Delights in a time of disasters
August 18, 2003 | 12:00am
In the last 10 days of July or so, the terrorists, who have merrily danced their way out of their detention cells, are still on the lose and the finger-pointing among their captors continue; a storm has devastated the north and flooded Metro Manila, shutting down schools; the sadistic scumbags who run the power companies have laughed their heads off while their consumers sweat in the dark and curse in vain; a jeepney strike has stranded commuters; self-styled cause-oriented groups have continued their red-flag waving in the empty air; and 295 fully armed uniformed men have attempted a coup as the mindless masses cheer. Ho-hum… So, what’s new?
The real miracle is that during these days, the cultural scene has suddenly sprung to life. All at once, this moonlighter found himself busy covering his beat, hopping from one concert hall or theater to the next, plowing through horrendous traffic, running a race with time, and bowing with defeat.
For this season, I missed the opening speeches of NCCA chairman Evelyn Pantig and Canadian Ambassador Robert Collette and the first four musical numbers of the concert billed as Duo Sopranos Canadiennes held at Barbara’s in Intramuros. The hall was filled to the rafters, very unusual for a classical concert.
The featured artists of this event were Canada-based soprano Joanna Go and mezzo-soprano Grace Chan, with assisting pianist Jonathan Coo.
Drovak’s lovely Song to the Moon, from the opera Rusalka, sung by Go with sheer beauty of tone, was followed by three works by Mozart. In the duet from Cosi fan tutte, the ladies’ voices blended most exquisitely, complementing each other note for note, bar for bar.
As an interlude, Coo delivered two pieces by Rachmaninov that displayed his command of the keyboard.
In the second half of their recital, the ladies interpreted lieder by Richard Strauss and Brahms, melodies by Chausson and Faure and Tagalog songs by Cuenco, San Pedro and Villaflor. The concert would have ended in high spirits with the Canadian folksong All Around the Circle, a light-hearted geographical homage to the homeland, had not the audience clamored for encores, which the charmers from the icy land up north obliged most warmly, Go enchantingly demure and Chan bewitching with vim, vigor and vivacity. The musical evening behind the walls of the Walled City could not have been more delightful.
Tanghalang Pilipino opened its 17th theater season 2003-2004 at the CCP Little Theater with Oraciones (Lord, Why Do They Hate US So Much?), a tetralogy of one-act plays revolving on a common theme: Philippine-American relations.
White Love by Rene Villanueva is an analytical, objective study of a particular phase of this relationship at the turn of the 20th century. With the sharp precision of a coroner’s scalpel, the play exhumes the cadaver of a case of libel filed in court by Dean Worcester against the newspaper, El Renacimiento, alluding to the complainant and his fellow-Americans as birds of prey like "the vulture, the owl and the vampire."
Less effective than the first play as propaganda are Balota Queen by Liza Magtoto and Mga Aswang sa Panahon ng Digmaan by Rody Vera. However, the first excels in caricature and satire and the second in comic irony.
The concluding play, Psychedelia Apocalypsis by Nicholas Pichay, is a farce that exposes Pinoy humor at its worst. The halo-halo piles into the bowl all sorts of weird characters, including an American G.I. (the villain naturally), a prostitute, Marlon Brando, foul language and an over-supply of corn mush that would slide down one’s gullet until you want to puke.
Credits are due Jose Estrella for his daring to direct the show, and Steve de Leon for his costume designs.
Oraciones stays afloat because of its cast of talents, particularly Richard Cunanan, Ronnie Lazaro, Ebong Joson, Jojit Lorenzo, Kokoy Palma, Paolo Rodriguez, Madeleine Nicolas, Thea Tadiar and Ana Guillen Feleo, who take on double/multiple roles.
Restraint is hardly a Filipino value. Overkill is our way. The problem is that it becomes a boomerang. If the target is the American, one ends up sympathizing with him and hating the man who shoots the missile. To our credit, compassion is one of our strengths. We are always on the side of the underdog.
The productions of Tanghalang Pilipino need classical restraint, good taste, soap and water, and Nonon Padilla.
Also, at the Little Theater, the Filipino Artists Series opened with the recital of tenor Ronan Ferrer, with assisting pianist Najib Ismail.
The appearance of a new star in the classical music firmament is always cause for excitement because these types of artists are a rarity. Ferrer had already made his light shine in Manila in various operatic productions before his advanced studies and successes in Japan. Now, this concert should bring his career to greater heights. His program very wisely dispenses with popular classical favorites and tired old war-horses and, instead, offers pieces rarely heard in these parts – works by Haydn, Britten, Stravinsky, Grieg, Sousa, and locals Suarez, Ignacio and Tolentino. He delivers these works with sensitivity and musical intelligence, making full use of his lyric gifts. He still needs to strengthen his highest range and so that the notes will not sound forced but float with ease. The future of Ferrer shows great promise.
