GOOD MORNING AND WELCOME TO RUTH LEON’S THEATREWISE

I’m still in California, down in the more Southern bit now, attending the Ojai Music Festival. More on this next week. I’m staying with friends who have a fabulous garden with cactuses of every size and shape, even flowering ones and this one, as big as a tree.

Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise is nearly all women this week, with Fred Astaire creeping in at the end but only because he’s dancing with Cyd Charisse. I didn’t plan it that way, it just happened. The number of women painters who have earned their living by their art is vanishingly small and this week I’m paying tribute to two of them, hundreds of years apart – Artemisia Gentileschi and Mary Cassatte.

Similarly, very few major arts organisations are headed by women and I’ve loved getting to know the work of two conductors who are now leading in their field, Eun Sun Kim and Elim Chan.

On Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise this week there’s also a very determined film actress, Moira Shearer, who beat her own path to movie stardom and then married the boss but proved her worth by continuing to star in major pictures long after he died.

All these are available by clicking the links beneath the pictures.

Norma Shearer – Marie Antoinette 1928

Click here to rent for $3.99.

She was a Canadian-American movie star who married the boss and, famously, turned down the role of Scarlett O’Hara. Norma Shearer was a Hollywood star who played spunky, sexually liberated women.

Among her roles were adaptations of Noël Coward, Eugene O'Neill, and William Shakespeare, and she was nominated six times for Academy Awards, winning one for The Divorcee (1930).

Critic Mick LaSalle called her a feminist pioneer, or "the exemplar of sophisticated modern womanhood and ... the first American film actress to make it chic and acceptable to be single and not a virgin on screen".

She wasn’t promising material for a movie star, being by her own estimation, "a dumpy figure, with shoulders too broad, legs too sturdy, hands too blunt", and she was acutely aware of her small eyes that appeared crossed due to a cast in her left eye. By her own admission, she was "ferociously ambitious" even when she was young.

She found out that Universal Pictures was looking for eight pretty girls to use as extras. Norma was the 8th one chosen. She learned that there were exercises she could do to improve the problem with her eye and she practiced religiously. She picked up some modeling work, which proved successful. About her modeling career, she said later: "I could smile at a cake of laundry soap as if it were dinner at the Ritz. I posed with a strand of imitation pearls. I posed in dust-cap and house dress with a mop, for dental paste, and for a soft drink, holding my mouth in a whistling pose until it all but froze that way."

That led to her big break. Producer Irving Thalberg had moved to Louis B. Mayer Pictures and sent a telegram to Shearer's agent, inviting her to come to the studio. After three years of hardship, she was finally offered a contract. It called for $250 a week for six months, with options for renewal and a test for a leading role in a major film called The Wanters.

Meeting Thalberg for the first time she was "impressed by his air of dispassionate strength, his calm self-possession and the almost black, impenetrable eyes set in a pale olive face". He was less impressed with her and insisted on a second screen test. That got her cast in a major picture with an important director for the first time.

But it didn’t go well. The director didn’t like her and wanted her replaced. She knew this was her last chance and the next scene she played was emotional, "I took that scene lock, stock, and barrel, fur, fins and feathers", she remembered, earning her the respect of her director and her studio. As a reward, Thalberg cast her in six films in eight months.

​She became one of the studio’s biggest stars, occasionally complaining to Thalberg that she wanted to be promoted on a par with Greta Garbo. And then, one night, she accompanied him to a premiere and they fell in love. Thalberg's appeal was not primarily sexual. What attracted Shearer was his commanding presence and steely grace, the impression he gave that wherever he sat was always the head of the table. In spite of his youth – he was only 26 – Thalberg became a father figure to the 23-year-old actress.

They were married in September 1927 in the Hollywood wedding of the year, Shearer having converted to Judaism.
Norma continued to be a great success even after the introduction of sound, graduating to difficult roles such as The Divorcee, for which she won an Oscar.

Shearer's marriage to Thalberg gave her a degree of power in Hollywood that was resented by rivals such as Joan Crawford, who complained that Shearer would always be offered the best roles and best conditions: "How can I compete with Norma when she's sleeping with the boss?”

But she was a hard worker and won respect from her costars and directors. George Cukor, who directed Shearer in Romeo and Juliet said of her, “The greatest joy of working with Miss Shearer comes from her complete lack of vanity. Far from bridling at minor criticisms as many actresses do, she will criticize herself with a penetrating, almost unfeminine, impersonal judgment. When she sees the unedited versions of the previous days footage ["rushes"] she seems to cease to be an actress and to look at her own work on the screen with the shrewd and critical mind of a producer.”

Irving Thalberg died unexpectedly just 9 years after their marriage. After his death, Norma’s contract was renewed for six films at $150,000 each. She leaves a considerable body of work.

I’ve chosen Marie Antoinette, largely because my father in law, Robert Morley, got his only Oscar nomination for his role in this picture. Many of Norma Shearer’s other films are still available on various movie websites.

The Quest for Artemisia Gentileschi

Click here to watch

Artemisia Gentileschi, who died 373 years ago today, June 14, 1654, was the first woman to earn her living as an artist but her life and troubled past were as absorbing as her work.

In this BBC documentary, that intrepid traveller, Michael Palin, curious about a powerful but violent painting that caught his eye, sets off on a quest to discover the astonishing story of the almost forgotten female artist who painted it over 400 years ago.

Travelling to Italy in search of Artemisia Gentileschi's tale, Michael encounters her work in Florence, Rome and Naples, not only her paintings but a complex life which included her rape as a teenager and the ensuing indignity of a full trial, her life as a working mother and her ultimate success against all odds as one of the greatest painters of the Baroque age who transformed the way women were depicted in art and who was sought after in many courts across 17th-century Europe.

Since this programme was screened, and partly because of it, Artemisia has been rediscovered and important exhibitions of her work have been mounted in museums throughout the world including London, Paris and Washington DC.

The Radical Art of Mary Cassatt

Click here to watch

The list of female artists who have been recognised as masters in their art is woefully short. One, maybe the first one, is Artemisia Gentileschi. Another who stands out is the American, Mary Cassatt, who died 100 years ago today.

This film, The Radical Art of Mary Cassatt, explores her life and work, from her contributions to the French Impressionist movement to her bold experimentation in painting, pastels, and printmaking. Through interviews with experts, archival footage and photography, and unpublished letters from the artist, we can step into the revolutionary world of Cassatt.

Eun Sun Kim - San Francisco Opera

I heard two wonderful conductors this week, both of them unfamiliar to me. And, not incidentally, both of them women.

At the San Francisco Opera, Eun Sun Kim, a diminutive woman from South Korea, controlled the resources of a Richard Strauss orchestra, with nearly 100 musicians in the pit, and dozens of singers on stage, in a massive production of Strauss’ Electra. It was quite a feat. More than that, it was a beautiful experience forall of them and for the audience.

She has been the Music Director of San Francisco Opera since 2021 and it’s easy to see why. In addition to SFO, Kim appears regularly at many of the world’s leading opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Berlin State Opera, the Opéra national de Paris, and Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Making her Met debut, the New York Times noted her “assured technical command, subtlety and imagination”.

Here is a little interview with her, where her warmth and infectioius sense of humour are evident.

Elim Chan conducts Tchaikovsky

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The other is Elim Chan, the newly appointed Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony. Born in Hong Kong, she was the first female winner of the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition and went on to spend her 2015–16 season as Assistant Conductor at the London Symphony Orchestra. Since then she’s been chewing up international orchestras to tremendous success and she makes her Berlin debut this year.

I was lucky enough to attend this week’s concert but I can’t share it with you because it’s not yet available online. I’d love you to see not only her musicianship and command of the music and the musicians, but also the warmth of her greeting from the discriminating San Francisco audience. She was welcomed with a long standing ovation and I could see smiles on every face. She spoke to the audience both at the start of the concert and during the interval with naturalness and charm. I was very taken with her.

This orchestra belonged to the late Michael Tilson Thomas for many years and, not to be too precious about it, his spirit was definitely present in the Davies Symphony Hall this week. This concert featured Debussy’s  La Mer and Berlioz’s  Les Nuits d’été with mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke who followed up with an encore of a Michael Tilson Thomas song "Ich lebe mein Leben" from his Meditations on Rilke series.

I’ll bring that concert to you when it’s released online but, in the meantime, to give you a taste of her energy and talent, here she is, conducting the Suite from Tchaikowsky’s Swan Lake with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Dancing in the Dark - Fred and Cyd

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Following last week’s Backgrounder about Fred Astaire (if you want to see it you’ll have to sign up to join the Backgrounders gang) lots of you have chimed in with your favourite Astaire clip, complaining that I left it out. I couldn’t include them all but here is another great favourite – Fred with Cyd Charisse “Dancing in the Dark” in The Bandwagon.

This may be the most romantic of them all. Thanks to all of you who recommended this one.

Looking forward to next month’s Backgrounder, I was planning to write about David Hockney but, as he has just died and everyone better qualified than I am is writing about him, I’m saving him for a future month when I’ve absorbed what they have written.

So, dear Paid Subscribers, tell me who you would like for the July Backgrounder. Fast, please.

By next Monday I’ll be back in London and will perhaps be able to reconsider all I’ve seen and heard in the wonderful couple of months I’ve spent over here in the US. So please come back for more arts online. Love, Ruth

GOOD MORNING AND WELCOME TO RUTH LEON’S THEATREWISE

I’ve had a wonderful week in San Francisco staying with friends who are as musically promiscuous as I am. The Barber of Seville, in a splendid production by Emilio Sagi was my first triumph. Well, not my triumph but assuredly one for the San Francisco Opera. Then I was blessed by being able to witness the first concert of the San Francisco Symphopny conducted by their new Music Director, Elim Chan. There was no doubt that the spirit of Michael Tilson Thomas, the late Music Director of the SFO, was hovering over her debut. She’s new to me but I’m now going to make a point of hearing her conduct wherever and whenever I can because she’s a marvel. My fellow audience members welcomed her with an endless (and for once richly deserved) standing ovation and she endeared herself to them with warmth and character and a delightful sense of humour.

I also saw the exhibition of Monet and Venice at the De Young Museum. It’s a jewel of an exhibition, small enough to be able to wallow in every painting, big enough to be able to see the roots of Monet’s Water Lilies in the watery reaches of his Venetian scenes.

Just before I leave I’m planning to see Richard Strauss’ Elektra and another SFO concert. By next week’s Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise I’ll be among the cactuses in Ojai, California, a very different climate, musically and weatherwise, from San Francisco. So, before I get there, here’s what’s on this week’s Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise.

It’s the 85th birthday of one of the greatest living pianists, the legendary Martha Argerich. I’ve included two beautiful concerts of hers, one filmed in 1977, the other in 2022. They’re both marvelous. Enjoy one or both as many times as you like.

Always, the Love Story of Irving Berlin is just what it says on the tin. It’s an extended livestream of two of the best New York cabaret performers, KT Sullivan and Mark Nadler singing and playing the love story of Berlin and his wife, Ellen Mackey. This will be performed live in New York at the end of this week with access available for three full days following the live performance.

A different kind of songwriting is showcased in Let It Be Your Will, a celebration of the music, life and legacy of the late Leonard Cohen which includes performances and reflections from many current musical stars.

There’s also a tour of the new exhibition at the Met Museum, called Costume Art, pairing clothes with artworks to explore the inherent relationships between garments and objects from the Met’s collections.

All these are available by clicking the links beneath the pictures.

Martha Argerich at 85

Click here to watch Tchaikovsky No.1
Click here to watch Prokoviev No. 3

Today, we celebrate the 85th birthday of the phenomenal pianist Martha Argerich.

Since her beginnings as a child prodigy and her win at the 1965 Chopin Competition, her sparkling, decades-long career has solidified her reputation as one of the greatest pianists of the century.

She is still performing at the highest level. As proof, here is a choice of Argerich playing the Tchaik­ovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in 1977 and her 2025 performance of Prokofiev’s Concerto No.3 with the Vienna Philharmonic. Why not watch both?

Costume Art - Met Exhibition Tour

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Join Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute, on a tour of “Costume Art,” The Costume Institute’s spring 2026 exhibition.

“Costume Art” explores depictions of the dressed body across The Met’s vast collection, pairing garments with artworks to reveal the inherent relationship between clothing and the body.

Focusing primarily on Western art from prehistory to the present, “Costume Art” presents connections between garments from The Costume Institute and objects from the Museum’s other collecting areas. Pairings between fashions and artworks present a spectrum of connections and experiences: from the formal to the conceptual, the aesthetic to the political, the individual to the universal, the illustrative to the symbolic, and the playful to the profound. These pairings are organized into a series of thematic body types that reflect their pervasiveness and endurance through time and cultures.

​“Costume Art” is the inaugural exhibition in the new, nearly 12,000-square-foot galleries adjacent to the Great Hall of the Met Museum. This space will display The Costume Institute’s annual spring show and, at times, shows from the Museum’s other curatorial departments, including those that explore the intersection of fashion and art.

Let It Be Your Will – Leonard Cohen

Click here to watch via Marquee

Leonard Cohen: Let It Be Your Will is a cinematic celebration of Leonard Cohen's music, life, and legacy.

While a star-studded memorial concert at Montreal's Bell Centre sits at the heart of the documentary, the film goes beyond the stage. It seamlessly weaves in archival footage of Cohen alongside reflective interviews with important musicians discussing his profound influence.

Adam Cohen, Leonard's son and longtime collaborator, leads the evening, performing with his father's original band and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.

The film features performances and reflections from Elvis Costello, Lana Del Rey, Chris Martin, The Lumineers, Courtney Love, Céline Dion, Bruce Springsteen, k.d. lang, and many more.

Shaped by these voices, this deeply personal, family-led portrait avoids uncritical praise, using Cohen's own dry, self-aware interviews to ground the tribute. As he shrugs and corrects a lyric on screen, the myth softens into a man, leaving the legendary songwriter feeling remarkably present by the final credits.

Always: The Love Story of Irving Berlin

Click here for tickets

One of the happiest experiences of my working life was a show called American Rhapsody: Songs of the Gershwins.

It was a revue starring two of the leading performers in New York’s cabaret world, KT Sullivan and Mark Nadler. Mark and I wrote it, I directed it, they played it brilliantly and it ran off-Broadway for nearly a year. Making that show with them and our very small production team was the most fun I ever had working in the theatre.

Now KT and Mark have a new show - Always: The Love Story of Irving Berlin. I’m not involved in this one, living on another continent, but I wish I could be in New York just to be in the audience at The Laurie Beechman Theatre on June 14th to see and hear the immortal songs of the great Irving Berlin brought to life by these two wonderful performers.

Mark Nadler and KT Sullivan tell, sing and reenact one of the great American love stories -- that of Irving Berlin and his wife, Ellin Mackey, using Berlin's songs to tell the tale.

It turns out that I can be there, and so can you. Well, it’s not quite the same as being in the theatre but it’s the next best thing as they’re livestreaming the show and, best of all of for those of us not in the same timezone, making it available online "On Demand" for 3 days following the performance. The "On Demand" replay will become available approximately 12 hours after the live performance, from June 14-17.

The show features a smorgasbord of Berlin tunes - many well-known, many rarely heard - with a slice of American history thrown in. If you're in New York, go in person but, if not, this is a show worth watching. And happily, online we can all see it too.

Met on Demand 30% off

Click here for Offer

I note that, through June 30 only, the Metropolitan Opera is running a limited-time summer promotion: a one-year unlimited-access subscription to Met Opera on Demand for just $99.99.
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It’s a good investment for opera-lovers, access to their extensive archive of new Live in HD titles from the 2025–26 season, including La Sonnambula, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, La Bohème, and, even more importantly to me, their entire catalog of more than 950 full-length Met performances.

Several of you have pointed out that I made a mistake in last week’s Theatrewise. Franz Kafka did not take his own life; it was taken from him by starvation caused by his inability to swallow food. He was suffering from laryngial tuberculosis. What a horrible way to die. Apologies for my error.
​Substack is a wonderful platform for my writing but without an editor looking over my shoulder, the only way I can see the error of my ways is when they are pointed out by my readers. I’m sincerely grateful when you do this. Brickbats and compliments are equally welcome.

Please come back next week for more arts online and, if you haven’t already done so, please join the Backgrounders gang in the box below. And, paid subscribers, please come up with some ideas for next month’s Backgrounder. Sorry this is a bit late but my computer is having a bad day.

Have a great week wherever you are. Love, Ruth

Fred Astaire was 34 and at a loose end. Someone suggested he should go to California and take a screen test. The movie executive who evaluated it wrote on his card: “Fred Astaire – “Balding. Can’t sing, can’t act, can dance a little.”

And thus began a 70-year career as a movie star, the most significant dancer in the history of the film industry. When sound came in, Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer (1927) was not nearly as effective in capturing the audience as the human body in motion, the tapping feet and beckoning hands of the dance. Dance provided the perfect synchronization of sight and sound, exhilarating to an audience which had seen only silent movies, and its success was very largely Astaire’s doing.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First came the dancer. Or, more accurately, dancers.

Fred and his sister Adele had been stage stars since they were very young, although the vicissitudes of child stars meant that they had to take a break of several years when Adele grew too tall for them to look good dancing together. Once they got going, however, they had a stream of Broadway and West End stage hits written by the likes of George Gershwin and presented by the top producers.

Frederick Austerlitz was born on May 10, 1899 in Omaha, Nebraska to Fritz and Johanna Austerlitz. Johanna, recognising that Adele, three years older, was a naturally talented dancer and singer, dreamed of escaping Omaha by means of her children’s talents. Brother-and-sister acts were popular in vaudeville and Johanna had a boy and a girl so the reluctant Fred had no choice but to follow Adele to the Chambers Dance Academy in Omaha where he also studied piano, accordion and clarinet.

Fritz and Johanna, now known as Ann, separated when Adele and Fred were eight and five, after a local dance teacher urged them to put the children on the stage in New York.

In November 1905, when Fred was 6, they made their debut in Keyport, New Jersey. The act was called Juvenile Artists Presenting an Electric Musical Toe-Dancing Novelty. Astaire wore a top hat and tails in the first half and a lobster outfit in the second. A local paper wrote, “the Astaires are the greatest child act in vaudeville,” and they were on their way.

