Sunday, July 5, 2015

New York Symphony and Ballet

My long weekend in New York June 12-14 was very stimulating and filled with music.  Arthur Honegger’s dramatic oratorio, Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (Joan of Arc at the Stake) was performed by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert.  This oratorio portrayed Joan of Arc as she lived her final minutes and remembered some of the events that led her to that point.  Performed in French with English supertitles, this was masterful and very moving.  New York Choral Arts provided the vocal parts and there were three speaking roles that moved the drama along.  The title role, a speaking role, was played by Marion Cotillard with intensity and innocence.  Here is a brief review of this oratorio:


Marion Cotillard in the title role of Honegger’s Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher, 
Photo by Chris Lee

I had the good fortune to see the American Ballet Theater's (ABT’s) extraordinary and elegant performance of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty.  This staging is notable because ABT’s artist-in-residence, Alexei Ratmansky, researched in detail the choreography of Marius Petipa and the costumes from the first performances of this ballet in 1890 in St. Petersburg, Russia.  This production hearkens back to a view of an old-world court in two time periods separated by 100 years.  Ratmansky cast several children from ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis ballet school, where my friend’s daughter, Julia Levine, is a student.  Julia danced two roles in Sleeping Beauty.


Gillian Murphy as Aurora in ABT’s The Sleeping Beauty, Photo by Gene Schiavone




With Julia Levine at the American Ballet Theater