Over at the Philamlife Theater, a unique Maestro Filipino presentation, Chords and Canvas, impressed every one who shared the event. The piano concert by Raul Sunico and J. Greg Zuniega and the exhibit of more than 40 works by painters and sculptors were an offering of the Far East Broadcasting Company in celebration of and thanksgiving for the company’s being on the air for 55 years.
The concert by the keyboard artists was a survey of music from the Baroque era through the Classical and the Romantic Age to the Modern.
The works were, of course, all transcriptions for two pianos from their original forms. The pieces made various demands on the skill of the pianists, but all these Sunico, who had memorized all the scores, and Zuniega met with perfect ease.
They started with Bach whose religious piece underlined the evangelical mission of the event and whose style was well in accord with the duo-piano medium. The same could not be said of the Mozart because it spoiled the classical simplicity and clarity of his writing.
Best served by the transcriptions were Khachaturian’s Lezghinka from Gayaneh, Chabrier’s España Rhapsody and Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor. In the last number, the pianists pulled out all stops and released torrents of exotic tonal colors and barbaric rhythms that conjured visions of the dances of Transcaucasia that ravished the ears and the imagination.
After this stunning showstopper, the rest of the evening, with pieces by Lutoslawski, Cayabyab and Rachmaninov, could only be anti-climactic.
And crowning all these cultural offerings was the presentation on Aug. 3 at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium by the Japan Foundation Manila Office of the opera Gauche the Cellist, a production of The Opera Theater Konnyakuza based in Tokyo.
Kipling’s dictum that "East is East and West is West" is belied by this opera which fuses very ingeniously the operatic idiom of the West and the fable, a literary form that originally sprang from the East, combined to express a message of universal and timeless significance.
The opera is an original work by Miyazawa Kenji with libretto and music by Hayashi Hikaru and directed by Kato Todashi.
The plot revolves around an inept cellist named Gouche (Oishi Satoshi) whose playing ruins the performance of a symphonic orchestra until he is thought by Tortoiseshell Cat (Imura Takao), the Cuckoo (Takeda Keiko), the Little Raccoon (Umemura Hiromi) and the Mother Mouse (Kawanabe Setsuo) much to the astonishment of the Conductor (Okahara Mayumi).
Gouche the Cellist is sheer delight for children of all ages – from seven and below to 70.
In the midst of calamities, of which the Filipino is a survivor, he will find the time and the chance to celebrate his love and joy of life, coup or no coup. Even in the eve of his Waterloo, he will still rejoice with Byron:
On, on with the dance!
Let joy be unconfined!
For comments, write to jessqcruz@hotmail.com.
The real miracle is that during these days, the cultural scene has suddenly sprung to life. All at once, this moonlighter found himself busy covering his beat, hopping from one concert hall or theater to the next, plowing through horrendous traffic, running a race with time, and bowing with defeat.
For this season, I missed the opening speeches of NCCA chairman Evelyn Pantig and Canadian Ambassador Robert Collette and the first four musical numbers of the concert billed as Duo Sopranos Canadiennes held at Barbara’s in Intramuros. The hall was filled to the rafters, very unusual for a classical concert.
The featured artists of this event were Canada-based soprano Joanna Go and mezzo-soprano Grace Chan, with assisting pianist Jonathan Coo.
Drovak’s lovely Song to the Moon, from the opera Rusalka, sung by Go with sheer beauty of tone, was followed by three works by Mozart. In the duet from Cosi fan tutte, the ladies’ voices blended most exquisitely, complementing each other note for note, bar for bar.
As an interlude, Coo delivered two pieces by Rachmaninov that displayed his command of the keyboard.
In the second half of their recital, the ladies interpreted lieder by Richard Strauss and Brahms, melodies by Chausson and Faure and Tagalog songs by Cuenco, San Pedro and Villaflor. The concert would have ended in high spirits with the Canadian folksong All Around the Circle, a light-hearted geographical homage to the homeland, had not the audience clamored for encores, which the charmers from the icy land up north obliged most warmly, Go enchantingly demure and Chan bewitching with vim, vigor and vivacity. The musical evening behind the walls of the Walled City could not have been more delightful.
Tanghalang Pilipino opened its 17th theater season 2003-2004 at the CCP Little Theater with Oraciones (Lord, Why Do They Hate US So Much?), a tetralogy of one-act plays revolving on a common theme: Philippine-American relations.
White Love by Rene Villanueva is an analytical, objective study of a particular phase of this relationship at the turn of the 20th century. With the sharp precision of a coroner’s scalpel, the play exhumes the cadaver of a case of libel filed in court by Dean Worcester against the newspaper, El Renacimiento, alluding to the complainant and his fellow-Americans as birds of prey like "the vulture, the owl and the vampire."