For many years thereafter it was understood that Adele was the talented one, Fred just there to support her. Unlike Adele, though, he took it seriously. Dance critic Arlene Croce wrote, “In vaudeville, the grinding schedule of rehearsal and performance made a workaholic of Fred and a slacker of Adele. With her huge natural talent, sparkling presence, and spontaneous wit, she could go on stage with no preparation and improvise, to his intense dismay.”

Fred developed other talents. He was always on the lookout for new music and dance ideas and he took care of the planning, the choreography and the logistics of the shows, always showcasing Adele.

By age 14, he had assumed the musical responsibilities for their act. He first met George Gershwin, aged 16, who was working as a song plugger for Jerome H. Remick’s music publishing company, in 1916 and they became instant friends, George promising to write a musical just for them. This friendship had a profound effect on both careers.

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Good Morning and Welcome to Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise

“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” No, we’re not, nor still in my beloved New York City. We’re now in beautiful San Francisco, California, and I’ve just caught my first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. It’s still amazing to me that we can climb into a tincan in London and seemingly five minutes later be at the Golden Gate Bridge.

It’s lovely here. A drive through the city yesterday brought happy reminders of city full of higgledy houses in imaginative colours, climbing up and down gentle and not-so-gentle hills, greenery and parks and wonderful food from every Ethnic direction.

I joined friends in their search for the best fish-and-chips in SF, presumably they wanted me as their English comparison guide to what’s authentic (a word much used here). In a simple outdoor restaurant, where you order and then serve yourself, the results were infinitely better than most English chippies. It was certainly fish, crisply fried and tastier than the flabby whitefish of UK offerings, although the ‘chips’ were definitely not chips – the fat greasy slabs of home. Instead, they were herbed and spiced crispy potato slivers, and irresistible. Delicious, like everything else I’ve eaten in this city where sensible people argue over the minutae of ‘best of’ edibles.

The much-anticipated wedding of my goddaughter was joyous and thrilling. And delicious.And warm and loving. It was wonderful to meet up with old friends, excitedly catching up and falling easily into old conversational patterns which indicate no lack of distance or affection however many years have passed. An epic wedding, not just for the two at the centre of it but also for all of us who got to share it with them.

Scrambling to assemble this week’s Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise has been a struggle but I’ve found you some treats.

There’s a delightful full-length production of the musical of The Wind in the Willows starring Rufus Hound as the incorrigible Toad in an adaptation by the Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes.

Dante Alighieri, the poet who was the founder of Italian literature, turns 755 this week and here’s the first documentary I’ve seen in 755 years which makes it easier to understand his master work, The Divine Comedy.

On the anniversary of Franz Kafka’s suicide, here’s a cheerful little film about a little-known part of his working life, his art.

And for those who are still in thrall to the romance of a King willing to abdicate his throne rather than live without the woman he loved, here is a new documentary about ‘David’ and the scandalous Wallis Simpson, King Edward V1 and Mrs Warfield Simpson, subsequently the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. It exposes what led up to the Abdication, its implications, and its wider political reverberations in the late 1930s with War beckoning, and beyond.

And for no reason except that he’s wonderful, here’s Louis Armstrong, playing the soul out of “Hello, Dolly”.

All these are available at the touch of a finger on the links beneath the pictures and all but one are free to watch.

The Divine Comedy: How Dante Provided A New World Theory

Click here to watch

755 years ago, on June 1, 1265, the Italian poet, writer and philospher Dante Alighieri was born in Florence. His Divine Comedy, later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language. But it’s hard to understand for non-scholars - all those Cantos.

At a time when Latin was still the dominant language for scholarly and literary writing—and when many Italian poets drew inspiration from French or Provençal traditions—Dante broke with both by writing in the vernacular, specifically his native Tuscan dialect.

His use of the Florentine dialect for works such as The New Life (1295) and Divine Comedy helped establish the modern-day standardized Italian language. His work set a precedent that important Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would later follow.

Dante claimed that his family descended from the ancient Romans but the earliest relative he could mention by name was his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida degli Elisei, born no earlier than about 1100. Ancient enough, I think.

Dante said he first met Beatrice Portinari, daughter of Folco Portinari, when he was nine (she was eight), and he claimed to have fallen in love with her "at first sight", apparently without even talking with her. When he was 12, however, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, daughter of Manetto Donati, member of the powerful Donati family. Contracting marriages for children at such an early age was quite common and involved a formal ceremony, including contracts signed before a notary. Dante claimed to have seen Beatrice again frequently after he turned 18, exchanging greetings with her in the streets of Florence, though he never knew her well.

Years after his marriage to Gemma, he claims to have met Beatrice again; he wrote several sonnets to Beatrice but never mentioned Gemma in any of his poems. The exact date of his marriage is not known; the only certain information is that, before 1301, he had fathered three children with Gemma (Pietro, Jacopo and Antonia).

But his love for Beatrice would be his reason for writing poetry and for living. In many of his poems, she is depicted as semi-divine, watching over him constantly and providing spiritual instruction, sometimes harshly. When Beatrice died in 1290, Dante sought refuge in Latin literature. And politics, writing many poetical commentaries and becoming a soldier, an activist, and finally an exile.

To take part in public life, one had to enroll in one of the city's many commercial or artisan guilds, so Dante entered the Physicians' and Apothecaries' Guild. His name is occasionally recorded as speaking or voting in the councils of the republic. Many minutes from such meetings between 1298 and 1300 were lost, so the extent of his participation is uncertain.

Some fifty poetical commentaries by Dante are known (the so-called Rime, rhymes), others being included in the later Vita Nuova and Convivio. Other studies are reported, or deduced from Vita Nuova or the Comedy, regarding painting and music.

This very informative documentary goes a long way to de-mystify Dante’s most famous work.

Edward and Wallis - The Exiled Windsors

Click here to watch

89 years ago this week, on June 3 1936, the Duke of Windsor (who was only the Duke of Windsor because he was no longer the King of England, having abdicated the throne because he was involved with a twice-divorced American, Wallis Warfield Simpson), married the woman he loved, thus making her the Duchess of Windsor.

What happened then was little short of a cataclysm in British society. The faith that had been built up over hundreds of years in the institution of royalty, the belief that the British people clung to that their monarch would always have their best interests at heart, the almost mystical connection between the monarchy and the people they ruled, was shattered overnight.

It had started the previous year when it became clear to the government and to the Prince of Wales’s ‘handlers’ at Buckingham Palace, that he was infatuated with divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. More than infatuated; obsessed. And this King, unlike his father, was ungovernable.

The King of England, and of Great Britain, had been showering his mistress with extravagant gifts, a warning to the security services of possible blackmail. What to do?

Fears grew, too, of his association with fascist sympathisers, and the possibility the king could attempt to overthrow the government to keep his seat of power on the throne. At the very least, would the affair trigger civil unrest and turmoil in an already unstable country? Behind the doors of 10 Downing street the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin had a difficult decision to make.

To spy on the head of state, the monarch, is an extraordinarily controversial and intrusive act, but Baldwin finally gave the order. The British intelligence service began to spy on the King. And so began one of the greatest constitutional crises in centuries.

The American press got wind of the relationship and began to speculate about it but the British press, in the shape of of the two press barons, Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook, were stifled and not a word was published until the final decision was made public.

Here is a fascinating recent documentary about the events leading up to and following the Abdication – Edward and Wallis - The Exiled Windsors.

The Wind in the Willows - National Theatre

Click here for Marquee

Here is the ebulliant West End musical, The Wind in the Willows from the stage of the London Palladium.

Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame, adapted Kenneth Grahame's Edwardian classic, with music by Olivier Award-winning composers George Stiles and Anthony Drewe.

The story follows Mole, Ratty, and Badger as they try to keep their riverbank life intact while the ungovernable Toad tears through everything in his path.

Green-haired and frenzied, Rufus Hound explodes onto the London Palladium stage as Toad, tearing through Julian Fellowes' adaptation and rewiring Edwardian calm into velocity and misrule.

The first screech of a stolen motorcar gives way to courtroom chaos and a surging steam train chase, as Simon Lipkin's Ratty, Craig Mather's Mole, and Gary Wilmot's ramrod-straight Badger struggle to hold their riverbank life together. Then a final escalation. Toad clears the stage entirely, flying out over the audience on a jetpack.

Captured from above in sightlines no stalls ticket could buy, the Olivier Award-winning team of George Stiles and Anthony Drewe delivers a score that shapes the escapade itself, shifting between choral swell and mischief with precision and wit.

The Secret Art of Franz Kafka

Click here to watch
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On June 3, 1924, the writer Franz Kafka took his own life. Before doing so he wrote to his friend, Max Brod instructing him to destroy all existing writings, letters and manuscripts, a instruction that his friend ignored.

While his novels and novellas have joined the canon of European literature and are taught throughout the world, what is less well known is his art. Throughout his life, but particularly when he was a student, Kafka made pictures, sketches and drawings which, while they don’t illustrate his writings, give an often humourous look into Kafka’s unusual mind.
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Here is a short film about them.

Hello Dolly – Louis Armstrong

Click here to watch

Louis Armstrong, in ebullient mood, performs “Hello Dolly” live at BBC Studios in 1968.

Welcome to all the new subscribers. Please come back next week for more arts online. Paid Subscribers, this is the week. Your Backgrounder about Fred Astaire will land in your Inboxes on Wednesday. Any free subscribers who would like to join them, just type your email address into the box below. I’ll welcome you with open arms.

Have a great week. Love, as always, from Ruth

Even the rich have their aggravations, it seems. I’m in the most exclusive tea-shop on Madison Avenue, on Manhattan’s East Side, after having waited on the pavement in a queue for 30 minutes before being seated by a supercilious young man who clearly finds his job far beneath him, at a table so tiny it’s almost a teatray.

The décor is beautiful, tasteful and elegant; the other customers designer-dressed in the latest casual fashion. It’s 3:30 in the afternoon. Teatime. We peruse the menu which is eye-wateringly expensive but what did we expect from a café attached to a Madison Avenue fashion house?

We consider... chocolate cake? Or coconut cake? We agree on one of each. Finally attracting the attention of a server, another young man clearly imagining himself in a different and more exalted job, we order: one iced latte, one drip coffee, two cakes.

“We’re out of cake,” he says, with evident satisfaction. “All that’s left is the almond loaf.” Two of those, then, please. It turns out to be like Starbucks lemon drizzle only without the lemon.

Notwithstanding, my friend and I have a lovely time, having a good laugh at the notice on the table which specifies that customers are expected to give up their table within 45 minutes. The bill, when it comes (very fast) is nearly $40. We have decided that, if this is how the rich live, we’ll leave it to the rich.

Back home, tidying up this week’s Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise, I’ve got some interesting anniversaries for you. It’s the hundredth birthday of the great jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and I’ve found you a black and white video which shows exactly how special he was.

Talking of special, this week marks the anniversary of one of the biggest arts scandals in history, the premiere of Igor Stravinsky and Vasclav Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring, in Paris in 1913. Robert Joffrey was instrumental in resurrecting this famous ballet and here is the full ballet as danced by his company, the Joffrey Ballet, so you can see what the fuss was all about. For those who like their ballet white and floaty and Tchaikowsky-esque, it is still shocking.

As everybody knows, Christopher Marlowe was killed in a pub punch-up in Deptford in 1593 but there was much more to him than an Elizabethan murder mystery, not least that he was both rival and inspiration to Shakespeare and that he wrote the first English tragedy, Tamburlaine the Greate, as well as the Tragical Story of Doctor Faustus.

Here is the 1968 movie of Dr Faustus, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor at her most glamorous (even if she doesn’t have much to say). The movie is an inadvertent hoot, Burton taking on the jobs of adaptor, director and star, proving only that he should have stuck to the day job.

And, talking of love stories that went wrong, here is a wonderful discovery, courtesy of Holly Foster Wells, granddaughter of Peggy Lee, of Noel Coward’s Mad About The Boy, recorded in a private session when Peggy had just divorced the boy she was mad about, her husband, and Holly’s grandfather, guitarist Dave Barbour.

All these are free to watch except the Burton/Taylor movie and that can be rented for just $3.99 for 30 days.

Miles Davis at 100

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One hundred years ago today, on May 26, 1926, a very unusual boy was born. He grew up to be among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music.

In a career spanning nearly five decades, Miles Davis was at the forefront of several major stylistic developments in jazz, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, third stream, modal jazz, avant-garde jazz, and jazz fusion. His legacy extends into rock, funk, classical, and hip-hop.

Born Miles Dewey Davis 111 into an upper class family in Alton, Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis, Davis started on the trumpet in his early teens. He left to study at Juilliard in New York City, before dropping out and making his professional debut as a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's bebop quintet from 1944 to 1948. Shortly afterwards, he recorded the Birth of the Cool sessions for Capitol Records, which were instrumental to the development of cool jazz.

Then he became addicted to heroin and alcohol. He said later, "Sex and drugs took the place music had occupied in my life." But still, at that time, in the early 1950s, sick and hardly performing at all, he recorded some of the earliest hard bop music.
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He made a sensatonal comeback at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955 and recorded the album 'Round About Midnight with saxophonist John Coltrane and bassist Paul Chambers, who became key members of the sextet he led into the early 1960s.

Extremely flexible, he alternated between orchestral jazz collaborations with arranger Gil Evans, such as the Spanish music–influenced Sketches of Spain (1960), and band recordings, such as Milestones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959), one of the most popular jazz albums of all time.

He married three times, most notably to the actor Cicely Tyson, and had countless relationships with women, but he was a terrible husband, abusive, violent and often unfaithful.

His health was always precarious, sickle cell anaemia, recurrent pneumonia and diabetes exacerbated by his abuse of drugs and alcohol, so it was almost inevitable that he would die young. It was surprising that he lived as long as he did, until September 28th 1991, at 65.

Rolling Stone magazine described him as "the most revered jazz trumpeter of all time, not to mention one of the most important musicians of the 20th century."

Here is just a taste of what Miles Davis could do – the official video of his So What album, a signature performance from him and John Coltrane. Even if you’re not a jazz fan please take the time to listen to this or any one of his albums. My favourite is Kind of Blue, one of the few recordings which I’d take to my desert island.

Christopher Marlowe - Dr Faustus

Click here to rent from Amazon for $3.99

I’ve always thought it’s a pity that the most salient or maybe the only fact every English schoolchild knows about Christopher Marlowe is that he was killed in a tavern brawl in Deptford, of all places.

In fact, Kit Marlowe was a rival and contemporary of Shakespeare, a talented playwright, poet, translater, scholar, a homosexual at a time when discovery was punishable by death, and a spy for Elizabeth 1.

Charming and well-educated, at Cambridge, no less, he spoke several languages including Latin, so he was able to travel freely on missions for England without attracting more than a mild curiousity in the theatre world. He was certainly involved in the vicious war to round up Catholics in this Protestant country and possibly travelled to the College in Rheims where Catholics were trained to return to England to spy for the Pope.

More importantly, to us at least, he was a playwright who wrote what is possibly the first English tragedy, Tamburlaine the Great which made him the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death at the age of 29. There was a lot of interraction between London playwrights at the time and the chances are that Marlowe’s work, particularly The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, influenced Shakespeare, who succeeded him as the preeminent Elizabethan playwright.

Marlowe's literary works have been described as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's avowed anti-intellectualism and his deliberate catering to the prurient tastes of his Elizabethan audiences by including in his plays a considerable amount of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed.

Events in Marlowe's life were sometimes as extreme as those found in his plays. After he died in 1593 everyone in London speculated on the nature and reason for his death. That he was murdered and by whom is not in dispute but the motive is still murky. Conjectures include a vicious bar-room fight, blasphemous libel against the church, homosexual intrigue, betrayal by another playwright, and espionage from the highest level: the Privy Council of Elizabeth I. Marlowe had just become too dangerous, perhaps too politically knowledgable, to be allowed to live.

The first recorded stage performance of Doctor Faustus took place at the Rose Theater on September 30, 1594, by the Admiral's Men.

Here is one of the many versions of Doctor Faustus, this one starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Of the many films they made together, nowhere is their seductive power better showcased than in this adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's classic play.

The legend of Dr Faustus is the tale of a German conjurer who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for a life of adventure and excitement. It has proved to be one of the richest legends of our time, inspiring countless plays and motion pictures.

In this (unintentionally hilarious) version, Burton stars as the aging scholar who makes a deal with the devil for youth, knowledge and a dazzling mistress. But when Faustus begins to regret his decision, the devil's assistant, Mephistopheles, sends in Taylor as the seductress, Helen of Troy, who seals Faustus' fate.

The Rite of Spring – Joffrey Ballet

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113 years ago this week, on May 29,1913, one of the biggest musical scandals exploded on the stage of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, during the premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du printemps. The performance famously degenerated into an uproar, with angry audience members hissing, shouting, and throwing objects at the stage.

The dancers on the stage were unable to hear the music for the noise of the riot and the choreographer, Vaslav Nijinsky, jumped on a chair in the wings where they could see him, and clapped the complicated rhythms of the dance for them.

Stravinsky’s score was radically unconventional for the time. It featured jarring, polytonal harmonies, unpredictable and violent shifting rhythms, and heavy brass meant to evoke primitive, pagan Russia.

Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography was equally shocking. Instead of graceful balletic movements, the dancers performed with turned-in toes, knock-knees, and stiff, convulsing, or stomping movements.

The audience was largely split between traditionalists—who were deeply offended by the assault on classical ballet conventions—and younger, progressive artists who were eager to embrace the avant-garde. Factions quickly formed, arguing loudly, which eventually resulted in fistfights in the aisles.

The original Ballet was performed only 9 times in 1913 and then disappeared until, in the 1980s, Robert Joffrey, the dancer and impresario, painstakingly resurrected it as closely as possible to Nijinsky’s original.

Now, 113 years after its first performance, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) is recognised as one of the great works of the musical canon both as an orchestral work and as a ballet. There have been many interpretations of the ballet, including one by Nijinsky’s sister Bronislava.

Here is the Joffrey Ballet's full-length version of Nijinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, filmed in 1987.

