Days after the grand scenic world premiere of Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder, De Nationale Opera once again comes up with a more than remarkable production of international stature. Everything and everyone dances and sings. (1) So you think you can dance? Sure. The modern opera singer(s) is used to something. Simply stepping forward and singing your aria was outdated decades ago. And.
More than a century we had to wait, but at last Arnold Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder also to be seen. Surprisingly, it is not. Reportedly, the composer was against it, as it concerns a cantata. However, director Pierre Audi and conductor Marc Albrecht show very convincingly with this scenic world premiere that Gurre-Lieder hid an opera that yearned for the stage light.
I had promised to check out a session with Benjamin Zander. Me as a non-expert, together with someone who finds classical music downright soporific. To see if Zander works, as he promises to work: "Everyone loves classical music, they just don't know it yet". The man is in the Netherlands and that doesn't happen very often. Not so long ago...
The 300-strong audience stood up as one after Leonard Bernstein's infectious performance of Candide at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam last night. The performance of this 'pocket version' of Bernstein's cheerful musical/opera about the incorrigible optimist Candide, produced by the Nationale Reisopera, took place indoors, in the hotel's ballroom, due to the weather conditions. After all, the Grachtenfestival has to be...
The living proof can be seen just before it knocks you off your socks, or lands under a bus before your eyes: people with headphones on in traffic are not on the same bike path as where you are riding. Not even in the same universe. Even if their eyes are open. We don't realise ourselves how effective sound is
A lot has already been said about Robin Williams. And why it's bad that he's dead. Remains the view that the best humour cannot exist without an inky black background. Humour, then, is an ideal tool to master your dark side. The darker, the more humour, in other words. Stephen Fry talks about the extremities of...
Two actors who, together with their director, want to create a performance about loss. Or rather: our fear of losing things, or people. The makers are not quite there yet, it turns out at Theatre Festival Boulevard. From numerous conversations with thinkers and (experiential) experts, they have distilled characters while improvising, which they - separated by a thick...
Being able to write nicely is fine, but the journalists at Culture Press can do more. They have studied to be art experts, have spent thousands of hours in rooms and halls that even you did not know existed and possess enormous drive. How else could this website exist?
About the same time as the train from Donietsk to Kharkov arrived in my mailbox yesterday, a press release from the Manifesta. Our cultural pride in St Petersburg. These weeks, the Dutch festival is organising an audio tour of Rimini Protokoll, the renowned highly political company from Germany. Oh. And, as a third item: there is a conversation tonight about what the Biennale is capable of in times of political turmoil.
From 2007, video artist Matthew Barney (The Cremaster Cycle) and composer Jonathan Bepler on a free adaptation of Norman Mailer's most maligned book Ancient Evenings. To Mailer's mythology of ancient Egypt, they added the equally mythical American automobile industry in an ambitious and operatesque film project with a demanding length of 5 hours 11 minutes.
From February River of Fundament on world tour and the Holland Festival
That Serbian Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Austrian crown prince in 1914, thus triggering World War I, was until recently in the Netherlands no more than a dry historical fact. But now that it has been a century since this attack, this young freedom fighter is still getting a face in our country. But what De Warme Winkel is doing in the performance 'Gavrilo Princip' is much more than 'giving a face'.
Jubilation and cheers echoed last night in the sold-out Great Hall of the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ after the Dutch premiere of Delusion of the Fury of Harry Partch at the Holland Festival. No wonder, as the performance directed by Heiner Goebbels was titillating and the performance by the - conductorless - MusikFabrik perfect.
Breaking new ground in theatre is the aim of Canadian director Robert Lepage and his group Ex Machina. It seems like everything is unusual about 'Playing Cards: Spades': playing floor, lighting, seating around the stage, the stories, the acting and the surprising denouement.
After seven concert seasons, the broadcasting series takes 'The Friday of Vredenburg' farewell to emergency venue Vredenburg Leidsche Rijn, better known as 'The Red Box'. From September, the concerts will again take place in the restored Great Hall of the otherwise brand-new TivoliVredenburg. The concert on 6 June will feature the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Groot Omroepkoor, conducted by Antony Hermus. They will play music by Beethoven, Richard Strauss and a brand new piece by Wim Laman, Requiem Songs.
Because Dutch culture the Dutch only notice when scoring abroad (also applies to football, by the way): Big news about the Netherlands' first company. National coach Ivo van Hove of Toneelgroep Amsterdam has appointed none other than Juliette Binoche snared for a lead role in a play.
The main character of Bach's St John Passion? Jesus, of course. Wrong. It is the narrator, the evangelist, especially in Dale Duesing's wonderful staging, especially when interpreted by Robert Burt. Where in ordinary performances of the Johannes the evangelist's recitatives mainly interrupt the arias and choral passages, here they form the dramatic core. We truly see John's passion.
Contrary to what some expected a few years ago, 3D in artistic film is still a rarity. So then, when something pops up in this corner again, it immediately makes one curious. And so I don't mean Cathedrals of Culture, the 3D film project by Wim Wenders and five other filmmakers starring buildings. That Wenders is a 3D believer we already knew.
I mean that other 3D premiere at the Berlin festival: Above Us All of the Dutch
Tonight, Feb 14 honours the North Netherlands Orchestra at the Oosterpoort in Groningen Simeon ten Holt, who died in 2012, with the world premiere of his orchestral work Centri-fuga, which he completed in 1979. It has never been performed to this day and will be christened tonight by conductor David Porcelijn. After the interval, Ten Holt's magnum opus will also be heard Canto ostinato for four pianos, performed by Sandra and Jeroen van Veen, Fred Oldenburg and Irene Russo. Earlier this week, other pianists also performed it at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.
Regional newspapers hardly do any real cultural journalism anymore. We know this, because it was the reason why we Culture Press once founded have. How bad things are now, five years later, with art in the region and the way the newspaper handles it, was evident this month in Tilburg.
During Writers Unlimited, writers often mingle clandestinely among the common folk. And especially younger, international authors, unlike the Adriaan van Dissen of this world who cannot take a step without being buried in a scrum of literary groupies. So it can happen that you find yourself drinking beer several times with someone who suddenly, completely unexpectedly, turns out to be a genius author. Like Andrès Neuman.
How can a usually very ordinary, amiable theatre director suddenly come out with the notice That a few orchestras can go away and the National Ballet should be outsourced? We wondered so and headed to the car park at the Concertgebouw yesterday.
Prokofiev's The Player is an hour and a half of drama, then after the interval it really becomes opera. This is not down to the soloists, not to the direction or sets, and certainly not to the excellent Residentie Orkest conducted by Marc Albrecht. Perhaps the music and libretto are too ingenious, Prokofiev was too faithful to Dostoevsky's book to make it a real opera. And perhaps Andrea Breth is too good a stage director for this opera. "Watch the surtitles especially carefully," she told me just before the premiere, "so you don't miss anything."
Forget the hours that preceded, don't think about the two hours to come. This is the moment. The Nibelungenhaat motif and the Hagen motif resound, but distorted. They clash. They cannot agree, We hear something vaguely triumphant, but at the same time threatening.
Five reasons to go to the ''Schoenberg & Kandinsky'' exhibition at the Jewish Historical Museum. And two why you can omit a visit.
Jet Bussemaker is satisfied. For the next few years, there will be little whining about the subsidies under her regime. She states this in her letter this weekend. After all, the basis of the system is fixed: there are great museums, symphony orchestras, opera and theatre clubs whose subsidies are cast in concrete. Or rather carved from classical marble, because money gets you
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