Streaming Komische Oper Berlin's "The Fair at Sorochintsi" by Moussorgsky

Muggy late summer weather. Out in the garden, hanging me washing, besieged by swallows swoopin' and chatterin'. Why flying so low? Flying ants, that's why, and the birds was swooping in for a meal of fat queen ants on the wing.

But sometimes this weather gives me a right old headache, or the feeling of the start of one. This happened the other weekend and I took to me workroom, feeling sorry for myself, unable to read and nothing on the radio... until I do have a brain wave and try the internet and the Opera Platform.  And I found a piece from the Komische Oper Berlin (same director, Barry Kosky, that brought "The Nose" to Royal Opera House).

Dear friends I spent a pleasant couple of hours, forgetting my headache and lounging around to the streamed pleasure of  Moussorgsky's "The Fair at Sorochintsi" Berlin style: farce, love story, devils and curses, drama, pigs heads and stilt-walkers. And great chorus singing. My kind of opera production.
You can stream it from Opera Platform until 21st October 2017 and I suggest you do.

Trying For A Night Out.... The Rise And Fall of The City Of Mahagonny..... At The Cinema

Well... Not tonight, you understand. That would be too much.... For us to go out on a Saturday night.

But our "Scottish friends" (do sound like that play... The Scottish Play... don't it) say that they have swanned off to the opera via their local cinema and it was an all right thing. So we are trying it too and I've got tickets for a live broadcast of Weill and Brecht's "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" at one of our local cinemas. If this works... we may be on the town all the time!

A love of Kurt Weill music be one of our early bonds... The Old Man and me. I made an impression on The Old Man, decades ago, with a quick Surabaya Johnny in the foyer of a concert hall....but I'm too old for that kind of thing these days. And of course we have seen "Mahagonny" before. And we did listen to the Covent Garden production recently on the radio. But this will be a chance to see the production. I am quite excited. Possibly over-excited. We do now have a quiet life, you know.

PS. The Old Man  Speaks.
This morning I be a bit grumpy over breakfast while The Old Man do chunter on. Finally  I sigh and do say: "Oh...barble barble barble... that's all you do!"
Indignantly he do say: "I have been quiet all night!"

Grey Doll And Criminal Reading: Jan Costin Wagner

If, like me, you are cheered by discovering a new "crime series" to read... you'll understand my "hurrahs" when I recently read "Light in a Dark House" by German writer Jan Costin Wagner.
And if, like me, you enjoy a Nordic setting, then you get two treats in one because Wagner lives part of the time in Finland and it is in Finland that he sets his crime series featuring detective Kimmo Joentaa.

"Light in a Dark House" is his latest in this series to be translated into English (by respected translator Anthea Bell). The story centres on the murder of a coma patient in the local hospital, a mystery patient about whom nothing is known since she was found unconscious by the roadside. What follows is a multi-stranded investigation that brings Joentaa back into contact with Helsinki detective Westerberg and embraces several apparently unconnected murders. The narrative also uses passages from diaries, some from the present day and some from the 1980s.

I enjoyed this book and hope to backtrack to Wagner's earlier stories in the series. Be warned. If you don't appreciate a large slice of introspection or emotional content in your crime detection and detectives.... this may not be your style of reading. But it is mine!
You can read a full Euro crime review here.

Animated Discussions: Wind by Robert Loebel

Prize winning short from Robert Loebel concerning a land where the wind always blows and the adaptations of its people to their circumstances. A monument to ingenuity.
Sound design by Berlin-based David Kamp.


WIND from robert loebel on Vimeo.

The "Christmas Gift": Wagner By The Hour... "The Ring Cycle"

So Someone Who Shall Be Nameless...do give The Old Man a boxed set of The Met's Complete "Ring" Cycle on DVD for Christmas. (Very nice present some of you may say... which indeed it is.)

Now... I may not have mentioned this already but.... I am not a Wagner fan. The Old Man however is a passionate devotee (see this previous post as proof). And as he do sprout yet another strange medical condition the other day... one hand looking like a bunch of sausages... (so far a blood test taken but no results....) .... I do feel he may need a treat and do agree to the watching of said DVDs... In truth I am a great Lepage fan and as this is his 2012 production for The Met... I really do want to see them as well.

I am surviving. Some of the scene effects are magical... wish I could have been there to see them. And some of the singing is wonderful. (Don't that sound grudging?) The Old Man grumbles a bit. For some reason he decides to try me out (without my realising it) on the final act of the entire thing. So he be a bit disgruntled that the immolation wasn't immolating enough as far as he was concerned! But equally he do peer at me occasionally to see how I have taken a particular passage... and I can tell... that his eyes be full and his voice might be choked... as he waves his banana hand around.

Grey Doll & Criminal Reading: Jakob Arjouni's "Brother Kemal"

Sometimes I catch a writer... tragically... with their last book. Last year it was Paul Sussman with his thrilling "Labyrinth Of Osiris" set in Egypt and Israel. (Read a review here.)

Recently I read German writer Jakob Arjouni's "Brother Kemal". It's the latest and sadly the last in the late writer's crime series featuring Turkish-German private eye Kemal Kayankaya as he walks the "mean streets" of Frankfurt. It is a tightly written, concise and flavourful thriller with a wry view which conjures up Chandler and his creation Marlowe. Arjouni wrote this series over a long period of time (because he wrote other things aside from Kemal) and there are four previous titles in the series. Publisher No Exit Press published all the titles last month by way of celebrating Arjouni's work.
Read a review of "Brother Kemal" over on the Euro Crime blog.

