The Met is sooooo big!

"Discover a treasure trove of virtuoso dancing in this swashbuckling comedy. Staged by Anna-Marie Holmes, this exotic fable of a dashing pirate’s love for a beautiful harem girl features captive maidens, rich sultans, suspenseful abductions, and dramatic rescues—culminating in a shipwreck that’s one of the most breathtaking spectacles in all of ballet. Boasting more than 120 performers, Le Corsaireperfectly showcases explosive bravura dancing from ABT’s star-studded roster."

LINCOLN CENTER

David Koch Theater
New York City Ballet

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Balanchine

Carolyn and I saw and enjoyed NYCB's Balanchine's choreographed Midsummer Night's Dream a few years ago.  It's a big, fun story.  But, what we both were struck by was the Pas de Deux in the 2nd act.  It was so simple and beautiful.  There were no big, fast, high, leaps or movements, just a man and a woman gently being, walking together in unadorned balletic fashion.  Carolyn and I knew at that very moment that we'd just seen something special.

Here it is! So simple, so beautiful.

This is not the pas de deux I am referring to but it's from the ballet...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

• Music by: Felix Mendelssohn
• Choreography by: George Balanchine
• Principal Casting: TITANIA: Teresa Reichlen; OBERON: Daniel Ulbricht; PUCK: Troy Schumacher (replaces Sean Suozzi); HIPPOLYTA: Megan LeCrone; THESEUS: Silas Farley; TITANIA’S CAVALIER: Russell Janzen; HELENA: Lauren King; DEMETRIUS: Zachary Catazaro; HERMIA: Erica Pereira; LYSANDER: Chase Finlay; BUTTERFLY: Indiana Woodward; BOTTOM: Cameron Dieck; DIVERTISSEMENT: Sterling Hyltin, Amar Ramasar

Enter the enchanted land of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a lush forest besieged by quixotic love triangles and feuding fairy kingdoms, awash with magic at every turn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/arts/dance/review-a-midsummer-nights-dream-nodding-off-with-the-mortals.html?_r=0

Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ Nodding Off With the Mortals

The evergreen sweetness of George Balanchine’s 1962 ballet of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” has many sources. There’s the Mendelssohn music that Balanchine chose, abuzz with summer sounds and the confusions and harmonies of love. There’s Balanchine’s expert storytelling, with its honeyed comedy and deft interweaving of fairies and mortals. There’s the embodiment of so many of those fairies by children (students from the School of American Ballet), one of the most enchanting uses of children in all of ballet.

Yet this “Dream,” in which fairies and mortals alike are frequently dozing off or being put to sleep by magic, can itself drift toward sleep. And so it was at the David H. Koch Theater on Tuesday, when New York City Ballet began its annual weeklong run of the work.

Tyler Angle and Tiler Peck in George Balanchine’s ballet, recorded in 2015.
By NEW YORK CITY BALLET on May 25, 2016. Watch in Times Video »

The sedative ingredient was hard to identify. As conducted by Andrew Litton, the music was newly vibrant: agile in its scurrying, full-bodied in its braying and sweet thunder, hushed in its lullabies. And apart from Andrew Veyette, who looked uncharacteristically sloppy in Oberon’s fearsomely fast and difficult solos — dampening their usual jolt of excitement — the performances were good, if not especially inspired.

This cast does have special graces. Taylor Stanley, who was just promoted to principal, is especially good as Bottom, funny and touching even with his face hidden in the head of an ass. And the all-dance second act, the slightly dull wedding party that happens after the story has been wrapped up, is justified and lifted to another plane by Tyler Angle and Tiler Peck’s as-good-as-it-gets rendition of the pas de deus.

This sublime duet, Balanchine’s harmonious rebuke to the foolish entanglements of Shakespeare’s lovers, is all about intimacy and trust. Mr. Angle and Ms. Peck, sturdy but never stolid, keep afloat on a singing line through balances, low lifts and quarter turns, sustaining an ideal of love into the gentle ecstasy of the final dips.

Soon afterward, we return to the forest and the fairies and fireflies at dusk. The final image is supposed to be of Puck in flight, but on Tuesday, something happened with the harness and the ropes, and Antonio Carmena’s Puck stayed grounded, accidentally emblematic of an evening a little short on enchantment.

MUSEUM

Battle Ship Intrepid

It's a beautiful day outside and a perfect opportunity to get on the Hudson River (just a bit) and see the Intrepid and its "guests".

"New York City’s Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum Complex is an educational and cultural non-profit institution centered on the aircraft carrier Intrepid. The mission of the Museum is to promote the awareness and understanding of history, science and service through its collections, exhibitions and programming in order to honor our heroes, educate the public and inspire our youth. Join us for a dynamic, interactive and educational journey for all ages."

We had a 2 hours, private tour of the ship regarding its role in the Pacific Oceans during World War II.  It was very well presented by an enthusiastic, well informed scholar on the ship.  Learned a lot.

A look at what is there...

A US Navy ship arriving in NYC for Fleet Week.  Those white dots are sailors and behind them are Marines.  Impressive.

Marine Quarters on the Intrepid.

PERFORMANCE

Carnegie Hall
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

Rene Fleming - Soprano

Everything we see in New York City is a treat but this performance is at the top of the list.  Strauss's "Four Last Songs" has been one of my very favorites for many years.  To hear it performed by Rene Fleming and the Met Orchestra is a dream performance.

