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PODIUM ART

Anything for which people enter a stage.

Willem Jeths: 'My First Symphony is about life and death'

At 53, Willem Jeths can boast an impressive career. His orchestral and chamber music works are performed worldwide and have been recorded on many CDs. In 2008 the newly built Muziekkwartier in Enschede opened with his opera Hotel de Pékin, and three years later the recording of his ode to gay marriage Monument to a Universal Marriage even reached US President Obama. At the request of the ZaterdagMatinee, Jeths wrote his First Symphony for the Radio Filharmonisc...

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Vredenburg Friday in 'Red Box' for one more season

When Muziekcentrum Vredenburg closed its doors for an ambitious renovation in 2007, the symphonic concerts were moved from the centre of Utrecht to the emergency location Vredenburg Leidsche Rijn on the A2 motorway. The broadcasting series 'De Vrijdag van Vredenburg', created two years earlier, moved along to this temporary accommodation, which was soon renamed 'Red Box'. Against all odds, programmer Astrid in 't Veld managed to develop the fledgling concert series there into a public...

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Fiction in dance films, (how) does it work? Good question at festival Cinedans

Fransien van der Putt, together with choreographer and dance film-maker Angelika Oei, saw five new Dutch dance films during Cinedans. Some of the results were promising. The films all transcended the level of visual gimmick. In its place is a struggle with fiction and physical credibility.

Prokofiev's satirical fairy tale is a visual feast

What makes an opera a success? The eccentrics, airheads, comedians, lyricists and tragedians think they know, proclaiming their point of view at the craziest moments and not even bothering to intervene in the action. Welcome to the wonderful world of Prokofiev's L'amour des trois oranges, back on stage at Amsterdam's Music Theatre this month.

At the centre seems to be an absurdist fairy tale about a hypochondriac prince who is tricked by a sorceress into falling in love with three orange...

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Prokofiev fairytale opera on repeat

L'amour des trois oranges

In 2005, director Laurent Pelly and conductor Stéphane Denève enchanted Dutch audiences with their vision of Sergei Prokofiev's L'amour des trois oranges. With its inventive sets, supremely musical direction, dazzling costumes and superb performances by soloists, DNO's Choir and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, this production by the Netherlands Opera met the most highly tense...

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Only in final scene does Guillaume Tell bathe in golden sunlight

After more than four hours, it happens: emotion. Free Switzerland is bathed in golden sunlight and the chorus swells over the most beautiful orchestral sounds Rossini composed. Unworldly sounds, which have little to do with the best-known sounds from Guillaume Tell - the canter from the overture.

A lot may have happened in the previous four hours, but even the famous scene in which Tell has to shoot an apple off his infant son's head is not a dramatic highlight.

H...

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Peter van Onna: 'Treaty of Utrecht is also topical now'

Three hundred years ago, the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, bringing an end to both the War of Spanish Succession, and the War of Queen Anne. Remarkably, this peace treaty was not negotiated on the battlefield, but at the negotiating table. It took a year and a half for the many parties to come to an agreement, and the treaty counts as the beginning of... 

Die Zauberflöte II - Overwhelming, but then?

Zauberflöte

Two years ago he was acclaimed for his staging of A Dog's Heart by Alexander Raskatov, now he is lavishly believed for his production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. It premiered last week at The Netherlands Opera and last night too, the sold-out audience responded enthusiastically. Yet the high expectations were not quite met.

Simon McBurney makes Die Zauberflöte magical

A sound engineer making deafening sounds on stage with wads of paper. Puppetry that flows seamlessly into film projections and singers dubbed by actors. A primitive stage on stage that is, however, high tech. A performance in one of the largest halls in our country, but reminiscent of a flat-floor performance. A flat floor that can move in all directions, though, and could just as easily be a slope or a ceiling, that is....

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Anna Mikhailova: 'Black Perfume is about addiction and fear'

Amsterdam, 10-12-2012 - Last weekend saw the start of the Babel Festival at the Ostadetheater, an initiative of the Diamantfabriek. Founded two years ago, this production group offers young makers the chance to develop small-scale musical theatre. This weekend sees the premiere of Black Perfume, by Russian composer Anna Mikhailova and Dutch director Annechien Koerselman, based on Mikhail Bulgakov's story Morphine.
Mikhailova (Moscow, 1984) studied with the notorious Tichon Chren...

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Jeroen Willems (1962 - 2012)

The Netherlands' greatest artist is dead. Can happen. But can I then also curse heartily? Because Jeroen Willems is irreplaceable. As a journalist, you know the drill: of actors over 60, or of otherwise fragile stature, you have a necrootje ready. If you are well-known and meet the requirements, count on your friends and acquaintances to... 