Peggy Lee - Mad About The Boy

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My friend Holly Foster Wells, granddaughter of the great Peggy Lee and keeper of her flame, has sent me this remarkably intimate video of her grandmother with the love of her life, guitarist Steve Barbour.

This series of visuals demonstrates, if demonstration was required, the depth of her passion for her then husband, set to her performance of Noël Coward’s “Mad About the Boy,” recorded in a single take during an intimate living room jam session in 1952.

Holly writes, “My grandmother often said that when she sang a song, she would envision a little play unfolding in her mind. As I listened to this performance, I had a pretty good idea who the star of that play was: my grandfather, Dave Barbour, who was the boy she was truly mad about."
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"This song was recorded less than a year after their divorce, at a time when my grandmother's heart was still reeling from the painful end of their marriage. She never stopped loving him or hoping they might one day find their way back to each other. In this little film, they do. The cover image is a frame from their 1943 wedding film, captured just after their first kiss as husband and wife - one of the happiest days of her life.”

Thanks for being a free subscriber to Theatrewise. I’m hard at work on the June Backgrounder about Fred Astaire, so if you haven’t already signed up for Backgrounders, please do so now.

And please come back to Theatrewise next week, when I’ll have more arts online for you. Love, Ruth

Good Morning and Welcome to Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise.

I’m still in New York. The temperature is climbing to 90F (32C) today but it’s going to rain tomorrow which will cool things down a bit. I’ve got less than a fortnight before I leave for California. As always, I love where I am and don’t want to leave but I’m excited about the coming San Francisco trip. I’m hoping to see family I hardly know and get to know them better. I’m staying with music-loving friends and we’ve already got tickets for concerts and the opera. The anchor purpose of the trip is the wedding of my goddaughter which will be spectacular but other events are planned too including a run-out to the Ojai Music Festival. More on all this when it happens.

In the meantime, New York is radiant in the Springtime. In an effort to ignore the politics emanating from Washington DC in which the administration is systematically destroying everything that makes the United States admirable, everyone in my bit of New York is out enjoying the sunshine. Today there’s a block party where we’re all going out to plant flowers and shrubs in the tiny spaces between the paving stones. It’s an excuse to meet the neighbours while beautifying an already beautiful block.

I plan to join in later but, in the meantime, I’m here screening away on your behalf, finding good stuff to share. For example, there’s this year’s Miscast, one of my favourite annual events when big Broadway stars get the chance to don a role for which they’d never be cast and sing a song from that show. Every performer is currently starring in a Broadway musical.

Also on this week’s Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise is a ballet by the late choreographer, Maurice Bejart, honouring the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima with a score by Mishima’s great friend, Toshiro Mayuzumi.

Here’s an interesting look behind the scenes in the conservation studios of the National Gallery before the opening of the current Zurbarán exhibition. I was unfamiliar with the paintings of Francisco de Zurbarán before this but now I’m planning an urgent visit to see them in person as soon as I get back to London.

If you’re a subscriber to Met Opera on Demand (and you should be because I’ve touted it often enough) don’t miss The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, an opera adaptation of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize – winning novel. It has a young cast and some knock-out projections that move composer Mason Bates’s eclectic score among the three worlds of Gene Scheer’s libretto: Nazi-occupied Prague, the bustling streets of New York City, and the technicolor realm of comic-book fantasy.

And for a few minutes of sheer delight, the late Tony Bennett teams up with the late Aretha Franklin to sing just one great song. This is how we keep the greats with us even after they’re gone.

All these are available by clicking on the link beneath the pictures.

Miscast 2026 - MCC

Click here to watch

I love this show and recommend it every year. Miscast is a one-night-only musical spectacular featuring Broadway’s hottest stars performing songs from roles in which they would not traditionally be cast—and the results are often thrilling, sometimes hilarious, always worth watching.

This year's version starts wth the entire cast of my current favourite Broadway musical import – Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) - Sam Tutty and Christiani Pitts singing a song from Waitress. If you’re not familiar with Waitress, he’s taking the female role and she the male.

There follows a dizzying stream of songs from great Broadway musicals sung by great Broadway stars, all performing songs they’d never get to sing. Maybe they're the wrong gender, the wrong age, too tall, too short, or just wrong for the part. Here, these supremely talented performers just have fun with songs they love without thinking about whether they'd be suitable for the role.

For instance, Broadway’s current leading lady, Lea Michele, currently starring in Chess, chose to sing the title song from Man of La Mancha. It's fun to see Brian Stokes Mitchell, who was Broadway's Don Quixote in that show, enjoying her performance from just behind her shoulder. He chose to sing Mother's great solo song from Ragtime while Caissie Levy, currently playing Mother on Broadway, watches with a big smile followed by a well-deserved standing ovation.

Here, they’re not auditioning, they’re just showing what they can do and having a good time with an audience largely made up of other Broadways stars who have come along to support them. Every one of these artists is currently the star of a Broadway musical, just not the one they’re singing in this show. This is their idea of fun. Mine, too.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Met Opera on Demand

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This exhilarating new adaptation of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is now available to stream from the Metropolitan Opera.

Two Jewish cousins invent an anti-fascist superhero and launch their own comic-book series, hoping to recruit America into the fight against Nazism. Incorporating scintillating electronic elements and a variety of musical styles, composer Mason Bates’s eclectic score moves seamlessly among the three worlds of Gene Scheer’s libretto: Nazi-occupied Prague, the bustling streets of New York City, and the technicolor realm of comic-book fantasy.

Bartlett Sher’s production provides spectacular visuals to match, with towering sets and proscenium-filling projections designed by 59 Studio.

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts a dynamic multimedia production by director Bartlett Sher, taking the podium to lead a cast headlined by baritone Andrzej Filończyk as the artist Joe Kavalier, who flees Czechoslovakia and arrives at the Brooklyn doorstep of writer Sam Clay, sung by tenor Miles Mykkanen as Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay.

The ensemble also features mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce as Rosa Saks, who raises funds to help Jewish children escape the horrors of the Holocaust, and baritone Edward Nelson as Tracy Bacon, the dashing radio actor who becomes Sam’s unexpected lover.

Zurbarán Portraits – National Gallery

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How were Zurbarán’s life-size portraits used as political statements?
The life-size portraits ‘Asher’ and ‘Joseph’ are among the first works by Francisco de Zurbarán to arrive in Britain. Here is a look behind the scenes in the conservation studios of the National Gallery before the opening of the current Zurbaran exhibition. National Gallery curators Francesca Whitlum-Cooper and Daniel Sobrino Ralston follow the story of the two paintings, from the Spanish painter’s series ‘Jacob and his Twelve Sons’.

When the Bishop of Durham bought 12 paintings by Francisco de Zurbarán in 1756, he did so with a purpose. With the help of Morlin Ellis and Clare Baron from the Spanish Gallery at Auckland Palace in County Durham, they discuss the historical significance behind these works.

Dive even deeper behind the scenes in the Gallery’s Conservation studio, where the paintings have undergone a recent treatment by Conservation Fellows Valeriia Kravchenko and Jack Chauncy. They carefully restored the paintings’ balance of light and dark, ahead of their display in the Gallery’s current Zurbarán exhibition.

Maurice Béjart's "M" - Tokyo Ballet

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Beauty, eroticism, and death become indistinguishable as choreographer Maurice Béjart reaches deep into the mind of Japan's most contested writer.

A contemporary ballet created for The Tokyo Ballet, M is based on the life, work, and death of Japan's most controversial novelist. Yukio Mishima died by ritual suicide at 45 after a failed attempt to incite a military coup, a final act that mirrored the violent beauty he often explored in his prose.

The ballet opens with the sea, a symbol Mishima returned to throughout his writing, and follows him alongside four other selves, each drawn from his novels. In Japanese, ‘four’ and ‘death’ share the same sound (‘shi’), a grim linguistic omen that haunts the choreography.

Scenes from "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion," "Confessions of a Mask," and "The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea" unfold as kimonos give way to military uniforms, then leotards. A long scarlet ribbon is drawn from young Mishima’s body as figures reach for its length.

The movement is at times driven by mechanical sound rather than melody, drawing on gestures rooted in Noh and Kabuki. Created for this company in 1993 and later performed at the Palais Garnier, Béjart resolves the work in a sakura fubuki: a cherry blossom blizzard through which death lifts into light.

Choreographer Maurice Béjart blends classical ballet with noh and kabuki gestures, to a score by Mishima's close friend Toshiro Mayuzumi.

Tony Bennett and Aretha Franklin - Duet

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Tony Bennett and Aretha Franklin recorded the classic song How Do You Keep the Music Playing? in late July 2011. It was composed by Michel LeGrand with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman for the 1982 film Best Friends.

The track was featured on Bennett's album Duets II, which was released on September 20, 2011, to coincide with his 85th birthday. He died in July 2023 at the age of 96. She died in August 2018 at the age of 76.

This performance gives me chills. I think it will do the same for you.

Thank you for your very kind comments on May’s Backgrounder about Diana Vreelander. The Backgrounder for June will be Fred Astaire. If you’re not yet part of the Backgrounder gang you can easily join just by typing your email into the box below.

And do come back next week for more arts online from Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise.

When I first lived in the United States my home was in Washington D.C., one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I’ve spent the past weekend there, enjoying the spring flowers, the sunshine, and the company of my friends. Most of them are current and former newspeople, the kind who are addicted to ‘getting it right’, to finding the story and telling it with conviction and integrity, and who are sometimes bewildered by the determination of so many of their compatriots to get their news from suspect websites, right-wing ‘influencers’ and flat-out liars. Told that TicToc is owned by the Chinese and that he is therefore getting his news about his own country from China, one man, apparently oblivious to the dangers, said, “That way I’m sure I’m getting the truth.”

That’s scary, as much that is happening currently in the beautiful city of Washington D.C. is scary. Familiar places are starting to look different. There are huge banners with President Trump’s face glaring down from public buildings, the Reflecting Pool, a historic landmark which shows both the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument, is being painted bright blue, like a swimming pool, and the proud golden pillars of the Kennedy Center have been painted white, which is odd when almost everything else is being painted gold. My beloved Washington D.C. is currently a sad city and an angry one.

Enough of all that. Back in New York, I’ve been delving into the history of the Oscars or, more properly, the Academy Awards, because this week marks the anniversary of the very first ceremony. The big winner that year, 1927, was Wings, starring Clara Bow and it’s a joyful reminder of the vibrancy of the silent film era.

Another woman starring on this week’s Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise is the 5-time Tony Award-winner, Audra Macdonald. Here is her lovely concert of musical theatre gems from the London Palladium filmed just before she returned to New York to star in Gypsy on Broadway.

On the classical side, conductor Mirga Gražinytė‑Tyla takes us to Amsterdam for a thrilling concert with the Royal Concertgebouw and piano virtuoso Gabriela Montero, performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

The third brilliant woman starring on Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise this week, or fourth if you count Clara Bow, is actor Rosamund Pike whose legal drama Inter Alia has finally been released for online viewing even while she’s still performing it live on stage in New York.

All these can be accessed by clicking on the links beneath the pictures.

Wings – 1927

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97 years ago this week on May 16, 1929, the first Academy Awards ceremony took place in what was not yet called Hollywood, to honour the best pictures of 1927/8.. Tickets for the event cost $5 and the ceremony lasted 15 minutes. The host was Douglas Fairbanks, the president of the nascent Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Here’s the back story of how it came to be. Louis B. Mayer established the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927 purportedly to unite the five branches of the film industry: actors, directors, producers, technicians, and writers.

Asked for the real reason he founded the Awards, Mayer said, "I found that the best way to handle them was to hang medals all over them ... If I got them cups and awards, they'd kill themselves to produce what I wanted. That's why the Academy Award was created."

Major winners at that first ceremony included 7th Heaven and Sunrise, with three awards apiece (the latter winning for ‘Unique and Artistic Picture’), and Wings with two.

The winners had been announced three months ahead of the ceremony. Some nominations did not reference a specific film, so an actor could be awarded for multiple performances: Emil Jannings won Best Actor for his work in both The Way of All Flesh and The Last Command, while Best Actress winner Janet Gaynor was honored for three films.

Charlie Chaplin and Warner Brothers each received an honorary award. Jannings, a Swiss-born performer who gained fame in Berlin, had been notified in advance of his victory; he subsequently posed for pictures with his statuette before leaving for Germany.

Here is Wings, Clara Bow starring with Charles Rogers and Richard Arlen, with Gary Cooper in a tiny role. Two young men, one rich, one middle class, who are in love with the same woman, become fighter pilots in World War I.

Wings, directed by William Wellman, had groundbreaking aerial combat cinematography with real planes and set the standard for future war epics. It was the most technically ambitious film of the silent era and helped shape Hollywood’s big-budget spectacle style.

Audra McDonald: I Am What I Am (Director's Cut)

Audra McDonald: I Am What I Am (Director's Cut)

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With a record-breaking six Tony Awards, alongside two Grammy Awards and an Emmy, Audra McDonald is a powerhouse of musical theatre.

Before she opened in Gypsy on Broadway, she came to London for a sold-out concert at the London Palladium. She fulfilled all the expectations of those of us who believe that she is the natural heir to Ethel Merman in the musical theatre, only better.

Her voice, which can soar into soprano heights and swoop to a raucaus belt, allows her to perform any song that takes her fancy. In this concert she shows her musical muscle, performing a diverse array of showstoppers, including theatre classics, such as “I Am What I Am”, “Summertime” and “Rose’s Turn”, Mama Rose’s mad scene from Gypsy.

This is the directors’ cut of this wonderful Audra McDonald concert, recorded live onstage at the London Palladium.

Inter Alia – Rosamund Pike

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Jessica Parks is a judge, a mother, a wife, a friend. Her career exists inter alia (among other things). How will one unthinkable event pull into question all aspects of her life?

Following their global phenomenon Prima Facie, the ‘dream creative collaboration’ of Suzie Miller and Justin Martin reunite with this searing examination of modern motherhood and masculinity.

Inter Alia features a ‘gale force performance’ from Rosamund Pike and music from Erin Le Count and Jakwob.

Here, at last online, even while Pike is performing the show live on stage in New York, is the sold-out, critically acclaimed show ‘that we should all be talking about’, on National Theatre at Home.

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts Tchaikovsky and Weinberg — With Gabriela Montero

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Conductor Mirga Gražinytė‑Tyla takes the podium at Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw for a thrilling concert with piano virtuoso Gabriela Montero, who performs Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a perennial favourite, lending her artistic sensitivity and astonishing skill to some of the most memorable melodies in classical music.

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra bookends the piano treasure with Raminta Šerkšnytė’s De Profundis and Mieczysław Weinberg’s Symphony No. 3.

The result is a rich program that perfectly blends Šerkšnytė’s dramatic dissonances and Weinberg’s stormy tension with Tchaikovsky’s sweeping Romantic lyricism.

Thank you for being a Theatrewise reader. Please come back next week for more arts online. And please become a Paid Subscriber so that you can access Backgrounders by typing your email in the box below.

Love, Ruth

They called her “The Empress of Fashion”, the woman who changed our perception of what we wore. But before that, Diana Vreeland was an international aristocrat born to a life of privilege and leisure far from the commercial world which, almost by accident, made her the most significant figure in fashion of the 20^th century.

She was born Diana Dalziel (Gaelic for “I dare”) in Paris in September 1903 to an American socialite mother, Emily Key Hoffman, who was a descendent of George Washington and a cousin of Francis Scott Key (who wrote the poem which became The Star Spangled Banner). Her father was a British stockbroker, Frederick Young Dalziel. Their life in Paris on the Avenue Foch was very ‘Belle Epoque’ except when Emily took off to Africa on one of her big game hunting trips, alone or with her daughters. From one trip she brought home an elephant, two rhinos, seven lions, and three hippos as trophies.

Read more

Good Morning and Welcome to Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise.

I just read a good piece in The Times (UK) by chief theatre critic Clive Davis under the headline Is Broadway Broken? It was sent by a London friend who asks, is it? And, well, yes, it does seem to be. The deadline for the Tony Award nominations was this week so I’ve seen nearly all the shows which may win this year and it’s a sad lot. I’ve seen four dreadful and very expensive musicals which opened the past month and several mediocre plays.

That is not to say there aren’t treats to be had in this new season for a die-hard theatregoer with deep pockets and an unquenchable love of the live theatre, but they are few and far between.

The revival of Ragtime stands head and shoulders over any other musical or musical revival this year. This heart-stopping adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s great novel is filled with wonderful music and career-making performances. It’s the only “don’t miss” of the season.

There’s one good play, Becky Shaw, about a disastrous blind date that’s worth the time and money.

Several one-man shows are doing well, too. Just in from London is Kenrex with a great performance from Jack Holden, who emerged from a fantastic line-up to win this year’s Olivier Award for Best Actor. His thriller grips from beginning to end.

Daniel Radcliffe is packing ‘em in with Every Brilliant Thing, an interactive play that showcases his huge talent. And Truman Capote’s living room is the setting for Tru, another one-man tour de force, performed by Jesse Tyler Ferguson, this one homegrown and about the brilliant writer who sabotaged his own life and career with one ill-advised article.

Also on the plus side is John Lithgow’s towering performance in Giant, a play about the alarmingly anti-Semitic Roald Dahl. Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf are both brilliant in the revival of Arthur Miller’s masterpiece, Death of a Salesman. And there’s also the charming musical, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York). All but Salesman are imported from London.

If you disregard the preponderance of imports from London, the pickin’s are very slim indeed. I have yet to see two of the season’s blockbusters – a revival of Proof and a revival of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, both with all-Black casts – which are on my Calendar for next week and should boost the homegrown percentage somewhat.

We can get into the stratospheric price of tickets and/or the ludicrous cost of mounting a play or musical on Broadway another time but these are problems to be surmounted, not reasons to give up.

Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise this week has several anniversaries of note. The conductor Zubin Mehta turns 90 and, in celebration, I’ve included a riotous concert of the Three Tenors in Los Angeles singing songs, not arias, for fun.

It’s also the birthday of the man who designed Central Park which I can see from my desk as I type, Frederick Law Olmstead, and the Met has released a little film about the Park which is here.