ALL-R. STRAUSS PROGRAM
Don Juan
Four Last Songs"
Meinem Kinde"
"Liebeshymnus"
"Das Bächlein""Ruhe, meine Seele"'
"Die heiligen drei Könige aus Morgenland"
Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30

"A disciple of Richard Wagner—in whom he declared “music reached its greatest capacity for expression”—Richard Strauss pushed Wagnerian lushness and chromaticism to a glorious extreme that became a cul de sac. By the early 20th century, the “modern” school of Wagner was as dated as the “conservative” school of Brahms. It is certainly hard to see how anyone—except Strauss himself in Also sprach Zarathustra and Ein Heldenleben—could outdo the Wagnerian fireworks of Don Juan, the first of Strauss’s tone poems to be performed.

Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) are the final creations of a composer who knew he was at the end of his life. Knowing these songs are final testaments makes them uniquely poignant, but without their dramatic circumstances, they would still be among the composer’s most exquisite creations. Prior to the Vier letzte Lieder of 1948, Strauss wrote more than 200 lieder. Of those on this afternoon’s program, he wrote the majority before 1906 for his wife, Pauline, who sang them, he always maintained, better than anyone. He composed for other favored singers as well, sometimes reworking early songs originally for piano accompaniment into full orchestral versions, sometimes beginning with the orchestra and condensing to piano later.

Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra influenced two of the most glorious musical works of the late 19th century, Strauss’s tone poem of the same title and Mahler’s Third Symphony, both completed in 1896. In the case of Strauss’s work, the influence seems almost palpable—an astonishing display of orchestral color and technology. From the blazing fanfare over a shuddery organ pedal—surely one of the most imposing openings in music—to the enigmatic ending, Also sprach Zarathustra is a mesmerizing work, one that combines visceral power with surprising delicacy."

Resting cellos.

You have the words so here's the music. Well worth the time... Listen.

A complete performance of Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra closed the program.

Russian Tea Room

THEATER

Minskoff Theater
The Lion King

We first saw in London, England.  It was wonderful then and there and it will be wonderful in New York.

STORY 
of The Lion King

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A lively stage adaptation of the Academy Award-winning 1994 Disney film, The Lion King is the story of a young lion prince living in the flourishing African Pride Lands. Born into the royal family, precocious cub Simba spends his days exploring the sprawling savanna grasslands and idolizing his kingly father, Mufasa, while youthfully shirking the responsibility his position in life requires. When an unthinkable tragedy, orchestrated by Simba’s wicked uncle, Scar, takes his father’s life, Simba flees the Pride Lands, leaving his loss and the life he knew behind. Eventually companioned by two hilarious and unlikely friends, Simba starts anew. But when weight of responsibility and a desperate plea from the now ravaged Pride Lands come to find the adult prince, Simba must take on a formidable enemy, and fulfill his destiny to be king. A vibrant and exciting tale from the great creatives at Disney, The Lion King is a story of love and redemption that nobody should miss.

CRITICS’ REVIEWS 
for The Lion King

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The breathtakingly staged Broadway adaptation of Disney's king of the cartoon jungle is an instant theater classic.

Review by Chris Willman from Entertainment Weekly

Awe-inspiring! Broadway theater is alive again. [Julie] Taymor's imaginative ideas seem limitless. it's a gorgeous, gasp-inducing spectacle. Most important - against all odds - it has innocence. The show appeals to our primal, childlike excitement in the power of theater to make us see things afresh.

Review by Richard Zoglin from Time Magazine

PERFORMANCE

Carnegie Hall
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

James Levine, Music Director Emeritus and Conductor
Evgeny Kissin, Piano

Glinka - Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila
Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 2
Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 6, "Pathétique"



"It’s an evening abundant with passion, melodic splendor, and dazzling color—elements that make Russian music thrilling. Glinka’s energetic Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila sets the stage for his festive grand opera. Superstar pianist Evgeny Kissin is on hand for one of most beloved concertos in all music: Rachmaninoff’s famous Piano Concerto No. 2. The program concludes with Tchaikovsky’s impassioned Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique.”

You must watch this short video...

The hall this evening will be filled with Russians.  On a previous occasion when we heard Kissin we sat right across the aisle from Mikhail Baryshnikov.


MIKHAIL GLINKA Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila

Glinka’s reputation as the father of Russian art music was cemented through the posthumous gratitude and acknowledgment he received from many famous Russian composers of the generations that followed. Ruslan and Lyudmila, composed between 1837 and 1842,is the second of Glinka’s two operas and is based on Pushkin’s poem of the same name. Though the full opera has achieved a comfortable place in the repertoire only in its native land, its infectiously energetic overture is a popular concert piece the world over.



SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18

For several years following the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony in 1897, Rachmaninoff found efforts at composition futile and distracted himself with other activities. His cousins eventually sent him to a specialist in hypnosis; after a few months of treatment, Rachmaninoff was considerably improved, and he traveled to the Crimea and then to Italy, returning to Russia bearing detailed sketches for a piano concerto. By December 1900, the concerto’s last two movements were finished, and Rachmaninoff played them in concert. Encouraged by the reception, he finished the first movement on May 4, 1901, and introduced the complete work the following November to thunderous acclaim.


PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74, “Pathétique”

Tchaikovsky called this his most “sincere” symphony, and indeed it brought a new emotional honesty to music. The gloom of the outer movements—made all the more convincing by the groping toward light in the inner ones—is gripping and emotionally real. The darkness of this symphony (dubbed the “Pathétique” by Tchaikovsky’s brother) looks forward to desolate moments in Mahler, Shostakovich, and others, yet the work carries a feeling of profound isolation. In Lawrence Gilman’s words, it remains “a lonely and towering masterpiece. Where, indeed, is there anything at all like it?