Moniek Toebosch no longer beams

Amsterdam, 26-11-2012 - Last Saturday died Moniek Toebosch (1948-2012), the sparkling multi-artist who startled our country from the 1970s onwards with contrary performances. Some of you may remember her scandalous performance in the 1983 Holland Festival. Toebosch presented the programme 'Attacks of Extremes' live for VPRO television from Theater Carré. After half the Broadcasting Orchestra had quit in protest,... 

Swan song Tristan Keuris in Friday at Vredenburg

Since the Vredenburg broadcasting series The Friday began six years ago, it has managed to attract an ever-expanding audience. This despite the initially rather inhospitable emergency location on the A2, whose curse name 'Red Box' has since become a nickname for audiences and musicians alike. No wonder, as acoustics and accessibility have improved considerably, while the foyer can now be called downright cosy. What's more, programmer Astrid in 't Veld weaves every y...

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Chamber - Medhi Walerski

NDT in motion: on stage, the silver screen and behind it

Being active on social media like Facebook or Twitter is now a must for any dance company. But broadcasting a dance performance (live) via 600 cinemas worldwide is no mean feat either. NDT (The Hague) has been chosen by Pathé theatres to join the illustrious list of The Metropolitan Opera (New York), The National Theatre (London) and the Bolshoi Ballet (Moscow) as a partner in high-level performing arts.

Ivo van Hove is God. According to New Yorkers.

Anyway: while Amsterdam's city newspaper Parool was embarking on a campaign against the Dutch capital's city company at the behest of the Flemish publishing board, the same Toneelgroep Amsterdam was winning the hearts of New York audiences with a production of the already years-old 'Roman Tragedies', which a few here did not even like overall: http://www.wijbrandschaap.nl/2007/06/romeinse-tragedies-hf2007ta/

No sour sounds in America so far. This sam...

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Getting there, right now! DNO retakes Das Rheingold

They had almost been thrown away: George Tsypin's immense sets for Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Not because his staging was unsuccessful or would have become obsolete by now, but simply because storage was too hefty a cost for the Netherlands Opera.

Immense they are, the sets that designer and architect Tsypin first presented at De Nederlandse Opera almost 20 years ago. The Muziektheater's stage is among the largest in the world, the width is 32 ...

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November Music focuses on multimedia

's Hertogenbosch 9-11-2012 - November Music was successfully kicked off last Wednesday and also focuses on multimedia in its twentieth edition. The duo Strijbos & Van Merwijk has been there before and that afternoon received the Prins Bernhardcultuurprijs Noord-Brabant, presented by former Concertgebouw director Martijn Sanders. In the evening, their multimedia show Cross Avenue, created for the American string quartet ETHEL, attracted many audiences, the two performances of Cloud-Messenger by Fred...

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Death Grips is 20 min of breathtaking frenzy

The experimental hip-hop / noise band Death Grips plays frothy twang noise. But very exciting, interesting branch noise with paranoid, surreal lyrics. Live, it was a breath of fresh air. In their concert in Bittersweet (presented by Paradiso), vocalist MC Ride (Stefan Burnett) and drummer Zach Hill unleash a 20-minute hurricane of breathtaking fury.

Disquiet TV takes classical music out of a straitjacket

Classical music on television always has something boring about it. Often a short introduction by a neat gentleman or lady, followed by the concert itself. Close-ups of the conductor and soloist, a longshot of the entire orchestra and applause afterwards. As if the medium is trying to emulate concert hall etiquette as scrupulously as possible. Even the webstreams that more and more large orchestras are increasingly turning to barely deviate from this formula.

Odedra engages wide audience in Indian dance

Emerging British-Indian dance idol Aakash Odedra manages to hook top choreographers with the programme Rising. The dance diptych premiered in London earlier this year and was shown at the India Dance Festival at Korzo dance theatre in The Hague on 14 October 2012. Rising consists of four solos danced by Aakash Odedra himself. In the first choreographed Nritta (A. Odedra), the young dance prince starts inconspicuously with... 

Nederlands Kamerkoor 75 years young

Amsterdam, 10-10-2012 - Already last summer, the Nederlands Kamerkoor (NKK) toured our country, joining amateur choirs in surprising station concerts to draw the attention of the general public to its seventy-fifth anniversary. In the coming weeks, this anniversary will be celebrated with a series of concerts in seven different cities, under the recruiting title 'A tradition of renewal'.

The kick-off of the festivities will take place on 12 October at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ in Amsterdam, where the ...

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