Here too is a music/theatre piece from Gavin Creel, a hugely talented American musical theatre actor, singer, and songwriter, who died much too young in 2024 but left this charming film behind, a tribute to his beloved Met Museum.

And, to mark the hundredth birthday of Giacomo Puccini‘s masterpiece, Turandot, let’s start with a new production from Vienna performed live just this week, starring Jonas Kaufmann and Asmik Grigorian.

You can click on the link beneath the pictures to access any of these. Most are free to watch.

If you have not yet joined the Backgrounders gang, please do so today as only Paid Subscribers will receive the Backgrounder for May, which will be in your Inboxes on Wednesday.

100 years of Turandot - Asmik Grigorian / Jonas Kaufmann

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"Here ends the Maestro's opera. He was there when he died", these words, spoken by the great conductor Arturo Toscanini, mark the end of the very first performance of Puccini's 1926 masterpiece Turandot at La Scala. The heavy velvet curtains close six bars after the exit of the procession surrounding Liù's corpse—where the great composer's pencil touched down for the last time, swept away by throat cancer on his hospital bed in Belgium in 1922.

The work of a lifetime comes to an end: bringing together all the subjects explored by the composer in his previous creations - the mystical fantasy of Le Villi (1884), the intimate drama with expressive melodies of La Bohème (1896), the orchestral and dramatic pomp of Tosca (1900), the happy love story of La Fanciulla del West (1910) and the Eastern sonorities of Madame Butterfly (1904) - Turandot is Puccini's most ambitious and complex project.

Based on the work by Carlo Gozzi, the libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni plunges us into a legendary version of Beijing, ruled by Emperor Altoum (Jörg Schneider) and his daughter, the cruel Princess Turandot (Asmik Grigorian). Unwilling to marry, she imposes on her suitors a test consisting of three riddles, failure of which leads to death. In the city, Prince Calaf (Jonas Kaufmann) and his father Timur (Dan Paul Dumitrescu), the deposed king of Tartary, hide out among their enemies, accompanied by their young servant Liù (Kristina Mkhitaryan), in love with the prince.

Despite the protests of Timur and Liù, Calaf, dazzled by Turandot's beauty, submits to the test of the three riddles, which he solves brilliantly. Turandot then begs her father not to marry her off, and the prince, desirous of a love marriage, offers her a challenge of his own: he agrees to die if she can discover his name before dawn.

To find out, the princess does not hesitate to torture Liù who, refusing to talk, ends up killing herself in a final show of loyalty. Shocked by this cruelty, Calaf offers his life to Turandot, revealing his name. Shocked by this gesture, Turandot's shell crumbles, and as she reveals her victory to her people, she proclaims: “His name is Love!"

To make an opera out of melody: this was Puccini's ambition and great achievement in Turandot—there are few who have never crossed paths with its famous aria “Nessun dorma”.

Supported by an exceptional cast, Claus Guth's staging highlights the satirical overtones of this tragedy; and under Marco Armiliato's baton, the orchestral pieces, the finest examples of Puccini's genius, are revealed in all their majesty.

Gavin Creel - Walk on Through

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Gavin Creel was an immensely talented performer. An American musical theatre actor, singer, and songwriter, he was awarded a Grammy, a Tony , two Drama Desk Awards and an Olivier.

Creel made his Broadway debut in 2002 in the leading role of Jimmy in Thoroughly Modern Millie before starring as Claude in the 2009 Broadway revival of Hair, both Tony Award–nominated performances. From 2012 to 2015, he starred as Elder Price in The Book of Mormon; he received a Laurence Olivier Award for originating the role in the West End version of the musical and played the role in the U.S. National Tour and on Broadway. He received a Tony Award in 2017 for his performance as Cornelius Hackl in Hello, Dolly! on Broadway.

In 2019, Gavin Creel visited The Met Museum for the very first time. Over the following two years, Creel spent countless hours in the Museum’s galleries, falling in love with the collection and finding inspiration for a brand-new theater piece. Now, remembering the life and legacy of Gavin Creel, here is Walk On Through, Creel’s love letter to The Met before his death in September 2024 from a rare form of cancer at the age of 48.

The supporting artists are Justin Mendoza, piano, Madeline Smith, keyboards and vocals, Meg Toohey on guitar and vocals, Dominic Dorset on mandolin, violin and percussion, Chris Peters on acoustic guitar, and Sherisse Rogers and Marques Walls on vocals. Linda Goodrich directed.

Olmsted and Central Park

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And now, for something much slower and more soothing. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art's 1983 exhibition, "Art of the Olmsted Landscape," the camera moves out for a tour of Central Park with Dr. Charles E. Beveridge, editor of the Frederic Law Olmsted papers at American University, who relates some of the history of this world-famous New York City park.

We hear the words of Frederick Law Olmsted, the park's designer, born April 26, 1822, 204 years ago this week, and see historical photographs and engravings of the park in the mid-nineteenth century when it was created.

The Three Tenors with Zubin Mehta

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One of the most essential names in classical music for nearly seven decades, the conductor Zubin Mehta turns 90 today. A celebrated leader of major orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, and Los Angeles Philharmonic, among many others, Mehta’s warm, expressive style has made him a critical and audience favourite since the late 1950s.

But the concert for which he is best known is one that touched off the celebrations of the World Cup in July 1990 in Rome. Soccer, despite its aristocratic roots, has been blemished by the behavior of its fanatic followers. The word ‘hooligans’ is universally used to describe them.

The Italian impresario Mario Dradi, wishing to infuse a measure of class and dignity into his favorite game, and also to help José Carreras who was recovering from leukaemia, organized the concert and asked the other two great tenors to join; which they did.

A massive worldwide hit, The Three Tenors - José Carreras, Plàcido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti, with conductor Zubin Mehta, repeated this triumph all over the world. Here, at the Los Angeles Dodger Stadium in July 1994 they perform an "Around The World" medley with the L.A. Philharmonic and the L.A. Music Center Opera Chorus.

Featuring songs "America", "All I Ask of You", "Funiculì, funiculà", "Sous les ponts de Paris", "Brazil", "Be my love", "Marechiare", "Lippen schweigen", "Santa Lucia luntana", "Those were the days", "Te quiero dijiste", and "Torna a surriento", all arranged and orchestrated by Lalo Schifrin.
Happy Birthday, Zubin.

Two days from today, on Wednesday, the Backgrounder for May, about the fashionista Diana Vreeland, the remarkable woman who was the longtime Editor-In-Chief of Vogue, will arrive in the Inboxes of all Paid Subscribers. If you haven’t joined them, please do so today.

See you all next week with more Theatrewise arts online. Love, Ruth

Beware of Saudis bearing gifts….The cash-strapped but still grand Metropolitan Opera was promised $200 million over 8 years in return for three annual weeks of performances in Riyadh. They have withdrawn the commitment, citing the damage to the country’s economy caused by the war in Iran and the blockading of oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia is unimaginably rich, $200m is nothing to them, as they prove by pouring more and more into the pockets of Trump’s son-in-law and his brother. But their withdrawal of what to the Saudis is petty cash, is a huge blow to the Met, still trying to catch up from the losses of revenue and audience sustained during the Covid pandemic. The Opera House was closed but the money had already been spent on the operas that would have played during the lockdown. The Saudi gift, already allocated, would have helped get them out of the hole. As always, it is the audience which suffers.

Shame on them. Rich countries and rich people never understand the consequences of changing their minds.

The glory of the Met is on display in this free presentation of La Sonnumbula starring Nadine Sierra. Or you can go one better and take an annual subscription to the Met Opera on Demand (https://ondemand.metopera.org/) where you can find an enormous catalogue of more than 450 operas with all the great stars, past and present. Online.

I have never suggested that seeing a concert or play online replaces the live experience. Nothing can do that. But it has its advantages. This week, for example, since it’s Shakespeare’s birthday, I’ve given you two very different online versions of one of his greatest plays. For a much smaller outlay than seeing them live, you can watch both, pause and compare, and enjoy two great actors at the top of their form.

Also, on Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise this week, there’s a new one-man play, The Unknown, with Sean Hayes, the actor who was sensational as Oscar Levant in Goodnight, Oscar. And a new dance-theatre work by the choreographer Kate Prince, set to some of Sting’s biggest hits.

Several of this week’s shows are charging a small amount to rent or subscribe. Don’t be afraid to subscribe for a month and then cancel within 30 days. That will cost you less than $10/£10.

Please join the Paid Subscriber gang today. In addition to Backgrounders, twelve illustrated close looks at individual artists, you’ll get 5 free monthly subscriptions to gift your arts-loving friends and relatives. Please spread the word of Theatrewise and Backgrounders as widely as possible. And please “Like” me, or is that pathetic?

To access everything here, just click beneath the pictures and you will find instructions.

Michael Tilson Thomas

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​Michael Tilson Thomas died this week. He was a towering figure in the world of classical music and he was a long-time friend.
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There are many wonderful tributes to him in all the news media and many of them do him justice. They celebrate all he was to American orchestral music and all he did for young artists and neophyte composers. He helped everyone who asked and many who did not. A rare, truly good person, loved and respected. And famous.

What is less well known is that his roots were in the Yiddish theatre on New York’s Second Avenue. Michael Tilson Thomas was born into "Yiddish Theater royalty." He was the grandson of Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, two of the most influential pioneers of American Yiddish theatre.

MTT often remarked that he viewed an orchestra like a repertory theater company, a philosophy inherited from his family’s stage background. He told me that his grandmother Bessie used to sing him folk tunes that he later recognized as the thematic foundations of works by composers such as Igor Stravinsky.

​MIT was proud of his Jewish identity which showed in his original works, including the Grammy-winning From the Diary of Anne Frank and Shówa/Shoáh.

Here is a charming celebration of the Thomashevsky legacy, a multi-media performance directed by MTT, The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater.
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May his memory be for a blessing.

King Lear – Ian McKellen

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It’s Shakespeare’s 462nd birthday, well, you knew that. Which play shall we celebrate with? All are online so you can choose among a variety of websites.
I’ve chosen the heavyweight, the role that all mature actors measure themselves against – King Lear.

Ian McKellen gives a tour-de-force performance as Shakespeare's tragic titular monarch in this special television adaptation of the Royal Shakespeare Company production of one of the playwright's most enduring and haunting works. Directed, during the RSC’s glory days, by Trevor Nunn.

You can subscribe to BroadwayHD, which has a wide catalogue of online arts programmes, for a month ($9.99) or a year ($199.99) and if you just want to see this production you can purchase a monthly subscription for $9.99 and cancel within 30 days.

King Lear – Jonathan Pryce

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For comparison purposes, here’s another Lear, with Jonathan Pryce as the King. This production was captured by Digital Theatre live at London’s Almeida Theatre as part of the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival.

Directed by the Almeida’s Artistic Director, Michael Attenborough, it starred the award-winning Jonathan Pryce as a Lear said to be “electrifying naturalistic” by the Independent on Sunday, “changeable as the weather, warm and gentle, shaken and ferociously raging.”

King Lear is considered by many to be Shakespeare’s finest tragedy. Lear, in dividing up his kingdom among his three daughters, gradually descends into madness, ultimately bringing tragedy upon all concerned.

This can be either rented for £7.99 for 48 hours, or you can subscribe monthly (£9.99) or annually (99.99).

Great Performances at the Met: La Sonnambula

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Recorded live onstage at The Met last Autumn, this new staging of Bellini’s comedy of confusion, La Sonnambula, stars Nadine Sierra as a young woman who’s discovered sleeping in the bed of a stranger by her startled fiancé Xabier Anduaga.
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Tenor-turned-director Rolando Villazón conceived of this fresh production, which uses the tale to explore the mysterious workings of the mind.
Free to watch this month.

Great Performances: Message in a Bottle

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British choreographer Kate Prince is behind this thrilling dance-theatre piece set to songs by rock icon and 17-time Grammy winner, Sting and his band The Police.

Filmed live onstage at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre, this compelling performance, featuring a mix of dance styles, follows a migrant family risking everything to find a new home.

The score includes 17 hits by the Grammy-winning artist, including “Every Breath You Take,” “Roxanne” and “Walking on the Moon.”

​Streaming free only until midnight on April 30

The Unknown – Sean Hayes

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Sean Hayes, the actor who gave such an electrifying performance as Oscar Levant in Goodnight, Oscar, and is always worth watching, gives another fine performance in The Unknown, a one-man thriller streaming on-demand only through April 29.

The Unknown is a gripping new play about a writer on the edge. Desperate to cure his writer’s block, Elliott retreats to a remote cabin—only to discover he may not be alone. As the boundaries between his work and his life collapse, Elliott begins to question everything he knows. Is he writing a thriller? Living one? Both?

The Unknown is a provocative thriller by award-winning playwright David Cale and directed by Tony Award nominee Leigh Silverman that explores the fine line between fascination and obsession.
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Streaming free only until April 29.

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

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In honour of Shakespeare’s birthday, how can we fail to enjoy the funniest song ever written about his plays? Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate is the great musical based on The Taming of the Shrew.

From that show, as performed in the one-night-only concert "My Favorite Broadway: The Love Songs," hosted by Julie Andrews on October 16, 2000, at the City Center in New York City, here are Michael McCormick and Michael Mulheren with Brush Up Your Shakespeare.

May 6th is, of course, the first Wednesday in the month and, as all my dearly loved Paid Subscribers know, Backgrounders drops into your Inboxes on that day. May’s Backgrounder is the fabulous fashionista, the Empress of Fashion, the legendary Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, Diana Vreeland.

Those who have not yet joined the gang, please write your email in the box below and you’ll not only get this month’s Backgrounder but also six one-month subscriptions to share with your friends.

Lots more online arts next week in Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise - see you then.

To my delight, Central Park is turning Spring green before my eyes. Arriving here a scant three weeks ago, the view from my desk was of a beautiful but wintry scene of brown trees with a glimpse of the Park through the bare branches. Today, it’s a picture of bright greens of differing hues and I can’t see the branches at all because the new leaves are obscuring them.

As if that weren’t enough, when I arrived, it was chilly enough that I was grateful for the reliable central heating in my apartment. Abruptly, on Monday, I woke to discover that it was mid-summer. The temperature on Broadway had risen overnight to an unbelievable 87F (30C) and I was scouring my wardrobe for something light enough to wear.

I am ploughing fast through the many Broadway openings that stuff the theatre calendar in April. Lots to see, not a lot of it noteworthy. A good new play, Becky Shaw, about a catastrophic blind date, was a bright spot last week, followed by three dreadful musicals. An excellent one-man play about Truman Capote, a mediocre play about a neighbourhood residents’ association, and an incomprehensible play about three women each remembering the same incident differently, and the revival of what I remember as a much better musical than its current incarnation would suggest.

Much better so far have been the concerts. Conductor Marin Alsop wrangled the excellent dancers, actors and musicians of the Juilliard School into a splendidly enjoyable concert, and I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the wonderful 100^th anniversary performances of the Martha Graham Company, the oldest dance troupe in the US.

There’s much more to come and I’m hoping for better luck as the theatre season develops. There’s an Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman), an August Wilson (Joe Turner’s Come and Gone) and at least three more new plays that I’m looking forward to. On the musicals side, there’s slim pickin’s but I’m hoping for a lovely surprise.

When I’m not running around New York seeing every new play and musical, I’m screening arts programmes to share with you and I have to report that so far the online items are winning over the live productions I’ve seen thus far.

For example, on Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise this week there’s a virtual tour of the newest exhibition at the Met, Raphael: Sublime Poetry, conducted by the Curators who know everything about it. I’m taking myself to see it this week.

Yet another production of Cyrano de Bergerac is on the way into the West End, this one from a sold-out run at the RSC. Personally, I’ve already seen too many versions of Edmond Rostand’s 19th century rom-com, set in the 17th century (unless yet another director gets his hands on it and then it’s just as likely to be set on the moon), in recent years? However, I’ve included my own favourite, the Broadway version starring Kevin Kline, which is correctly produced in period.

There’s a good short documentary about the maverick Australian painter, Sidney Nolan, and a beautiful concert conducted by Anthony Pappano with music by Lili Boulanger, Sergei Rachmaninov, and a gorgeous rendering of Samuel Barber’s Vioin Concerto, played by the Dutch virtuosa, Janine Jansen.

And, because it would have been Shirley Temple’s 98^th birthday this week, I thought we should take another look at a favourite clip – the moppet herself dancing with the great Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson in the famous ‘Stair Dance’ from “The Little Colonel”.

Just click on the links below the pictures. Nearly all are free to watch this week but do invest in a No-Ads app before watching all these YouTube programmes.

Raphael: Sublime Poetry – Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Met Museum’s big Spring exhibition is Raphael: Sublime Poetry. In this guided tour, the Exhibition’s curator Carmen Bambach, Daniel Kershaw, Exhibition Design Manager, and Caroline Elenowitz-Hess, Research Associate, virtually explore it for our benefit.

A true titan of the Italian Renaissance, Raffaello di Giovanni Santi (1483–1520)—better known as Raphael—matched ambition with lyricism to create works with both intellectual heft and emotional depth, a necessary skill in the complex political landscape of Renaissance courts.

The son of a painter and poet, Raphael engaged with the foremost writers and thinkers of his age in Rome, displaying a poetic sensibility that captivated his peers and the generations that followed. In his short life of only 37 years, he achieved such profound success as a painter, designer, and architect that he was regarded as the pinnacle of artistic perfection for centuries after his death.

​Raphael: Sublime Poetry is the first comprehensive exhibition on Raphael in the United States, and brings together more than 170 of the artist’s greatest masterpieces and rarely seen treasures to illuminate the brilliance of Raphael’s extraordinary creativity.

It follows the full breadth of his life and career, from his origins in Urbino to his rise in Florence, where he began to emerge as a peer of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, to his final, prolific decade at the papal court in Rome.

Anthony Pappano conducts Boulanger, Barber, and Rachmaninov — With Janine Jansen

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Here’s a lovely concert of elegantly contrasting 20th-century works with the London Symphony Orchestra and their chief conductor, Anthony Pappano.

It opens with a revivifying burst of springtime with Lili Boulanger's tone poem D'un matin de printemps which is followed by Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto performed by the Dutch violin star Janine Jansen with her trademark "radiant tone and fiery technique" (The New York Times).