Less effective than the first play as propaganda are Balota Queen by Liza Magtoto and Mga Aswang sa Panahon ng Digmaan by Rody Vera. However, the first excels in caricature and satire and the second in comic irony.
The concluding play, Psychedelia Apocalypsis by Nicholas Pichay, is a farce that exposes Pinoy humor at its worst. The halo-halo piles into the bowl all sorts of weird characters, including an American G.I. (the villain naturally), a prostitute, Marlon Brando, foul language and an over-supply of corn mush that would slide down one’s gullet until you want to puke.
Credits are due Jose Estrella for his daring to direct the show, and Steve de Leon for his costume designs.
Oraciones stays afloat because of its cast of talents, particularly Richard Cunanan, Ronnie Lazaro, Ebong Joson, Jojit Lorenzo, Kokoy Palma, Paolo Rodriguez, Madeleine Nicolas, Thea Tadiar and Ana Guillen Feleo, who take on double/multiple roles.
Restraint is hardly a Filipino value. Overkill is our way. The problem is that it becomes a boomerang. If the target is the American, one ends up sympathizing with him and hating the man who shoots the missile. To our credit, compassion is one of our strengths. We are always on the side of the underdog.
The productions of Tanghalang Pilipino need classical restraint, good taste, soap and water, and Nonon Padilla.
Also, at the Little Theater, the Filipino Artists Series opened with the recital of tenor Ronan Ferrer, with assisting pianist Najib Ismail.
The appearance of a new star in the classical music firmament is always cause for excitement because these types of artists are a rarity. Ferrer had already made his light shine in Manila in various operatic productions before his advanced studies and successes in Japan. Now, this concert should bring his career to greater heights. His program very wisely dispenses with popular classical favorites and tired old war-horses and, instead, offers pieces rarely heard in these parts – works by Haydn, Britten, Stravinsky, Grieg, Sousa, and locals Suarez, Ignacio and Tolentino. He delivers these works with sensitivity and musical intelligence, making full use of his lyric gifts. He still needs to strengthen his highest range and so that the notes will not sound forced but float with ease. The future of Ferrer shows great promise.
Over at the Philamlife Theater, a unique Maestro Filipino presentation, Chords and Canvas, impressed every one who shared the event. The piano concert by Raul Sunico and J. Greg Zuniega and the exhibit of more than 40 works by painters and sculptors were an offering of the Far East Broadcasting Company in celebration of and thanksgiving for the company’s being on the air for 55 years.
The concert by the keyboard artists was a survey of music from the Baroque era through the Classical and the Romantic Age to the Modern.
The works were, of course, all transcriptions for two pianos from their original forms. The pieces made various demands on the skill of the pianists, but all these Sunico, who had memorized all the scores, and Zuniega met with perfect ease.
They started with Bach whose religious piece underlined the evangelical mission of the event and whose style was well in accord with the duo-piano medium. The same could not be said of the Mozart because it spoiled the classical simplicity and clarity of his writing.
Best served by the transcriptions were Khachaturian’s Lezghinka from Gayaneh, Chabrier’s España Rhapsody and Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor. In the last number, the pianists pulled out all stops and released torrents of exotic tonal colors and barbaric rhythms that conjured visions of the dances of Transcaucasia that ravished the ears and the imagination.
After this stunning showstopper, the rest of the evening, with pieces by Lutoslawski, Cayabyab and Rachmaninov, could only be anti-climactic.
And crowning all these cultural offerings was the presentation on Aug. 3 at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium by the Japan Foundation Manila Office of the opera Gauche the Cellist, a production of The Opera Theater Konnyakuza based in Tokyo.
Kipling’s dictum that "East is East and West is West" is belied by this opera which fuses very ingeniously the operatic idiom of the West and the fable, a literary form that originally sprang from the East, combined to express a message of universal and timeless significance.
The opera is an original work by Miyazawa Kenji with libretto and music by Hayashi Hikaru and directed by Kato Todashi.
The plot revolves around an inept cellist named Gouche (Oishi Satoshi) whose playing ruins the performance of a symphonic orchestra until he is thought by Tortoiseshell Cat (Imura Takao), the Cuckoo (Takeda Keiko), the Little Raccoon (Umemura Hiromi) and the Mother Mouse (Kawanabe Setsuo) much to the astonishment of the Conductor (Okahara Mayumi).
Gouche the Cellist is sheer delight for children of all ages – from seven and below to 70.
In the midst of calamities, of which the Filipino is a survivor, he will find the time and the chance to celebrate his love and joy of life, coup or no coup. Even in the eve of his Waterloo, he will still rejoice with Byron:
On, on with the dance!
Let joy be unconfined!
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