Travels With My Film-Life: Berlin, 1931 - "Emil & The Detectives"

Ah! You do think I may be deep in the rise of Hitler and such, here in 1930s Berlin.... But no....
I am enjoying the innocence of a ragamuffin childhood as I join village boy Emil, robbed of his money by a bowler-hatted villain who do drug poor Emil as he travels by train to Berlin to stay with his grandmother. (Moral: Do not accept sweets from dodgy strangers, children!) In Berlin Emil is helped by a friendly gang of children (aka "The Detectives") to track down the bowler-hatted villain and find a way to get Emil's money back. Watch out for the car-horn tooting gang leader. Toot-toot!

Based on the famous children's book  "Emil & The Detectives", written by Erich Kastner, this 1931 German version is by Gerhard Lamprecht and has a script written by a pre-Hollywood Billy Wilder.

This is the kind of kids story that makes me feel good. Not sure why. But I remember my favourite children's book was "A Hundred Million Francs" by Paul Berna... which is set in postwar France but in many ways is a very similar story... a gang of ragamuffins track down the villains that steal something precious from them.

On the same DVD as this German 1931 film is the BFI restored 1935 English version...
Here's an extract for you.

The NY Met, Lepage... and Wagner

So next Saturday (April 20th 2013) the Live from the Met broadcast on BBC Radio 3 will be "Siegfried"... and if you want a taster of what I mean by a Lepage production you can see the Met's clip in the next post. Yes... I know... not much to see on a postage stamp blog post...

So bear with me over the next post or two whilst I recount my admiration of Robert Lepage's work.
You see I am a set-tilting, smoke and mirrors kinda girl when it comes to theatre.

"Siegfried" - Act 3: Wanderer's Entrance - The Metropolitan Opera

A Hilltop Walk Leading To Wagnerian Ramblings

Today we do walk up the hill. As you can see it is misty.

I do have a rather martyred weekend in terms of evening entertainment.... First there is the weekly BBC Radio 3's  Opera on 3 - "Live from the Met" broadcast... which do be Wagner's "Die Walkure."  And I be no fan of Wagner.... but The Old Man is.... so I do grit my teeth and bear nearly all of it.

Then I be hijacked because The Old Man announces that he be giving the BBC's paltry allotment of  "The Masters" Golf Tournament priority over my Scandi-crime...Much to my chagrin...
(He have better recorded my "Arne Dahl".) These are the disagreements of the elder kind as we both insist he said, he didn't, and so on. I be not in good humour.

....Until I do some research on the Met production. Because it is by Robert Lepage... who be a bit of a theatrical  must for me. Which cause me to look at some clips online at the Met site  and to talk to The Old Man about it.... which do prompt the usual Old Man lecture... which one may or may not find informative. This lecture continues during our hilly walk. Here you can see some goats momentarily enthralled by the concept of opera production of the Wagnerian kind.

Mrs D Ponders Crime: Peter Leonard "Voices Of The Dead"

A fast-paced tale that to and fros between 1970s Detroit and 1940s Munich. Much murder and mayhem of the cold-blooded kind.

You can read a review over at Eurocrime....
along with loads of information for eurocrime addicts and lots of other crime fiction reviews....

Travels with my Film-Life: Sweden

We's just been visiting Sweden via Roy Andersson's film: "Songs from the Second Floor".

'Cept... it's not exactly visiting Sweden... It's... erm..
It's entering an absurdist or Samuel Beckett version of Sweden. References and flavours that crop up after I watch the film are a collection of "B"s: Bunuel, Beckett, and Pina Bausch... with a little bit of Laurel and Hardy thrown in, especially the impotent rage of Oliver Hardy.

Beautifully and painstakingly filmed, with a succession of vignette scenes played to a fixed-point camera, in only one scene does the camera move. Finding this out, I realise why I am drawn to theatrical comparisons. In the sense of viewpoint, it's as though I am watching a proscenium theatre piece.

The occasional foray into white-faced makeup makes me think of silent films; the repetition of phrases and themes ... Beckett and Bausch; the procession of self-flagellating stockbrokers, and the serried ranks of bishops ... Bunuel.

But make no mistake, this film is not just a hotch-potch of references. It is a dark, funny, surreal, coherent piece, in which characters wander through office buildings, psychiatric wards, cafes, and an urban landscape dominated by an endless traffic jam. A railway station and a desolate, fringe-urban "plain" fill out the film's setting.

Andersson took four years to complete the film. He doesn't use storyboarding to plan scenes and shots - but walks through the scenes and situations with himself, crew members, and actors - until he has built the scene and the camera viewpoint that he wants.

Music is by Benny Andersson. No relation to the director. But yes. That - Benny Andersson. The man from Abba. I'm not an Abba Girl but ... this film's music progresses around my brain as I write.

"So who is this Pina Bausch then?" ask you.

Aah... wonderful, wonderful dance-theatre maker who died in 2009. The Old Man and me managed to see performances in London and Edinburgh. In fact, some years ago, I book tickets for a performance at Sadler's Wells. The performance coincides with The Hospital calling The Old Man in for treatment of an extreme nature... and he told 'em:

"I ain't coming in til I seen this show."

And neither did he.

The last piece of hers that we were able to see...was in 2002. We'd just moved to Cornwall. But we went back up to London to catch it. And glad we were too. This is a sample of the same piece, "Kontakthof" from another performance. (Click on that link if you want to know more.)

But I digress.
I love this here Andersson film. So I tries to find a link for you to watch a sample. Here is a trailer for it... If you are not ready for "some scenes of an adult nature" as they say .... then don't click here.