Composed in 1939, Barber's soulful concerto transports us into his unconventional, lushly tonal landscape from the sweepingly melodic first movement through the exhilarating perpetual motion of the short but intense finale, all executed with Jansen's characteristic grace and depth of feeling.

Finally, Pappano and the LSO turn to Rachmaninov's passionate Symphony No. 2, full of dramatic emotional shifts, rich orchestral textures, and some of the composer's most memorable melodies, notably in the swooningly romantic Adagio.

Cyrano de Bergerac

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So many Cyranos. You might think this cautionary Edmond Rostand tale about looks not being everything might have had too many incarnations by now, but no.

There’s yet another coming down the pike into the West End next month, starring Adrian Lester, coming in from a sold out run at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford.

Not long ago, director Jamie Lloyd stripped it bare in his trademark minimalist style with James McAvoy as the long-nosed poet except, in that version, he didn’t. Have a long nose, that is. We had to imagine it. Well, it was a Jamie Lloyd production.

Director Jackson Gay used the same Martin Crimp adaptation for her production which ran in New York last September.

The Park Theatre in London recently had a gender-flipping version. And currently, there’s a major tour moving across North America.

Why? Because producers know it always sells. And because it’s a good story that tugs at the heart.

Simply told, soldier and poet Cyrano de Bergerac is in love with Roxane, but he’s too ashamed to admit it because of his big nose. When a cadet, Christian, falls for Roxane, he asks for Cyrano’s help in sharing his feelings. Cyrano writes love letters signed with Christian’s name, and Roxane doesn’t realize that it’s Cyrano’s words she falls for. She marries Christian, and Cyrano continues to keep the other man’s secret, even after tragedy strikes.

Here’s my favourite Cyrano - Kevin Kline as the soldier-poet, Jennifer Garner as the beautiful but daft Roxane, and Daniel Sunjata as the besotted Christian. It was recorded at the Richard Rodgers Theater on Broadway in January 2008.

Directed by the immaculate David Leveaux, it remains true to Rostand’s 1897 heartbreaker of a play, bursting with swashbuckling gascons and duplicitous noblemen, fops and ruffians.

Sidney Nolan – Australian Artist

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Sir Sidney Robert Nolan was one of the leading Australian artists of the 20th century. Born 109 years ago this week, on 22 April 1917, his oeuvre is among the most diverse and prolific in all of modern art.

He is best known for his series of paintings on legends from Australian history, most famously that of Ned Kelly, the bushranger and outlaw. Nolan's stylised depiction of Kelly's armour has become an icon of Australian art.

Conscripted into the Army in 1942, during WW2, and stationed in the Wimmera, he went absent without leave in July 1944. After deserting from the army he joined the Angry Penguins, a group of artists and poets who sought to introduce avant-garde ideas into Australian art and literature, and position Australia within a broader international modernism.
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Nolan was an editor of the Angry Penguins magazine and painted the cover for the Ern Malley edition published in June 1944. The Ern Malley hoax poems were Australia's most famous literary hoax. They were seen by Nolan as being uncannily prescient in touching on his own personal circumstances. The Malley poems remained a real presence to him throughout his life. He painted and drew hundreds of Malley-themed works.

Nolan painted a wide range of personal interpretations of historical and legendary figures, including explorers Burke and Wills, and Eliza Fraser. Nolan's Ned Kelly series follows the main sequence of the Kelly story. However, Nolan did not intend the series to be an authentic depiction of these events. Rather, these episodes/series became the setting for the artist's meditations upon universal themes of injustice, love and betrayal. The Kelly saga was also a way for Nolan to paint the Australian landscape in new ways, with the story giving meaning to the place.

Nolan wanted to create and define episodes in Australian nationalism, to retell the story of a hero, who now has become a metaphor for humankind, the fighter, the victim, and the hero, resisting tyranny with a passion for freedom. Nolan recognised that the conceptual image of the black square (Kelly's helmet and armour) had been part of modern art since World War 1. He just placed a pair of eyes in Kelly's helmet, which animates its formal shape. In most of the series, Kelly's steel head-guard dominates the composition. Nolan also concentrates on the Australian outback and shows a different landscape in nearly every painting.
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Nolan never relied upon one style or technique, but rather experimented throughout his lifetime with many different methods of application, and also devised some of his own.

Shirley Temple and Bojangles – Stair Dance

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Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was the greatest tap dancer that ever was. He had a strong, almost mystical connection with his favourite partner, the tiny Shirley Temple aged four, and they made a number of movies together despite studio objections to Bojangles, an African-American, holding her hand.

Here they are in 1935, Bojangles teaching Shirley Temple his famous Stair Dance in the movie “The Little Colonel”.

Thank you for being a reader of Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise. Please come back next week for more arts online.

A special welcome to new Paid Subscribers. May’s Backgrounder, exclusive to Paid Subscribers, will be in your Inboxes on May 1st and will be about the legendary Empress of Style, Vogue Editor-in-Chief Diana Vreeland. If you haven’t joined the Backgrounders gang yet you can do so below.

I hope this first week of Spring is joyful for you.

Love, Ruth

Good Morning and Welcome to Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise

Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise is six years old today. When I started it in April 2020, it was because an elderly friend was unable to go to the ballet because of Covid restrictions. The Opera House and the Coliseum were closed as were all theatres. She was bereft. This was her only outing every week, her only opportunity to be with other balletomanes, her only entertainment, her only venture into the outside world.

I could have pointed out that there were worse things going on; that Covid was raging and people were dying, but I didn’t, because the loss of her weekly outing to the ballet was, for her, tragedy enough. Instead, I asked if she had an IPad, a laptop, anything that was connected to the internet. Oh yes, she said, but I don’t know how to work it. I told her to bring it to the ‘phone and 15 minutes later, she was watching the Royal Ballet.

Read more

Good Morning and Welcome to Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise

I’m having a lovely time in New York, seeing plays, seeing friends, enjoying the city in Springtime. But there’s this underlying unease in everyone I talk to, whether close friend or someone who’s waiting for the same bus, a sense that something is about to happen, something bad. What everyone talks about is what they talK about everywhere – the prices. A reasonable seat in a Broadway theatre now costs north of $200 unless the show has a big star, in which case it can be anything up to $1000. But it’s the cost of eggs and bread, the ordinary stuff you buy in the supermarket, which is the subject of most people’s conversation. Here in New York where most people don’t have cars, the rising price of a gallon of fuel isn’t a topic but the rising price of groceries, is.

That and the war. That’s what has ordinary New Yorkers scared. Over and over again people tell me they have no idea what the war is about. Oil, I say, it’s about oil. Is that why I just paid $14 for a chicken? Yes, I say, it’s about oil and ego.

This week’s Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise isn’t about oil but it is about ego. Here is Eadweard J. Muybridge, a massive ego whose inventions included studies in motion which presaged the moving image before film was invented. He was a strange man, inventor, photographer, writer and murderer. This is a fine documentary from the BBC about Eadweard J. Muybridge. Eccentric doesn’t begin to cover it.

Another huge ego this week is the showman, PT Barnum. He made museums, freak shows, theatrical performances and circuses. He knew what the public wanted and he gave it to them. He wasn’t very respectful of his audiences, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” but they came to his shows in droves.

His life inspired a Broadway musical, Barnum! The songs are by Cy Coleman and Michael Stewart so you know there are rousing performances. Here is it’s London production starring Michael Crawford.

I think I can describe Josephine Baker as a big ego. How else could this skinny little girl, born in the slums of St Louis where, from the age of 12, she had to scavenge in the garbage bins to eat, become the toast of France, a fabulously popular entertainer in the ‘20s, in the ‘40s, a spy, and a Resistance fighter, and, in the ‘50s, an activist in the civil rights movement? When she died, she was a Hero of the French Republic. This is her signature song.

And, because I like and admire Nathan Lane, who makes no secret of his political views, here he is this week on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show with a song that is pertinent for our time.

It is Easter, it is Passover, and I am privileged to celebrate both with friends of several religions and none, so allow me to salute all my readers and to wish you all, whatever your beliefs, a very Happy Easter and an equally Happy Passover.

As a little Easter/Passover gift, all today’s programmes are from YouTube and free to watch. Just click the links beneath the pictures to access them. I suggest you, like me, get an app, there are several, to block the annoying ads which pop up at inconvenient times.

Josephine Baker – Symbol of the Jazz Age

J’ai deux Amours

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I have spent the past month researching and writing about Josephine Baker. Those of you who are not yet Paid Subscribers won’t have received the in-depth profile of this remarkable woman that was posted on Wednesday, as this month’s Backgrounder.

Josephine Baker, born in the slums of St. Louis, grew up to be the most famous entertainer at the Folies Bergère, the mother of 12 adopted children of different ethnicities, a pilot who flew reconnaisance missions in the Phony War, an officer in the Free French army in WW2, a spy for the Deuxieme Bureau and MI6, a key member of the Resistance, an active participant in the American civil rights movement, and a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honor. There was much more in this month’s Backgrounder so do consider becoming a Paid Subscriber.

Josephine Baker died a Hero of the French Republic, exactly 51 years ago this week on April 12th, 1975.
Here is her signature song, J’ai Deux Amours. It says, “I have two loves; my country and Paris”.

The Weird World of Eadweard Muybridge

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Eadweard J. Muybridge was an artist and pioneering photographer whose inventions prefigured the invention of cinema, and led the way to our digital age.

He was also a murderer, and a very strange man indeed. He was born on April 9, 1830, 196 years ago this week, in Kingston Upon Thames. He changed his name from Edward James Muggeridge to Eadweard J. Muybridge, believing it to be the original Anglo-Saxon form of his name.

Emigrating to the United States, he became known as a photographer of the American West, photographing Yosemite, San Francisco, the newly acquired Alaskan Territory, and lighthouses on the West Coast. He also made his early moving picture studies in California.

Muybridge suffered serious head injuries in a stage coach accident in Texas which may have led to some of the emotional, eccentric behaviour reported by friends in later years, as well as freeing his creativity from conventional social inhibitions.

He came back to England to recover, during which time he learned the wet-plate collodion process, and secured at least two British patents for his inventions.
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He returned to San Francisco in 1867, a man with a markedly altered personality. He had changed from a smart and pleasant businessman into an eccentric artist. He was much more careless about his appearance, was easily agitated, could suddenly take objection to people and would regularly misstate previously-arranged business deals.

He met Flora in 1871. She was 19 and married. Muybridge, 20 years older, paid for her divorce and promptly married her. After that, he was rarely home and she was known to be flirtatious, a disaster waiting to happen. She had a baby, Florado Helios Muybridge, but on the back of a photograph of the baby she wrote “Little Harry”, the name of her lover, suggesting that the child was not her husband’s.

In October 1874, Muybridge shot his wife’s lover at point blank range and was arrested for murder. At his trial, his friends testified that he was insane as a result of his head injury and the verdict was justifiable homicide. His dark hair turned white within days of the murder.

But that was not the end of Eadweard Muybridge. He subsequently became famous for his pioneering chronophotography of animal locomotion between 1878 and 1886, which used multiple cameras to capture the different positions in a stride; and for his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting painted motion pictures from glass discs that predated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography.

The work he made was beyond astonishing. A horse in motion, a man walking, in effect, Muybridge made films, long before film had been invented.

As I said, a very odd but interesting man. This is a terrific documentary from the BBC which delves into Muybridge’s life and career.

PT Barnum - Showman

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Phineas Taylor Barnum, who died on April 7th, 1891, 135 years ago this week, was a marketing genius. He was also a fake, a humbug, an exploiter of people and animals, a promoter of hoaxes, and a politician who served two terms in the Connecticut legislature.

He had a knack for knowing what people would pay to see, whether it was a museum, a travelling freak show, or a circus. He is supposed to have said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

He thought big. All his endeavours were colossal, even the ones that failed. Especially the ones that failed. What has survived to this day is the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, initially known as The Greatest Show on Earth.

Barnum!, the Broadway show based, loosely, on his life, is a lot of fun. It’s got good songs, circus tricks and, in this 1986 London production, a great performance from Michael Crawford as Barnum himself, a much more personable and attractive personality than the original. The musical, composed by Cy Coleman with lyrics by Michael Stewart, was directed by Joe Layton.

Click here to watch

Laughing Matters – Nathan Lane

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Nathan Lane, the much-awarded actor who is currently leading the cast in Arthur Miller’s great play, Death of a Salesman, on Broadway, is not shy about his political beliefs.

On Stephen Colbert’s Late Show recently, he agreed to sing and he chose this song by Mark Waldrop and Dick Gallagher from When Pigs Fly.

​I think we can all agree with the lyrics which tell us, amongst other things, that no matter what happens, laughter does matter.

Thank you for being here. Please come back next week for more arts online. Paid Subscribers will want to know that you have come up with an elegant idea for May’s Backgrounder: the fashion editor and ultimate fashionista, Diana Vreeland. If you have any good stories about her, please let me know.

And do enjoy your Passover Seder and Easter Feast with my love,

Ruth

Who was she, this spindly sprite with legs that seemed to go in all directions? How did this child of the slums become the spirit of the Roaring Twenties and the symbol of the Jazz Age? Was it her dogged persistence? Her determination to be a star? Her insistence that she was not to be ignored? All those. And something else - star quality that couldn't be denied.

Freda Josephine Macdonald was born into poverty in the slums of St. Louis on June 3, 1906.

By the age of 12 she was living on the streets, always hungry, sleeping in cardboard shelters, scavenging for food in garbage cans, hanging out in St. Louis’ entertainment district to look at performers that she could imitate, earning a few cents dancing on street corners. At 13, she married Willie Wells, a Pullman porter, but the marriage lasted less than a year and following her divorce, she joined a street performance group called the Jones Family Band.

​In 1921, when she was 15, she married William Howard Baker but left him as soon as she got to Broadway. All that remained of that marriage was his name, and she was now Josephine Baker forever.

Determined to be a star, or, at least, a professional performer, she headed for New York at exactly the right time; the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing. Her persistance paid off when, after much badgering of the stage manager and many auditions, untrained as she was, she was cast in the chorus line of the groundbreaking and hugely successful all-Black Broadway revue Shuffle Along. She was on her way.

Read more

Good Morning and Welcome to Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise

Jetlag is a wondrous thing when it allows you to watch the sun rise over Manhattan. Awake at 4am, at my desk by 5, with a cup of tea and an English muffin (which is neither English nor a muffin), and the entire, improbable skyline of New York laid out in front of me, the sun rising over the city, more glorious than any stage set. I’m home again. And so lucky.

The holy month of Ramadam has just finished with its traditional Eid Celebration. Music is frowned upon during Ramadan. Not so with Passover and Easter, both of which fall this week. There’s lots of music for the season and I’ve found some of the best for Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise.

What could be more uplifting than Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion? Here is a performance of the St Matthew Passion in the chapel of King’s College Cambridge which features one of the finest ensembles of musicians performing on historical instruments.

Here too is a beautiful performance of “Kaddish”, Leonard Bernstein conducting his own 3^rd Symphony with the European Community Youth Orchestra, the soprano Barbara Hendricks, the Vienna Youth Choir and the Nyiregyhaza Boy’s Choir.

Passover music comes in many forms. Here is an adorable family singing the Four Questions (of which more later). Here too is a funny Passover folksong written only this week and performed by its composer, Daniel Cainer. And, to complete the set, a Russian ensemble ebulliently performs some of the best known Jewish songs.

But it’s not all religion. This week marks the birthday of Hans Christian Andersen and the anniversary of the opening of the Eiffel Tower and both are celebrated here.

All the events this week are available to watch free on YouTube. Just click on the links beneath the pictures. But annoying ads often interrupt. I suggest an ad-free ap which solves this.

St. Matthew Passion - Bach

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An inexhaustible wealth of musical inspiration and inner emotion characterize Johann Sebastian Bach’s (1685 – 1750) St Matthew Passion, a piece representing the zenith of Protestant church music.

Premiered on Good Friday 1727, the Passion slipped into obscurity for a long time. It wasn’t until the performance of an abridged version under the baton of Felix Mendelssohn in the year 1829 that a veritable Bach renaissance began – and the St Matthew Passion secured its rightful place in concert programs. Today, the 1736 edition is seen as the definitive version. The autograph survives to this day and is one of Bach’s most precious original scores.

This performance is by the Choir of King’s College Cambridge and the Brandenburg Consort. The soloists are Rogers Covey-Crumb (Evangelist) Michael George (Jesus) and Soprano, Emma Kirkby. The conductor is Stephen Cleobury.

Symphony No. 3 “Kaddish”- Leonard Bernstein

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The term 'Kaddish' refers to the Jewish prayer that is chanted at every synagogue service for the dead but never mentions "death".

Bernstein’s 3rd Symphony "Kaddish" is dedicated to the memory of John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated on November 22, 1963, just weeks before the first performance of the symphony. Bernstein wrote the narration himself.

“Kaddish” is a dramatic work written for a large orchestra, a full choir, a boys' choir, a soprano soloist and a narrator.

In 1985, at the Vienna StaatsOper, Bernstein conducted the European Community Youth Orchestra and the soprano Barbara Hendricks, Michael Wager, narrator, the Vienna Youth Choir and the Nyiregyhaza Boy's Choir.

Passover in many guises

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Passover is a celebration of the liberation of the people of Israel from slavery in the land of Egypt. Every year the whole family gathers with friends for a ritual meal, known as a Seder, where the story of their escape is related, traditional food is eaten, and many songs are sung.

Here are some traditional Jewish folk songs, sung by a popular Russian ensemble.

The Four Questions

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At the Seder, the youngest person present gets to ask four questions.

Sometimes, as with this charming version from the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York, they are sung by the children. The four questions, which lovingly give insight into the Seder ritual, is revealed in the subtitles.

The Angel Passed Over Me – Daniel Cainer.

Click here to watch

As a Passover treat, here’s a folksong for the Festival of Passover written and performed, with his unusual perspective on all things Jewish, by singer-songwriter Daniel Cainer.

​And now for something completely different!

