Archives for August 2013

Maria Callas sings the “Habañera” from Bizet’s Carmen in Hamburg in 1962, accompanied by Georges Prêtre and the Symphonieorchester des NDR:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

“This evening heard Carmen on the radio, and reflected how hard it was to vamp a man while singing at the top of one’s voice. That is the operatic problem; the singer must keep up a head of steam while trying to appear secretive, or seductive, or consumptive. Some ingenious composer should write an opera about a group of people who were condemned by a cruel god to scream all the time; it would be an instantaneous success, and a triumph of verisimilitude.”
Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (courtesy of Paul Moravec)

From 2004:

Gerry Mulligan wrote a song called “Just Want to Sing and Dance Like Fred Astaire,” which has always been my own vain wish. Instead, I suffer from a chronic condition dubbed Inanimate Object Trouble by the playwright George S. Kaufman, who suffered from the same disorder. I’m a dropper and a tripper, and I don’t need anything to fall over in order to fall–my shadow is quite sufficient, thanks. This problem I attribute to my lifelong left-handedness. I once read a study whose authors concluded that most of the variance in the lifespans of lefties and righties (we die younger) can be explained by the fact that left-handed people are accident-prone. It seems we’re more likely to crash cars, cut off our pedal extremities with power saws, and other such domestic tragedies. The study went on to suggest that our curious penchant for self-destruction is due to the fact that the world is arranged to suit the convenience of right-handed people, a hard truth I learned the first time I picked up a pair of scissors….

Read the whole thing here.

“There are very few of us who are strong enough to make circumstances serve us.”
Somerset Maugham, The Circle

A public interview with Patrick O’Brian, conducted by John Hightower in 1995:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

“Men are extraordinary. They can’t stand the smallest discomfort. Why, a woman’s life is uncomfortable from the moment she gets up in the morning till the moment she goes to bed at night.”
Somerset Maugham, The Circle

In today’s Wall Street Journal I report on my recent visit to Ontario’s Shaw Festival, where I saw three superb revivals, Our Betters, Faith Healer, and Major Barbara. Here’s an excerpt.
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It isn’t quite right to say that Somerset Maugham’s plays are forgotten, but it’s close enough to pass for true, at least in America, where the celebrated author of “Cakes and Ale” and “The Razor’s Edge” is now known almost exclusively as a novelist and short-story writer. Yet there was a time when he was also one of the English-speaking world’s most popular playwrights, and I’ve never seen a Maugham revival (there are such things) without asking myself why adventurous directors aren’t willing to take a second look at his stage works. So the Shaw Festival deserves a wealth of plaudits for mounting “Our Betters,” Maugham’s 1915 comedy about a group of monied American expatriates who’ve come to England in order to marry titled, cash-strapped Brits. Moreover, they’ve done it so well that you’ll be at a loss to explain why so crackling a satire hasn’t been seen on Broadway since 1928.
Maugham was an unabashed cynic, and the immediate appeal of “Our Betters” arises from the savagery with which its well-bred characters skewer the foibles of their friends (“If one wants to be a success in London one must either have looks, wit or a bank balance”). What makes it more than just a school-of-Wilde stage soufflé is his willingness to raise the dramatic stakes in the second act and let the same characters admit to the frustrated passions that they more often prefer to conceal with deceptively brittle badinage.
This production, like the Shaw’s similarly rare and equally important 2012 revival of Terence Rattigan’s “French Without Tears,” is as good as it could possibly be. Morris Panych has staged it briskly and with just the right lightness of touch….
The most agreeable of the Shaw Festival’s four performance spaces is the Royal George Theatre, a vaudeville house that has been transformed into a small but beautifully proportioned 328-seat proscenium-stage theater. In addition to “Our Betters,” the festival is presenting two other plays at the Royal George, Brian Friel’s “Faith Healer” (directed by Craig Hall) and Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara” (directed by Jackie Maxwell, the festival’s artistic director). Both are staged and acted with unusual sensitivity.
Anyone fortunate enough to have seen the 2006 New York revival of Mr. Friel’s great play, in which Ralph Fiennes was cast as a drunken faith healer who is forced by chance–or fate–to face his deepest doubts, will be staggered by Jim Mezon’s identically penetrating performance in the same role. Suffice it to say that lightning can strike the same tree twice. As for Benedict Campbell, who plays the seductively urbane arms manufacturer in “Major Barbara,” he sails through that demanding part with the kind of virtuosity that you’d expect from a top-dollar Broadway star turn….
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Read the whole thing here.
A clip from George Cukor’s rarely seen 1933 film version of Our Betters: