Entry tags:
Culture!
The summer feels like it has gone by in a flash, but not before I managed to Do Some Things with it. Mostly in Edinburgh, where I had the holiday I meant to have last year, before I came down with Covid on my first full day there. This year I did not have Covid and also seem to have managed to get back to about where I was healthwise last year before I got it again, which meant that I not only had a nice time with my parents and Youngest Sister, but felt up to leaving the house, if with the inevitable days of not being so good.
* A Little Night Music, Sondheim. Edinburgh Conservatoire, so students who can actually sing and a decent director. I'd never seen it before and had avoided looking up the plot, though genius was not required to work out which way things were tending. Strong performances from the leads and a solid cast in general, with good direction and ensemble pieces. I enjoyed it a lot, and it made me want to see the Bergman film/
* Legend of the White Snake. A 75 minute abridged version of the extremely long original, this was excellent, performed by the younger members of a professional Chinese company. My father boldly joined me, and we both really enjoyed it. The musical style is never going to be my favourite, but it was interesting to hear it live by trained performers. There were, thankfully, surtitles, and more humour than I expected, and some excellent fighting/acrobatics*, although that did not save it for the 10 year old boy in front of me who was silent but unmistakable in his wishing that his mother had not dragged him to this display of his cultural heritage. Having seen a piece of Kunqu opera once, would I go again? Definitely!
* An Irish Impressionist: Lavery on Location Large National Galleries of Scotland exhibition of the painter John Lavery (1856 - 1941). I'd never heard of him, but ended up liking his work a lot, he caught people very effectively, as well as landscapes. He had trained in Glasgow, then France, and worked in an impressionist style, mostly southern Europe and Morocco. Mum and I were struck by his evidently being a man with a strong sense of business, who had seized on opportunities to make his career. We were particularly impressed that, commissioned to do a large painting of Queen Victoria visiting the Glasgow International Exhibition, he had invited everyone to be in it to his studio for him to do a study of them, to make sure he got a good likeness. Only fitting for an important civic piece, of course - and meant that he got individual time with a large number of potential patrons and customers. Full marks to a self-made man.
* Yoshida: Three Generations of Japanese Printing at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. I really like father and son Yoshida Hiroshi and Toshi's work, so it added a new dimension to see them here contextualised by each other and also art by their wives and families. My favourites remain the traditional landscape styles, but some there were some interesting more abstract pieces, as well as a number of what ten year old me mentally categorised as "1960s grey gloomy things" that did not enliven a wet Sunday afternoon in Leeds Art Gallery (I was much more taken with the Lady of Shalott, and Gordon of Khartoum). I bought the catalogue.
*We also liked a more low key piece of movement of pretending to be on a boat and getting the swaying feeling across.
* A Little Night Music, Sondheim. Edinburgh Conservatoire, so students who can actually sing and a decent director. I'd never seen it before and had avoided looking up the plot, though genius was not required to work out which way things were tending. Strong performances from the leads and a solid cast in general, with good direction and ensemble pieces. I enjoyed it a lot, and it made me want to see the Bergman film/
* Legend of the White Snake. A 75 minute abridged version of the extremely long original, this was excellent, performed by the younger members of a professional Chinese company. My father boldly joined me, and we both really enjoyed it. The musical style is never going to be my favourite, but it was interesting to hear it live by trained performers. There were, thankfully, surtitles, and more humour than I expected, and some excellent fighting/acrobatics*, although that did not save it for the 10 year old boy in front of me who was silent but unmistakable in his wishing that his mother had not dragged him to this display of his cultural heritage. Having seen a piece of Kunqu opera once, would I go again? Definitely!
* An Irish Impressionist: Lavery on Location Large National Galleries of Scotland exhibition of the painter John Lavery (1856 - 1941). I'd never heard of him, but ended up liking his work a lot, he caught people very effectively, as well as landscapes. He had trained in Glasgow, then France, and worked in an impressionist style, mostly southern Europe and Morocco. Mum and I were struck by his evidently being a man with a strong sense of business, who had seized on opportunities to make his career. We were particularly impressed that, commissioned to do a large painting of Queen Victoria visiting the Glasgow International Exhibition, he had invited everyone to be in it to his studio for him to do a study of them, to make sure he got a good likeness. Only fitting for an important civic piece, of course - and meant that he got individual time with a large number of potential patrons and customers. Full marks to a self-made man.
* Yoshida: Three Generations of Japanese Printing at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. I really like father and son Yoshida Hiroshi and Toshi's work, so it added a new dimension to see them here contextualised by each other and also art by their wives and families. My favourites remain the traditional landscape styles, but some there were some interesting more abstract pieces, as well as a number of what ten year old me mentally categorised as "1960s grey gloomy things" that did not enliven a wet Sunday afternoon in Leeds Art Gallery (I was much more taken with the Lady of Shalott, and Gordon of Khartoum). I bought the catalogue.
*We also liked a more low key piece of movement of pretending to be on a boat and getting the swaying feeling across.