Monsieur Eiffel’s Tower is 136 years old today

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The tower that nobody wanted, that was vilified and scorned by its neighbours, but that was built anyway, opened on March 31st, 1889, 136 years ago today. The Eiffel Tower was constructed as the centrepiece of the 1889 World's Fair, and to crown the centennial anniversary of the French Revolution. It was designed by Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier, two senior engineers working for Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower from 1887 to 1889.

The design choice was a very French affair. After the technical drawings of the tower had been already exhibited, there was an “open competition” for a tower for the World’s Fair with parameters so specific that only Eiffel’s design could meet them. Nobody else, it seemed, had suggested “a 300 m (980 ft) four-sided metal tower on the Champ de Mars”. A foregone conclusion if ever there was one.

A global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognisable structures in the world, the Eiffel Tower is designated a monument historique and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Eiffel Tower received 5,889,000 visitors in 2022 and is the most visited monument in the world.

Here is a PBS documentary which tells the story of the tower nobody wanted.

Hans Christian Andersen

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His most famous fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", "The Nightingale", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Red Shoes", "The Princess and the Pea", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Little Match Girl", and "Thumbelina."

His name was Hans Christian Andersen and he was born exactly 157 years ago tomorrow, on April 2nd 1869.

Danny Kaye portrayed him in the 1952 biopic and here is his unbeatable version of the “Ugly Duckling” from that movie.

There will be more arts online next week so please come back. My tip - get an ad-free ap so that your YouTube viewing won’t be interrupted.

Paid Subscribers (Oh, how I love you), your Backgrounder on Josephine Baker will land in your Inboxes on Wednesday. Have a great week.

Love, Ruth

Still in London. Off to New York tomorrow but sorry to leave my Spring bulbs, planted so haphazardly in my window boxes, when I threw them in among the still flowering plants from last summer, without concerning myself about where they fell. And now, look, they’re bravely ignoring my nonchalance and sprouting tulips, daffs, hyacinths and even crocuses. And it’s only March.

London is awash with blossoms. Yesterday aftenoon, I saw a large group of children, just released from their lessons, stop dead when running through a park they use every day. Each of them took out their phone to photograph the trees they had never noticed before, an avenue of blossom above them and at their feet. “Look what growed”, said a 9-year old when I asked her why she was taking pictures. It has not yet occurred to her that this miracle happens every year. “Bootiful,” she murmured.

Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise this week has several ‘bootiful’ offerings to share. The Icelandic singer and songwriter Laufey filled the Hollywood Bowl to capacity with her fresh new approach to performance. She’s unclassifiable, with her ability to switch from jazz to pop to classical – she began her performing life as a solo cellist with the Iceland Symphony – with a youthful gaiety that is irresistible.

Last week we celebrated the birthday of Rudolf Nureyev and paid subscribers got a close look at the legacy of Leonard Bernstein. This week I want you to see what I consider to be the best dance film of Nureyev’s prime without Margot Fonteyn, his Don Quixote, which gave him the opportunity to display his bravura jumps and his irrepressible nature.

On the Bernstein side, here’s Lauren Bacall in Stephen Sondheim’s parodic tribute to the great man on his 70^th birthday.

And, in my ‘spare time’, I watched a splendid BBC documentary called Ending The Impressionist Era on A Stunning High, about the transition from Impressionism to Post-Impressionism, emphasising Van Gogh in Paris and the emergence of Seurat’s Pointilism.

Next week, New York. In the meantime, you can access all the programmes here by clicking on the links beneath the pictures. If there’s a fee, the link will tell you what you need to know.

Laufey’s A Night at the Symphony - Hollywood Bowl

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Laufey is a phenomenon. For the uninitiated, she is a wildly popular Icelandic singer and songwriter. She began performing as a cello soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra at age 15. She plays a number of instruments and her musical style blends jazzpop, classical and bossa nova. She’s unclassifiable.

Laufey Lín Bing Jónsdóttir has a twin sister, a violinist who sometimes performs with her, and the two are so alike that it is difficult to believe they are two people even when standing side by side. Her name is Junia Lín Bing Jónsdóttir and she is not just a musical sidekick but also Laufey’s creative director. Their mother is a violinist, the daughter of a distinguished Chinese music professor, their father Icelandic, and they grew up speaking Mandarin, English, Icelandic and, for some reason, Danish, in a childhood that moved between Rekjavik and Washington DC, fetching up only a few years ago in LA.

Here she takes the stage at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for a concert under the California night sky, that blends all her styles. Her songs are personal, telling stories of her life, and going some way towards clarifying her extraordinary success.

There is a giggly girlishness in the way Laufey presents herself when talking to the audience but there is nothing childish about her music which is serious and thoughtful when she strips away the ‘showbiz’ in her show. The enormous Hollywood Bowl is full of Laufey’s fans, all her own age and familiar with every word of every song. She mades them happy, that’s clear.
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If you’re not familiar with her you may find her as fascinating as I do.

Don Quixote - Rudolf Nureyev

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Last week we celebrated what would have been Rudolf Nureyev’s 88th birthday but I gave you very little of his dancing or choreography. Let’s correct that now with this, his own version of Don Quixote, performed when he was at the height of his powers as a mature dancer and choreographer.

In 1973, in an abandoned warehouse near Melbourne, Australia, who would have thought that one of history's most renowned dancers and choreographers would be filming one of the century's greatest masterpieces? Co-directed with Robert Helpmann, Rudolf Nureyev’s version of Petipa’s famous ballet, based on the Cervantes classic, Nureyev himself and the dancers of the Australian Ballet transformed the warehouse into a grand theatre of art.

The man his contemporaries called “the god of dance” restored the satirical nature of the tale, approaching a sort of commedia dell’arte sensibility and introducing a master of ceremonies, who appears throughout the ballet.

Officially added to the repertoire of the Paris Opera in 1981, this work in a prologue and three acts has become a classic of the genre over the years, and this version is one of the best dance films ever made.

Minkus’ original score, adapted by the conductor John Lanchbery according to Nureyev's vision, sparkles with classic melodies and renewed modernity, with the addition of several new compositions.

With principals are Lucette Aldous (Kitri), Robert Helpmann (Don Quixote), Ray Powell (Sancho Panza) and Nureyev himself as Basilio, Don Quixote offers an unforgettable explosion of vibrant colors and exquisite scenes from designer Barry Kay, a showcase for perhaps the finest male dancer of all time.

Ending The Impressionist Era on A Stunning High

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Waldemar Januszczak’s documentaries for the BBC Perspective series are always good value. This episode takes a closer look at the latter years of Impressionism. Waldemar looks in considerable depth at the work of Georges Seurat.

There is also an insight into the complex but fascinating world of optics and art.
Also featured is Van Gogh's time in Paris, charting his journey from brown and dull canvases to the splendid colour and light we find more familiar.

Leonard Bernstein’s 70th Birthday - Lauren Bacall

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My friend Celia reminds me that the best commentary on the life of Leonard Bernstein was written not by Bernstein himself and certainly not by me, despite your many warm comments on this month’s Backgrounder, but by Stephen Sondheim for the all-star celebration of Bernstein’s 70th birthday.

Here it is, set to the music of Kurt Weill’s The Saga of Jenny in an amazing arrangement which includes tiny inserts of Bernstein’s music, performed by Lauren Bacall, accompanied by Paul Ford, and introduced by Beverly Sills.

Off to New York tomorrow so will see you next week from The Other Side. Please come back then for more arts online on Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise.

And please do join the Backgrounders gang if you can. It’s really worth the pittance you pay for it and what you get is 12 illustrated biographies of artists you think you know but discover that you don’t know enough. This month you missed Leonard Bernstein so don’t miss Josephine Baker. Her Backgrounder is coming on April 1st.

Good Morning and Welcome to Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise

There’s only one more week before I decamp London for my other hometown, New York. I’m excited. The new theatre season is just starting on Broadway, ballet, opera and cabaret are in full swing, and there is much to see and complain about. I’ll report back to you when I’m in the thick of it.

Once the Tony Award deadline has passed, and I’ve seen everything possible on Broadway, I’m off to California for the wedding of a much-loved god-daughter and to stay with music friends in San Francisco. Then, before returning to London, I plan to travel south for an important festival of new music in Ojai that I’ve wanted to get to for years but somehow the dates never worked out before. Again, more on this when I get there.

But the question I need to tackle before I leave is the question I’m asked every day now, increasingly urgently now that my departure is imminent: Why am I choosing to go to the United States at this moment? This query is coming from both sides of the Atlantic. Canadian friends are refusing to travel to the US or buy American goods. British friends, offended by being insulted and bullied into participating in a war they don’t support, are nonplussed by my enduring love for my adopted country, and American friends are trying to leave as quickly as possible.

The only answer I can offer is that, for more than 50 years, New York has been my home, every bit as much as London. The United States and its people, its core values and its innate decency will, I believe, triumph in the end. The rest is just politics and will pass. I hope.

In the meantime, the theatre, the music, the opera and the ballet in New York are calling me to get on that flight, but most of all, my friends, those irreplaceable human beings who have been with me for a lifetime, are there, and I can’t imagine my life without them.

This doesn’t mean that you will be left without online treats in Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise or Backgrounders. One of the joys of a writer’s life is that I can write anywhere. This week, there’s an unmissable concert of Spirituals from the late great Jessye Norman and the still very much alive Kathleen Battle at Carnegie Hall.

Here too is the singing of Nat King Cole, the first Black American to have his own radio and television show in the segregated United States. The smoothness of that voice and the modesty of his presentation is definitely worth sharing even if it were not also his birthday. Which it is.

And I noticed that this week Rudolf Nureyev would have celebrated his 88^th birthday had he not died, far too young, of AIDs. So here is a mini-celebration of a life lived for ballet and a wonderfully simple rendition of the pas de deux from Swan Lake with his partner, Margot Fonteyn.

Many thanks to the Paid Subscribers who have helped me decide on the subject of April’s Backgrounder. It will be Josephine Baker, the tiny entertainer who used her fame during WW2 to become a decorated hero of the French Resistance.

Access to all the online performances today couldn’t be easier, just clink on the links beneath the pictures. Most are free but there’s a little charge to rent the Spirituals. It’s worth it, I promise. One suggestion. If you don’t already have one, it’s a good idea to use an Ad-free link so that you can watch the YouTube videos without inopportune interruptions.

Spirituals in Concert – Carnegie Hall

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On March 18, 1993, 32 years ago this week. Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle gave a legendary concert of spirituals at Carnegie Hall.

Throughout their starry careers and beloved by opera fans the world over, Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle thrilled Met audiences for 315 performances. Both sopranos, they represented different branches of the singer’s art, Jessye Norman, with her commanding portrayals across the dramatic repertoire, and Kathleen Battle’s radiant tone and crystalline high notes that were evident in operas stretching from Handel to Strauss.

As two of their generation’s most prominent Black artists, they each dedicated much of their careers to championing the music of their ancestors, including in this thrilling concert of Spirituals recorded live from the historic Carnegie Hall stage, featuring members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, and the New York Philharmonic. The ground-breaking Black contralto Marian Anderson was in the audience.

The programme, conducted by James Levine, includes such timeless favorites as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” “Balm in Gilead,” and many more.

Nat King Cole

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Nathanial Adams Cole was born on March 17, 1919, 107 years ago this week in Montgomery, Alabama. His family moved to Chicago and his mother, who was his only teacher, taught him to play the piano and organ when he was four. By the time he was a teenager he was already a well-known jazz pianist with his own Trio, first in Chicago, and soon throughout the United States.

At first, he sang only occasionally, to add variety to his King Cole Trio’s appearances. Increasingly, though, recognition of his smooth baritone and musical phasing made him a singing star too and soon overtook his piano-playing. “I started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that’s just the way it came out.” Bookings and recording contracts followed. His recordings were so popular that his record label, Capitol, used to boast that they were “the label that Cole built”.

His fame spread and he became the first Black artist with his own radio series and, more impressively, his own television series. “The Nat King Cole Show” was the first nationally broadcast television show hosted by a Black American. Unfortunately, although local sponsors were enthusiastic, NBC, which had supported the series for the first year in the belief that national advertisers would be willing to come on board, had miscalculated. Despite his popularity, there were no corporations willing to take the risk of alienating their customers in the Deep South by supporting a Black artist and it was discontinued. Commenting on the lack of sponsorship, Cole said shortly after the show’s demise, “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark."

His recordings sold in the millions and, although he died at the age of only 45, there are some songs which remain unmistakeably his. Here is an episode of the Nat King Cole Show from 1957, complete with its cringe-making commercials.

These few songs demonstrate his ability to take any song and make it his own, but his version of “Pretend” here is indelible.

Rudolf Nureyev - Superstar

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When Rudolf Nureyev died of AIDs, aged only 54, in January, 1993, he left a unique legacy, that of being the first male ballet dancer to have become a household name.

Today's male dancers have no concept of the impact Rudolf Nureyev had back in the early 1960's when he defected from the Kirov Ballet. His defection was a sensational news story, but what stood him apart from all other male ballet dancers of the time was his smoldering sensuality, rock solid masculinity, and the unpredictability implicit in every movement. He would try anything. Others had cleaner technique, others were more versatile, but nobody else had that daring and recklessness that Nureyev brought to every performance. Nureyev was dangerous and audiences adored him.

Not just ‘scaffolding’ to lift the ballerina, this male dancer was just as presentational as any partner and a whole lot stronger than most. It was up to his partner to compete with him for the audience’s attention as he made clear with every gesture that he was not there just to hold her up. That is why the extraordinary partnership with Margot Fonteyn worked, because her line, delicacy and strength matched and emphasised his.

Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev was born in the USSR on this day in 1938. Ballet was his way out of the peasant life in rural Russia. Once he had defected, he was declared an enemy of the state and he saw his mother again only once, when she was dying.

Graduating out of the Vaganova Academy into the Kirov Ballet at the age of 19, he was immediately recognised as supremely talented and quickly promoted to principal dancer, even partnering the company’s senior ballerina from the outset.

Always a rebel, he was invariably forgiven his escapades because he was a star. But when he was allowed to travel to Paris and was seen to be frequenting gay bars and socialising with young French dancers, the KGB agents travelling with the Kirov party tried to send him back to Russia. He refused, instead imploring French friends to help him defect. The rest is history.

He met Fonteyn, then apparently at the end of her career, in 1961 and they first danced together in February 1962. She was 19 years his senior but as one critic wrote about that first peformance, “Fonteyn has shed half her years to match him with contrasting grace and sparkle.” Each of them, from opposite ends of the ballet spectum, had found the partner to complete them.

Nureyev was difficult, mercurial, sulky, uneducated, boastful and not much fun to be with, but he adored Margot and she him. When she contracted cancer, Rudi paid for her medical expenses until the end of her life.

Here is the White Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake, Rudi and Margot, dancing in a television studio, stronger by far for being unencumbered by the usual folderol of scenery and opera house lighting, just the two of them, together and apart, in unison and in competition, showing what each has to offer and giving Nureyev every opportunity to show what he had alone and what they had together. So much.

There will be lots more arts online next week on Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise so please come back. I’m hard at work on the Backgrounder about Josephine Baker which is due on April 1. Please join us if you can.

Good Morning and Welcome to Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise

In 1897, an obituary appeared in the New York Journal for the writer and humourist Mark Twain. He immediately fired back, “The report of my death was an exaggeration”. This quip came to mind this week when the death knell was sounded yet again for the arts. This time it came from an ignorant young man (all right, an Oscar-nominated actor) who said he wouldn’t want to work in opera and ballet because, “I don’t wanna be working in ballet or opera, or, you know, things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive,’ even though it’s like, no one cares about this anymore.” If you remove the ungrammatical tics, what he’s saying is that no one cares about the arts any more. Really?

An actor who doesn’t appear to know that we’re still clamouring to watch plays that are more than 2000 years old? Oedipus is playing on Broadway right this minute. And opera? What about the current sold out production of Handel’s 1744 Hercules, based on Sophocles’s Women of Trachis and the ninth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, being performed this very evening in Berkeley, California?

Ballet? This week’s performances by the American Ballet Theatre of Othello, a contemporary ballet based on a 400-year old play, has hopeful punters camped out on the street outside Lincoln Center hoping for a return ticket.

It’s true that the high arts – ballet, opera, classical music, cabaret, even film – are under seige. And we have an administation in the United States that is actively anti-arts and another in the UK which is in so much trouble that the arts barely register. But it was ever thus.

Theater has been called “the fabulous invalid” because it has continuously been diagnosed as dying. In the 20th century, when movies came along, everyone said the theater would disappear. The same thing happened when television and home video arrived, and subsequently with the internet and streaming. But, guess what?

The arts and artists were here long before us, they will survive long after we’ve left the stage. And long after the demise of arrogant young actors who don’t know any better.

In fact, should you wish to go to a concert this evening without leaving home, why not check out the Hollywood in Vienna concert at the Wiener Konzerthaus which includes a tribute to Randy Newman with Newman himself at the piano?

Or, it’s an opera you want, how about Gilbert & Sullivan’s most famous comic opera, The Mikado? Or perhaps it’s a dance programme that appeals? Irish step dance is a form of dancing as old as classical ballet and popular throughout the world. And, as a rest from performances, do dip into The Art That Made us, a riveting documentary in which contemporary artists and performers, alongside historians and curators, reveal how a century of creative renewal emerged from the chaos of plague.

All this is on Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise this week and nearly all is available to watch free or for a small price. Just click on the links beneath the pictures.

The Mikado – Gilbert & Sullivan

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Gilbert and Sullivan were a Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan. They were very different people but the two men collaborated, not always congenially, on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado are among the best known. It’s hard to overestimate the popularity of these 14 musical entertainments.

The producer Richard D'Oyly Carte brought Gilbert and Sullivan together and nurtured their collaboration. He even built them a theatre, the Savoy, in 1881, to present their joint works (which came to be known as the Savoy Operas) and founded the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which performed and promoted Gilbert and Sullivan's works for more than a century. The Savoy, a stunning art deco house, was the first all-electric theatre in London.

Both Gilbert and Sullivan were well-known and respected artists in their own fields before D’Oyly Carte introduced them. W.S. Gilbert’s writings developed in an upside-down style, often described as “topsy-turvy”, in which humour was derived by setting up a ridiculous premise and working out its logical consequences, however absurd, as though the premise made sense. His libretti made gentle fun of British institutions – the army, the aristocracy, the courts, etc, and of the pomposity of people in high places.

