Fainting Audiences at Titus

Laura Rees in Titus Andronicus

The Shakespeare's Birthday post by Patrick Vaz over at The Reverberate Hills got people reminiscing about performances of Titus Andronicus, & now there are reports of audience members fainting at the current Shakespeare's Globe production. The Telegraph & the Daily Mail report that a total of 5 people succumbed at a recent performance alone.

Sharknado

I was sold on Sharknado by its title alone. This low-budget disaster movie was made for the Syfy channel & was so bad that it picked up bigger audiences with each re-airing & eventually made it onto late-night cinema screens. I was elated to see it for myself at a Midnight Madness show at the Clay Theater over the weekend.

A tornado strikes LA, resulting in flash floods, the destruction of the Santa Monica Pier, & giant man-eating sharks dropping from the skies. Homemade bombs are used to disperse land-based waterspouts, & at the climax the hero chainsaws his way out of the belly of a shark. A fleeting reference to global warming & a MacGuffin involving a bowl of shark fin soup hint at an ecological theme.

There couldn't have been more than 20 people at the midnight screening, but there was much vociferous laughter & howling nonetheless. I felt enjoyably like I was 12 years old again. A sequel set in New York is in production, called Sharknado 2: The Second One.

§ Sharknado (2013)
dir: Anthony C. Ferrante

Ig Nobel for Effects of Opera on Mice

I don't know how I missed this one: This year's Ig Nobel Prize for medicine went to Japanese research showing that playing La Traviata to mice that received heart transplants made them survive longer. The mice heard Angela Gheorghiu in the title role. Other test subjects heard Mozart, Enya & single sound frequencies.

9 Hour Bach Marathon & Vulgar Bulgers

Image: © Matthias Baus

Not listening to enough Bach? The day after Easter, John Eliot Gardiner leads a 9 hour Bach Marathon at Royal Albert Hall, starting at 1p with the motet Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied & concluding with a 7:30p performance of the Mass in B Minor. Speakers & various instrumental soloists are also scheduled throughout the day.  It seems to be one ticket for the entire event.

Sir Gardiner discusses conducting Bach on a recent edition of Front Row on BBC Radio 4. He refers to period performers who swell notes as "vulgar bulgers."

These people are speaking German!

Roy Crane
Buz Sawyer
December 4, 1967
Ink on board
Cartoon Art Museum

Experimental Belgian Does Shakespeare

For some reason I laughed out loud when I read this capsule preview in The New Yorker:

HEAVE HOVE

Nov. 16-18

The experimental Belgian director Ivo van Hove is the artistic director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the Netherlands’ largest repertory company. At BAM, van Hove directs “Roman Tragedies,” a continuous performance of Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus,” “Julius Caesar,” and “Antony and Cleopatra,” during which the audience is invited to mingle with the cast onstage.

It's a 5-and-a-half-hour show, with no intermission. If I lived in New York, I would totally pack a couple of sandwiches & be there.

No Ordinary Carmina Burana

Received a great flyer touting this "no ordinary" performance of Carmina Burana by the San Francisco Choral Society at Davies Hall. It's replete with "dancing MAIDENS, monks, PAGAN dress, [and] theatrical LIGHTING," though I'm not sure what is meant by "a swan well-done on WRY." The event sounds delightful nonetheless.

§ San Francisco Choral Society presents

Orff: Carmina Burana

Emma Lou Diemer: Songs for the Earth

Brian Staufenbiel, Tenor

Marnie Breckenridge, Soprano

Eugene Brancoveanu, Bass

Contra Costa Children's Chorus, Martin Benvenuto, Conductor

Brian Staufenbiel, Creative Consultant

California Chamber Symphony

Robert Geary, Conductor

Friday, August 17, 2012 8:00 pm

Saturday, August 18, 2012 8:00 pm

Davies Symphony Hall - San Francisco

A Spectacle of Napoleonic Proportions

I was walking by Davies Hall this evening when this poster caught my eye. It's for a special performance by the Redwood Symphony. The program doesn't quite make sense, but you'd be a fool to miss "A Spectacle of Napoleonic Proportions," "a shameless display of brass" and "an almost obscene percussion section."


§ Berlioz Requiem at Davies Hall
August 5, 2012 at 3 p.m.
 
There is no pre-concert lecture for this event.

Berlioz: Requiem
  with the Finger Lakes Choral Festival chorus
  and Lyric Chorus of San Francisco
 
Mendelssohn: Hebrides Overture
Eric Townell, Rochester Oratorio Society
 
Berlioz: Shepherd’s Farewell 
Robert Gurney, San Francisco Lyric Chorus

Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Sunrise” (as in "2001, A Space Odyssey")
 
Boito: Mefistofele (final scene)
Adrian Horn, Finger Lakes Choral Festival