RUTH LEON'S THEATREWISE
THE ARTS ONLINE - JUNE 5-11
Good morning and welcome to Theatrewise.
Friends - This week's link is: https://ruthleontheatrewise.weebly.com/blog//
Another Spring Monday morning, another chance to introduce some smashing online events you may not have come across yet. It’s always safer to stay home and watch your preferred concert, ballet, opera or cabaret on your own screen and not just because you stand less chance of being mugged or having your pockets picked. No, it’s safer because when, like now, everybody but you seems to be on strike, you can push Pause, make a cup or tea or a glass of wine, and return to the screen to watch at your own pace without leaving the house. It’s so much less expensive than venturing into the outside world and in these parlous times, who can afford the tickets?
To tempt you to stay at home again this week. On the Theatrewise Blog there’s a wonderful concert of music by Purcell combined with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic Rime of the Ancient Mariner. One of my favourite actors, Rory Kinear, ‘tells’ the poem – you can’t call it ‘reciting’ – as an exciting adventure and the music, played by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, is superb. These serendipitous combinations of song, music and words, when well done, as here, give each other strength and make us wonder how we ever thought one was complete without the other.
The Royal Opera House has released Mayerling on their platform, Kenneth Macmillan’s ballet, the true story about the mad Crown Prince Rudolf, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his murder/suicide with his mistress Baroness Vetsera. Fabulous Steven McRae is Rudolf, worth the price of admission by himself, as is the bedroom pas de deux with Sarah Lamb which verges on the pornographic.
When I was in New York recently, I caught a gig by the young and extremely talented Australian jazz and cabaret pianist, Matt Baker, and was highly impressed. This week, tomorrow in fact, he’s performing in New York again at Chelsea Table and Stage, a new boite on the West Side of Manhattan and this time, wherever we are in the world, we can join him.
His cabaret concert, A Rhapsody of Gershwin, will be available via livestream as he takes a fresh look at the music of Gershwin. I wrote a book about George (so I feel I can call him by his first name) and I’m therefore extremely keen to see this new take on music we know so well. Baker has an impressive lineup of supporting jazz musicians and vocalists on his show who each have something to offer so this one should be a lot of fun. It's only available for 24 hours, mind, but that should be enough for Gershwin lovers to catch up with the show and for Matt Baker to acquire a lot of international fans.
There’s an excellent short film on the Blog from the National Gallery about Caravaggio and his painting of “The Supper at Emmaus”. It’s amazing to me that I, well, most of us, can see a painting many times, love it, and miss all the important details that become so obvious when pointed out by an expert art historian, in this case amiable curator Daniel Ralston.
That’s the fun of this job, wading though dozens of videos and films each week to decide what to share with you and learning something from each of them. I hope you enjoy all the shows on this week’s Theatrewise Blog as much as I’ve enjoyed choosing them. Just click on the link below or the button and you can watch them all.
And don’t hesitate to recommend the Blog to your arts-loving friends. I’m always keen to expand the readership.
See you next Monday.
All good wishes,
Ruth