The film director Mike Leigh wrote, “His genius is to fuse opposites with an imperceptible sleight of hand, to blend the surreal with the real, and the caricature with the natural. In other words, to tell a perfectly outrageous story in a completely deadpan way.”

Gilbert directed the shows and was a hard task-master, insisting on regular rehearsals, strict adherence to the score, and absolute obedience. He once fired his leading lady because she missed one rehearsal.

Sullivan, a distinguished composer before his partnership with Gilbert, saw himself as a major composer of classical music and chafed at the necessity to curb his musical imagination to make room for Gilbert’s lyrics. Writing a negative review about a previous entertainment composed by Sullivan, Gilbert, then a theatre critic, had written, “Sullivan's score is, in many places, of too high a class for the grotesquely absurd plot to which it is wedded." Clearly, he thought he could do better. The pair didn’t like each other much.

Matters came to a head when D’Oyly Carte, who was in charge of the finances, overreached himself and began to charge the partners for expenditures to refurbish the Savoy. In their different ways, they both objected and, for a time, there were lawsuits which caused a serious breach.

But, of course, the popularity of the work they did together far out-earned their individual efforts and, after many failed attempts at reconciliation, Gilbert and Sullivan's music publisher, Tom Chappell, stepped in to mediate between two of his most profitable artists and got them back together for their last two operettas – Utopia Limited, and The Grand Duke, neither of which was a great success.

Gilbert and Sullivan introduced innovations in content and form that directly influenced the development of musical theatre through the 20th century. The operas have also influenced political discourse, literature, film and television and have been widely parodied by humorists.

The first production of The Mikado, the most popular of the operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan, premiered 141 years ago this week, on March 14, 1885.

In 1922 the distinguished conductor Sir Henry Wood wrote, “Sullivan's music is much more than the accompaniment of Gilbert's libretti, just as Gilbert's libretti are far more than words to Sullivan's music. We have two masters who are playing a concerto. Neither is subordinate to the other; each gives what is original, but the two, while neither predominates, are in perfect correspondence. This rare harmony of words and music is what makes these operas entirely unique. They are the work not of a musician and his librettist nor of a poet and one who sets his words to music, but of two geniuses.”
​
Here is The Mikado, produced by the Carl Rosa Opera, filmed before a live audience at the Hackney Empire in 2001.

Art That Made Us - Revolution of the Dead

Click here to watch

I got hooked on this documentary this week and wanted to share it. I found it online on BBC Iplayer when I was looking for something else.
It portrays an alternative history of the Black Death of the Middle Ages and its bitter – but profoundly creative – aftermath. Contemporary artists and performers, alongside historians and curators, reveal how a century of creative renewal emerged from the chaos of plague as survivors found their voice, questioning authority and challenging status and class.

Above all, writing in English - works including Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, William Langland’s angry satire The Vision of Piers Plowman and breakthrough works by women such as the spirited pilgrim Margery Kempe - formed the foundation for English literature.

Poet laureate Simon Armitage reflects on the poem of loss, Pearl, as a window into the medieval mind, and artist Sarah Maple shines a light on the subversive Lincoln Cathedral misericords, carved in the wake of plague. Meanwhile, writer Maria Fusco explores how the profound faith of female mystic Julian of Norwich is unshaken by illness.

As tensions rose over taxes on the plague’s survivors, the Peasants’ Revolt triggered a counter-reaction from an insecure king, Richard II. Royal photographer Chris Levine dissects the first portrait of a living English king, and artist Marc Quinn explores the beautiful but enigmatic Wilton Diptych, which Richard used to project his divine right to rule.

We discover how this was also a moment of new imagination and new opportunities in cathedral-building and music as people increasingly sought their fortunes and patrons in towns and cities. Sarah Brown of the York Glaziers Trust shows us the magnificent, recently restored Great East Window at York Minster, a pinnacle of European stained glass art, and Rory McCleery and the Marian Consort perform John Dunstaple’s Veni Sancte Spiritus, a game changer for medieval music.

I hope you find it as compelling as I did.

A Tribute to Randy Newman - David Newman

Click here for Medici
​
The annual Hollywood in Vienna gala brings us a lively evening of music from big- and small-screen favorites, this time dedicated to iconic comedies of cinema and television, including The Simpsons, The Pink Panther, The Artist, and Love Actually, performed by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Wiener Konzerthaus.

The festivities are led by conductor-composer David Newman, whose score for The War of the Roses features on the program — and whose cousin, Randy Newman, gets a marvelous tribute in the evening's second half.

In a selection of the most memorable works by the two-time Oscar winner and veritable giant of contemporary film music, this gala shines a light on Randy's inimitable style, melodic sense, subtle irony, and emotional sincerity.

A celebration of film music, this edition of Hollywood in Vienna promises all the spectacle and magic of the cinema itself. Soloists are: Randy Newman and singers Adrian Eröd, Cassandra Steen, and David B. Whitley with František Jánoška on piano.

A Little Irish Magic - Trinity Irish Dance Company

Click here to watch

Irish step-dancing is weirdly fascinating with its roots in traditional Irish dance. One or many dancers, expressionless, with rigidly stiff arms and upper bodies perform fast and precise movements of the feet and legs, sometime so fast that the human eye can’t follow them. This is traditional stepdance and there are championships, called Feissana, all over the world, encompassing the traditional and, increasingly, the more flexible and colourful modern versions of the dance.

Step dance, thanks to Michael Flatley and Riverdance, has become internationally famous in recent years. Over the years it has taken on new permutations and combinations, new movements and new performance styles, but it has remained intrinsically, itself.

Two types of shoes are typically worn in Irish stepdance: hard shoes, which make sounds similar to tap shoes; and soft shoes (also called Ghillies), which are similar to ballet slippers. There are different dances specific to each type of shoe, and different types of music with varying beats are played based on the dance, although soft and hard shoe dances all share basic moves and rhythms.

This “sophisticated and commanding company”, Trinity Irish Dance Company, made their debut at Jacob’s Pillow Festival 2025, presenting “everything you expect, but like nothing you’d imagine” for their 35th anniversary season. Here are all the incarnations of stepdancing, from the most rigidly traditional to the most avant-garde and outre.

This evening-long performance is streaming free from now until March 27.

The “fabulous invalid”, the performing and visual arts, beleaguered and besieged as always, are still flourishing, live and online. Thank you for being part of their perennial support. And please come back next week for more arts online on Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise.

“When I die,” Leonard Bernstein frequently lamented towards the end of his life, “all anyone will ever remember about me is that I composed West Side Story.” Now, 36 years after his death, there is some truth to that, but not much. He was, indeed, the composer of one of the most innovative, best loved and most significant pieces of musical theater of his century, but he was so much more.

As a composer, Bernstein wrote in many genres, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film, religious and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music, and pieces for the piano.

As a performer, on a good night, Bernstein was one of the world’s finest piano soloists, often conducting major works from the keyboard.

​Even on a bad night, he was always an electrifying conductor, inspiring an orchestra, especially his beloved New York Philharmonic, to heights that no other conductor could persuade them to reach.

​But it is perhaps as a pedagogue, probably the greatest music teacher that America ever produced, that will be Leonard Bernstein's enduring legacy. Ask almost any American professional musician born between 1949 and 1962 where they first heard and learned to love classical music and you will find that an astonishingly high percentage were first exposed to it on television in Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts. In these remarkable black-and-white Saturday morning live broadcasts on CBS, he persuaded children of all ages that music wasn’t just for the grown-ups, not just for those who already knew about culture, but for everybody, even the little ones.

Here is one of them, What Is A Concerto, introduced by Joshua Bell.
​​Click here to watch (If you can, try to watch all YouTube videos with an Ad-free setting)

Louis Bernstein was born on Aug 25 1918 in Lawrence, Mass, the first child of of immigrant Jewish parents from what is now Ukraine. The name ‘Louis’ was his grandmother’s choice but he was always known as ‘Lenny’ and changed his name to Leonard when he was 16.

​When Lenny was 10 his aunt gave him her upright piano and he took to it at once in the face of considerable opposition from his father, a wealthy businesssman. Like many immigrants, Samuel wanted his children to have ‘proper’ jobs – lawyers, doctors - and music didn’t count. When, in an effort to dissuade him, Samuel wouldn’t pay for his piano studies, Lenny gave lessons to the neighbourhood children to earn money to pay his teachers. He and his younger siblings – Shirley and Burton – would put on shows from Carmen to Gilbert & Sullivan with his friends. In these complex productions, Lenny was always producer, director and star.

​In his teens, it became obvious that Lenny was genuinely talented and then Samuel did everything possible to promote his musical development, taking him to concerts at the Boston Pops and paying for his studies.

His first public piano performance was on March 30, 1932, at the New England Conservatory of Music. He was 14. Two years later, he made his debut as a soloist with the Boston Public School Orchestra, playing Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor.

​In 1935, aged 17, Lenny enrolled at Harvard where he majored in music. He became president of the Harvard Glee Club while also serving as the unpaid pianist for Harvard Film Society's silent film presentations. He also wrote and conducted the musical score for philosopher David Davidson's production of the Aristophanes play The Birds, performed in the original Greek.

During this time at Harvard, Lenny made some of the vital contacts who would become his friends for life. He mounted a student production of The Cradle Will Rock, directing its action from the piano as its composer Marc Blitzstein had done at the premiere. Blitzstein, who attended the performance, subsequently became one of his closest friends and mentors.

At this time too the conductor Dmitri Mitropoulos invited him to come to Minneapolis as his assistant and, although that never worked out, it was his relationship with Mitropoulos which influenced Lenny towards becoming a conductor.

In 1937, in one of the most important meetings of all, Bernstein sat next to Aaron Copland at a dance recital at Town Hall in New York City. Copland invited Bernstein to his birthday party afterwards, where Bernstein impressed the guests by playing Copland's fiendishly difficult Piano Variations from memory.

Agnes de Mille told me that when Copland arrived to play her the score he had composed for her ballet Appalachian Spring, “He brought with him this golden boy to play the second piano part, whom he introduced only as ‘Lenny’.”

By the time he graduated from Harvard cum laude in 1939, he had made the friends he needed to take him on the next stage of his musical education. It was obvious to all of them that this stunningly handsome young man was already a musician of great promise.

​He enrolled at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where he studied conducting with the demanding Fritz Reiner, receiving his diploma in conducting in 1941.

In the summer of 1940, he met Serge Koussevitzky, music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who took him to Tanglewood as his conducting assistant. It was instant love and admiration between the aspiring young musician and the venerable old conductor who instinctively knew he had a gem worth nurturing.

Koussevitzky tried to persuade Lenny to change his name to ‘Burns’, worrying that ‘Bernstein’ was too Jewish and that therefore anti-semitism would torpedo what he already believed would be a major career. He failed in that but introduced Lenny to Tanglewood, and Bernstein subsequently returned there nearly every summer for the rest of his life to teach and conduct young music students.

Moving to New York, and briefly sharing an apartment with his friend Adolph Green who would go on, with Betty Comden, to write the lyrics for Singin’ In the Rain and many other hit musicals, Lenny made ends meet by coaching singers, teaching piano, accompanying dance classes in Carnegie Hall, transcribing jazz and pop music for a music publisher, doing odd jobs for a few dollars, and generally having a wonderful time. Life was hard work, and a lot of fun.

He published a few of his own pieces under the name, “Lenny Amber” (‘bernstein’ is the German word for ‘amber’).

Adolph, Betty and their friend Judy Holliday had an improv comedy group, The Revuers, which appeared downtown at the Village Vanguard and Lenny became their unofficial music director whenever they needed an accompanist.

Here are The Revuers with The Girl With Two Left Feet, Lenny at the piano.
Click here to watch

But he was doing serious work at the same time. On April 21, 1942, Bernstein performed the premiere of his first published work, Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, with clarinetist David Glazer at the Institute of Modern Art in Boston.

​And then, quite suddenly, overnight, on November 14, 1943, aged 25, Leonard Bernstein became a star.

​He had recently been appointed Assistant Conductor at the New York Philharmonic when the star guest conductor, Bruno Walter, came down with the ‘flu on the day of his concert. Lenny stepped in, without rehearsal, and conducted a challenging programme of music by Schumann, Rozsa, Wagner and Strauss.

It was a sensation. The next day, The New York Times carried the story on its front page and remarked in an editorial, "It's a good American success story. The warm, friendly triumph of it filled Carnegie Hall and spread far over the air waves." Newspapers throughout the country carried the story, which, in combination with the concert's live national CBS Radio broadcast, propelled Bernstein to instant fame.

Suddenly, Lenny was a star. He was invited to conduct orchestras throughout the US and Canada and his good looks, coupled with his undeniable musicianship, were the best story classical music had had in years. He would remain a star for the rest of his life. Orchestras adored him, ignored his youth, and the fact that he was American and Jewish, which might have been three strikes against him, and invited him back again and again. Bernstein was a physically expressive conductor. Orchestra members often remarked that Bernstein's every gesture conveyed a specific musical communication for them.

Just a few months later, in January 1944, Lenny conducted the premiere of his Symphony No. 1: Jeremiah with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

Click here to hear Symphony No. 1: Jeremiah

At the same time, he was working with the choreographer, Jerome Robbins, on their first collaboration, Fancy Free, a ballet about three young sailors on leave in wartime New York City. Fancy Free premiered on April 18, 1944 at the old Metropolitan Opera House.

Here is Fancy Free from the New York City Ballet
Click here to watch

Fancy Free is still in the repertoire of the New York City Ballet and other ballet companies worldwide but it has another life too. Lenny and Jerry Robbins decided to expand it into a musical and invited Comden and Green to write the book and lyrics. Now called On the Town, it opened at Broadway's Adelphi Theatre on December 28, 1944.

Here is New York, New York - Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin from the 1949 movie of On The Town.
Click here to watch

This was the beginning of a lifetime forever lived amidst torrents of engagements, compositions, events and innovations which poured out of a man who never said ‘no’ to anything that he considered challenging and fun. Lenny wanted to do it all and he did.

In 1945, Leonard Bernstein was named Music Director of the New York City Symphony Orchestra, and in that same year, he conducted in Tel Aviv (then in Palestine) for the first time, beginning a lifelong association with Israel and its people. On that first trip he conducted an astounding 40 concerts in 60 days with what was essentially a pickup orchestra, then called the Palestine Orchestra, later the Israel Philharmonic. His attachment to Israel was real and lasting. But that didn’t preclude his many other international interests.

​He conducted all kinds of music in all kinds of places and he expanded the scope of what could be played in a concert hall to include jazz, musical theater, and works from Latin America. He made sure to programme American composers everywhere in the world that he conducted, sharing the music of Gershwin, Copland, and Ives. He was the first American-born, American-trained conductor to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, and the Royal Concertgebouw, among others.

On July 4, 1946, Bernstein conducted the European premiere of Fancy Free at the Royal Opera House in London. On August 6 he conducted opera professionally for the first time, with the American premiere of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes at Tanglewood, commissioned by Koussevitzky.

That year too, Arturo Toscanini invited Bernstein to guest conduct the NBC Symphony Orchestra, including a concert which featured Bernstein as soloist in Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major.

​Since his student days, Lenny’s private life had always included affairs with both men and women but at a party in 1947 he met the Chilean pianist and actor Felicia Montealegre Cohn and they embarked on an on-again-off-again engagement which lasted until they eventually married in September 1951.

Upon hearing of their engagement, Aaron Copland, never famous for his tact, himself homosexual, is said to have blurted: “But he’s not housebroken!” In many unsuccessful efforts to ‘cure’ himself of his attraction to other men, Lenny underwent therapy for the rest of his life.

While on his honeymoon in Mexico, Bernstein composed a one-act opera for which he wrote both music and libretto. Trouble in Tahiti was about the troubled marriage of a couple whose idyllic suburban post-war environment belies their inner turmoil. The first performance of Trouble in Tahiti in 1952 was followed by its television premiere and then a Broadway run at the Playhouse Theatre.

This Trouble in Tahiti performance is by Psappha Ensemble
Click here to watch

Because of his deficits in the faithfulness department, it wasn’t an easy marriage, although their three children, Jamie, Alexander and Nina, glued them together in a warm and loving family life. To the extent his personality allowed, Lenny was a devoted husband and father and there is no doubt that he adored Felicia and the children and they him. There is also no doubt that his sexual adventures were very painful to Felicia who tried to accommodate what was a fait accompli.

After they married, she wrote to him, "You are a homosexual and may never change – you don't admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depend on a certain sexual pattern what can you do?....Let’s see what will happen if you are free to do as you like, without guilt and confession.”

By 1953, Lenny’s international conducting career was in full swing. Maria Callas heard him on the radio and invited him to conduct her at La Scala in Bellini’s La Sonnambula and Cherubini’s Medea to tremendous acclaim. It was the first time he had conducted in an opera house.

La Sonnambula - Maria Callas
Click here to watch

Then, another successful musical.
Wonderful Town opened on Broadway on February 25, 1953, starring Rosalind Russell. Lenny wrote it very quickly with Betty and Adolph. It was a musical based on a play, based on some autobiographical New Yorker short stories by Ruth McKinney, adapted by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Choderov.

It won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Actress.

Here is Ohio from the original cast recording
Click here to watch

Then came television. As television became a part of everyday life, Lenny saw its potential. His first televised appearance was in 1954 but his television popularity exploded in 1958 with the New York Philharmonic Young People's Concerts on CBS. He wrote and presented these programmes and his imaginative programming ideas and engaging presence, made even the most rigorous elements of classical music an adventure in which everyone could join.

​His fame made him the perfect fit to be America's cultural emissary to Moscow in 1959, and to Berlin in 1960 with the New York Philharmonic. He began recording in earnest in 1956 and more than half his 500-plus recordings are with the New York Philharmonic whose Music Director he became in 1958.

Particularly notable were his performances of the Mahler symphonies in the 1960s, sparking a renewed interest in the works of Mahler. Bernstein identified with the works on a personal level, and wrote of the composer: "I'm so sympathetic to Mahler: I understand his problem. It's like being two different men locked up in the same body; one man is a conductor and the other a composer ... It's like being a double man.”

Lenny conducts Mahler's 5th Symphony with Vienna Philharmonic
Click here to watch

​As if all this activity weren’t sufficient, Lenny was simultaneously composing two more musical theatre pieces.

One was Candide, which was perhaps the biggest muddle of any musical in history, and remains so to this day. The left-wing writer, Lillian Hellman, whose politics aligned with Lenny’s, deliberately adapted Voltaire’s story to draw parallels with the ongoing hearings conducted by the Senator McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee.

The show’s director, Tyrone Guthrie, getting cold feet, persuaded the collaborators to cut the most incendiary political sections prior to opening night by which time it didn’t make a lot of sense. The production was both a box office disaster and a political cause celebre but the cast album became a cult classic, and that kept Bernstein's score alive.

Here, Lenny conducts the Overture to Candide with the London Symphony Orchestra
Click here to watch

There have been several subsequent attempts to make sense of Candide, none very successful, and many changes of writers, directors and principal actors, but whatever they do to it, the show still doesn’t work, but that gorgeous score survives, particularly the Overture, which remains one of Lenny’s most frequently performed compositions, and the coloratura aria "Glitter and Be Gay" beloved of auditioning sopranos everywhere.

Glitter and Be Gay sung by Kristin Chinoweth with a funny intro from Patti Lupone
Click here to watch

The other was, of course, West Side Story. There are a million stories about the making of this iconic musical. Maybe one day I’ll write a whole Backgrounder about it.

To make a very long story short-ish, Lenny teamed up again with Jerry Robbins to make a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The original idea was to set it on the Lower East Side during Passover and Easter, hence East Side Story. The lovers were to be a Jewish girl and a Catholic boy.

​It took a long time, five years, for the elements of the show to be agreed between the supremely talented and highly volatile collaborators - Leonard Bernstein, composer, Jerome Robbins, choreographer and director, the experienced Arthur Laurents, book writer, and the inexperienced lyricist, Stephen Sondheim – and by that time it was about the rivalry between two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds vying for prominence in the neighbourhood, the girl a Puerto Rican immigrant, the boy a white gang member. It would address serious themes like racism, immigration, and prejudice, set against a backdrop of 1950s urban renewal in Manhattan’s West Side tenements, hence, West Side Story.

​Various members of the team including the original producer, backed out, (“Who wants to see a musical where people die at the end of the first act?”). Hal Prince came in as producer and managed with difficulty to raise the money needed for the production by cutting expenses and establishing order amongst the warring collaborators.

Arguments among the creative team often reached operatic proportions, exacerbated by the myriad other projects each was working on at the time. Some were substantive and concerned the show itself, others, equally vociferous, were about credits. Sondheim, the youngest and least famous of the team, was frequently bypassed for credit until Bernstein agreed not to take a credit as co-lyricist.

Robbins, irascible by nature, demanded and received a "Conceived by" credit, and used it to justify his making major decisions regarding changes in the show without consulting the others. As a result, by opening night on Broadway, none of his collaborators was talking to him.

But somehow, all this was eventually resolved and the show opened on September 26th, 1957 to ecstatic reviews.
The dark theme, sophisticated music, extended dance scenes, tragic love story, and focus on social problems marked a turning point in musical theatre. The original Broadway production ran for 732 performances and was nominated for six Tony Awards.
Here's a legendary scene from the 1961 movie, "America", with the same Robbins choreograpy as the stage version. Led by Chita Rivera and George Chakiris.
Click here to watch

West Side Story continues to be regularly performed worldwide with new productions on Broadway, in the West End, on television, and in two full length feature films.

The 1961 film, co-directed by Jerry Robbins (until he was fired) and Robert Wise, solidified its legacy, winning 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, and the 2021 film adaptation, directed by Steven Spielberg, was also nominated for Best Picture and six additional nominations.

Here is "Tonight" from the 1961 movie.
Click here to watch

​Many years later, Lenny told television producer Christopher Swann, “West Side Story is the best thing I have ever done and my tragedy is, I don’t know how I did it.”

In addition to his musical theatre work, Bernstein composed three symphonies, - Symphony No. 1, Jeremiah; Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety; and Symphony No. 3, Kaddish . In 1954 he wrote his Serenade after Plato's "Symposium" and the score for Elia Kazan’s movie On the Waterfront ; as well as Prelude, Fugue and Riffs, for jazz big band and solo clarinet, Chichester Psalms and Mass.

In 1966, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis commissioned Bernstein to compose a work for the inauguration of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. This large-scale theatrical work was based on the Tridentine Mass of the Catholic Church.

The piece, Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers; combines elements of musical theater, jazz, gospel, blues, folk, rock, and symphonic music, and the libretto combines Latin and English liturgy, Hebrew prayer, and additional lyrics written by Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz. Following its premiere on September 8, 1971, some called it a work of genius, others blasphemous.

50 years later, the music critic Edward Seckerson wrote, “no other work of Bernstein’s encapsulates exactly who he was as a man or as a musician; no other work displays his genius, his intellect, his musical virtuosity and innate theatricality quite like Mass.”

Here it is, in a televised version from 1981 on its 10th anniversary at the Kennedy Center.
Click here to watch

​

In 1974 Lenny and Jerry Robbins got together again to make a ballet about a young woman possessed by a malicious spirit, known in Jewish folklore as a "dybbuk". The Dybbuk was premiered by the New York City Ballet at the New York State Theater on May 16, 1974, with Bernstein conducting.

Except when he was on the concert platform and, even in rehearsal, Lenny always had a cigarette going and usually a drink as well. So did Felicia. Not surprisingly, Lenny developed emphysema in his early 50s but that isn’t what killed him, not directly, at least.
In 1976, Lenny fell in love with Tom Cothran, a music scholar, and left Felicia to live with him as an openly gay man.

The following year, Felicia was diagnosed with lung cancer. Bernstein moved back in with her and cared for her until her death on June 16, 1978. Thereafter, he always believed that he had killed her.

He remained in contact with Cothran who later developed AIDs and Bernstein paid for his medical and living expenses until his death.

After Felicia’s death Lenny established the Felicia Montealegre Bernstein Fund of Amnesty International USA to provide aid for human rights activists and to cement his own lifelong commitment to human rights and the cause of peace. Throughout his life, Bernstein fought for a variety of political and humanitarian causes, from the civil rights movement to the Vietnam War protests to nuclear disarmament to advocacy during the AIDS crisis.

Lenny’s schedule never really let up. He continued to compose, conduct, lecture, and make television programmes for the rest of his life. He stepped up the pace of his recordings and travelled throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas, conducting 29 orchestras and making recordings with many of them. He established an ongoing loving relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic.

In 1976, Bernstein composed his last original Broadway score, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a musical with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, about the White House and its occupants from 1800 to 1900. It ran for only 7 performances. His Broadway life was over.

​On December 25, 1989, Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in East Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. The orchestra consisted of members representing the two German States and the four occupying powers of post-war Berlin. That Christmas Day concert was broadcast live to an estimated audience of 100 million people in more than twenty countries. For the occasion, Bernstein re-worded Friedrich Schiller's text of the Ode to Joy, replacing the word Freude (joy) with the word Freiheit (freedom). Bernstein added, "I'm sure that Beethoven would have given us his blessing."

Here is the Berlin Celebration Concert 1989
​Click here to watch

Fittingly, Lenny, although visibly ill and coughing badly, conducted his last concert on August 19, 1990, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood.

He died on October 9th, 1990 from a heart attack brought on by a pleural tumour. As his funeral procession moved through the streets of Manhattan, construction workers removed their hard hats and waved, calling out, “Goodbye, Lenny”.
He was buried with a score of Mahler’s 5th Symphony across his heart.
The boy who had called himself Lenny Amber had become their Leonard Bernstein.

​In his lifetime he had been criticised for his homosexuality, his flamboyance, his Judaism, his left-wing politics, and, perhaps most painful of all, the nagging belief that he was not a serious composer. He wasn’t a man who could shrug off criticism, he felt it deeply. He was torn apart by his many conflicts - between classical and popular music, between his marriage and his homosexuality, between composing and conducting, between his frantic lifestyle and his yearning for peace to compose.

If a man who had succeeded so spectacularly in his life could be said to have had a tragic end, it was this, that he always wanted more. He wanted to be recognised as a great composer like Gustav Mahler or Aaron Copland.

Leonard Bernstein had believed that he could have it all – he could be a great composer, a great pianist, a great conductor, a great pedagogue, a great husband, a great father, a great humanitarian, a great lover, a great skier, and a great tennis player – and to a large extent he succeeded in all these but he died still wanting more, disappointed that his name was not spoken in the same breath as his heroes, Gustav Mahler and Aaron Copland.​ Or Beethoven.

Here is Leonard Bernstein conducting Beethoven's Missa Solemnis at Tanglewood in 1971, in memory of his beloved teacher, Serge Koussevitsky.

Click here to watch

I know that many of you like to follow up these Backgounders with documentaries about the subject. In the case of Leonard Bernstein there is an embarrassment of riches, literally dozens of films about and with him. I’ve chosen these either because they contain interviews with him or long musical excerpts of his performances, but there are many more.

Kennedy Center Honors Legend: Leonard Bernstein (In-Depth Interview) 1981

This is an extended interview with Leonard Bernstein as he reflects on his career and his relationships with other conductors and mentors.

American Masters – Leonard Bernstein

A thorough, well researched and extensive film of his life.

Leonard Bernstein - A biography: His Life, his people, his places (Documentary)

This is an excellent short doc containing a number of pictures I’ve never found anywhere else.

The Maestro Behind MAESTRO
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYIU2SUMDpQ

Read more

Good Morning and Welcome to Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise

I was cheered to receive a press release that the producer, Cameron Mackintosh, has decided to extend ‘one year more’ (a misquote from Les Mis) for all four of his big and successful musicals currently playing in the West End. And he’s adding another at the end of the year.

This autumn, The Phantom of the Opera will be celebrating 40 years at the same theatre, Les Miserables its 41^st year, Oliver! will be going into its 3^rd year and in 2027, Hamilton will celebrate its 10^th year at the Victoria Palace which Cameron rebuilt to house this revolutionary musical.This is seriously impressive and deserves a cheer. Picking musicals that are good, tuneful and about something, is not job for weaklings. Mackintosh has proved that taste, experience, care, bravado, guts, courage (aren’t they the same thing?) and a lot of cash, can still make the live theatre worth our time and money.

He’s also bringing a new production of Miss Saigon into the Prince Edward Theatre in the West End from a country-wide tour. Next year, London will be the only place where you can see all these extraordinary musicals.

The cash, though essential, is not enough. If you doubt me, look at Broadway. Much of what Broadway producers are giving us as new musicals are silly, vulgar, or just plain terrible - The Queen of Versailles, anyone? There are honourable exceptions - Ragtime is wonderful and the irresistible rhythms of The Buena Vista Social Club are, well, irresistible, and there are a handful of others, but I’d be hard put to it to name 5 more this season. The season, though, is nearly over and my eternal theatrical optimism is bubbling up as usual this time of the year when the Tony Awards are about to be nominated. I’ll report back to you from New York.

This week on Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise there are several splendid concerts of different genres and a great comedy. Alfie Boe, an operatic tenor who has branched out into other kinds of songs, fills the Royal Albert Hall and isn’t in the least intimidated by its echoing spaces, particularly when he is filling them.

A group of America’s finest chamber musicians get together to perform a delicate programme of wonderful music, including a brand new piece especially composed for this concert and dedicated to one of its musicians.

I’m not very familiar with the music of Rameau but I love the Palace of Versailles (who doesn’t?) so I had to include this baroque concert set in the gorgousness of the Royal Chapel.

And, since so many of you loved The Tempest from Stratford Festival in Canada, here’s another Shakespeare production from there, a highly amusing Much Ado About Nothing.

I’m working hard on the Backgrounder, due on Wednesday, about Leonard Bernstein so, if you haven’t signed up for it, please do so now.

All online events are available at the touch of a button and the links are just below the pictures. The small online fees, charged by the venues, are worth every penny/cent. I do hope you enjoy them all.

Much Ado About Nothing – Stratford Festival

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So many of you took the time to say how much you enjoyed The Tempest, in the production from the Stratford, Ontario Festival, that I asked what else they have that you would like too. They offered this enchanting production of my favourite Shakespeare comedy, Much Ado About Nothing.

True, it has some additional lines that I’ve never heard before (and neither had Shakespeare) but it’s still recognisable as the best of all the Comedies. There are no fairy characters here, just real people, a real man and a real woman, who both think that love has passed them by, who find out, delightfully, via perfect Shakespearean word jousting, that it hasn’t.
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I hear that two famous British actors, Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell, are about to perform this play on Broadway and I wish them well but I enjoyed this production, with Canadian actors whose work I have not seen before- the very fine Graham Abbey as Benedick and, equally strong Maev Beaty as Beatrice – hugely. I hope you will too.

A subscription to Stratfest@Home is just CDN$7.99 per month or CDN$79.99 per year. And Theatrewise readers can get 30% off the first year with promo code SFWIN30.

Rameau at Versailles

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I love concerts that take place in grand surroundings instead of dull modern concert halls. Versailles is one of the grandest of all.

At the magnificent Royal Chapel of the Palace of Versailles, Catalan maestro and Baroque and early music specialist Jordi Savall conducts his orchestra, Le Concert des Nations, in a vibrant exploration of works by pioneering 18th-century French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. It’s music I don’t know very well and it’s a joy to hear it played by an orchestra that knows whereof it plays.

Opening with a jubilant suite from Rameau’s 1748 opera Naïs, (no, I’m not familiar with it, either), the period instrument orchestra performs stately music from the (I’m told) famous ballet héroïque, Les Indes galantes. The concert finishes with the lyrical Zoroastre and Rameau’s posthumous final tragédie en musique, Les Boréades.
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Conductor Jordi Savall — with a career spanning more than 50 years — expertly conjures the joyful exuberance and poignant beauty of Baroque music in a dazzling location.

Alfie Boe at the Albert Hall

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What happens when a voice built in a Blackpool car factory reaches the rafters of the Royal Albert Hall? This is an artist whose every note carries the weight of where he’s been and the wonder of how far a voice can travel.

Like most of us, I first encountered Alfie Boe as an opera singer, a diminutive and audience-friendly tenor with a knockout voice and a presence that belied his size. Even then, the ease and flexibility of his voice suggested that he might possibly one day step out of the opera house into other forms of music.

This cinematic performance reveals Tony Award–winning tenor Alfie Boe having truly stepped out of the opera house into a packed Royal Albert Hall. Backed by a 19-piece band, including an ensemble of a dozen female violinists, he channels raw intensity and confessional intimacy across rock anthems, soulful ballads, and operatic arias. At one point, he even duets with a digitally restored Roy Orbison.

You come to believe that he can do anything. Between songs, the camera catches something rare: the vulnerability behind the virtuosity, the boy from the factory floor who has risen to heights he could only imagine before becoming Baz Luhrmann’s handpicked lead in La Bohème.
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I like the quieter songs best but I’ll take the lot, and, clad in jeans and t-shirt, our Alfie commands a sold-out Royal Albert Hall with complete authority. If he told his mainly female audience to stand on their heads, I think they’d try.

Alfie Boe is homegrown British but it’s a voice that encompasses many worlds.

DON’T Strike The Viol! - Montage Music Society

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This is an unusual and wonderful chamber music concert by some fantastic musicians (full disclosure – two of them are among my closest friends) of a piece of new music especially composed for this concert.

Such fun to hear from the composer of the new piece, Elliot Roman, what he was thinking. I wish we could have a similar description from the other composers on this eclectic programme - Mozart, Turina and Dvořák. Instead, we have programme notes by Daniel Avshalomov which is almost as good.
Elliot Roman who says.“DON’T Strike the Viol! draws inspiration from a 1568 Amati viola owned by Daniel Avshalomov to whom this piece is dedicated. The “birth year” of this instrument left me wondering about composers born in years consisting of those very numbers – 1, 5, 6, and 8 – in different combinations. As a result, I pulled from compositions by Henry Purcell (born circa 1658), J.S. Bach (born 1685), and Alexander Glazunov (born 1865) to create a collage based on this one unique connecting thread. The title of this piece is inspired by Purcell’s Strike the Viol from “Come Ye Sons of Art Away””.
About the Mozart Duo for violin and viola, Daniel Avshalomov writes,
“The opening in octaves is sort of a tease, as the violin then takes the lion’s share of the melodies, but any violist who objects to accompanying from time to time has chosen the wrong instrument. In any case the end result is Mozart, so no-one is complaining.”
And about the Piano Quartet by Joaquin Turina, “As a young man, Joaquín Turina traveled from his native Seville to Paris in order to pursue his studies. The mysterious Andalusian Andante - with its moody Lento introduction, the spritely Sevillian Scherzo where castanets echo, and the Andante-Allegretto finale - all are linked by hints of the cante jondo (serious songs) of southern Spain.”
As all violists do, Avshalomov loves Dvorak, “Antonín Dvořák was someone you would have liked to meet. Affable, humble, pious, he was a short, round fellow with wide eyes, a thorough beard, and a good heart. After his family and his music, his loves were trains, homing pigeons and beer. And like many enlightened composers, he played the viola. So, little wonder that his Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81 is richly flavored, and none at all that it is greatly favored, among his most popular chamber works.”

One Day More – Les Miserables

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The producer Cameron Mackintosh is extending the run of each of the four musicals on which his reputation and fortune are based, by another year, in London’s West End theatres. Bravo!
Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, Hamilton, Oliver!

I remember the First Nights of all of them. Les Miserables came first. It took my breath away. Not an immediate critical success, it built an audience by word of mouth into one of the biggest hits of the musical theatre, ever.

Ten years after its first performance, in October 1995, Cameron Mackintosh celebrated with an impressive all-star concert version at the Royal Albert Hall. Participating were many of the performers who had cut their teeth on the show throughout the years, now big stars.

For the 25th anniversary he did it again, this time in the vast 02 Centre.
Here is a clip from that concert. See how many stars you can spot. And, yes, that’s Alfie Boe again. I still love the scale of it. It was, and remains, a massive achievement.

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Love from Ruth

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