10:10 p.m., this joint is emptying out.
I think they want to kick us out.
A couple of things first:
In the film that Glass adapted, Cocteau was revitalizing the “fairy tale,” which even in the 1940s and 1950s had been relegated to the children’s shelf, and giving it back its spirituality and wonder. He was after the [...]
9:53 p.m.: After the show, after the applause, after the standing ovation.
“I actually liked it a lot,” Mrs. Scatter said. “I found it surprisingly moving.”
Yes, it is. This is an opera that’s hardly been produced since its debut in 1993, and now it seems ready to join the repertoire. It stands up to the test [...]
Photo: French poster for Jean Cocteau’s film “Orphee,” the inspiration for Philip Glass’s opera. Wikimedia Commons
8:38 p.m., Intermission: No smoke yet, but lots of mirrors.
One of the coolest things about this opera is the way that it uses the image of the mirror. Very important to Cocteau, and Glass and the set designer, Andrew Lieberman, [...]
6:14 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, Keller Auditorium, in the lobby: One hour and 16 minutes to showtime, the show being the West Coast premiere of Philip Glass’s Orphee, by Portland Opera.
A crowd’s assembled outside the doors, early birds waiting to claim their spots.
I’m sitting between Byron Beck and Storm Large — rare company.
Time to stop [...]
As the old joke goes, tonight’s the night!
Art Scatter regulars might have noted that it’s been Philip Glass Week in Portland, and tonight at Keller Auditorium his 1993 opera Orphee opens in its West Coast premiere, performed by Portland Opera. Reports are promising: Glass liked the dress rehearsal so much that he whipped up a [...]
“I’ve never been very interested in film,” Philip Glass said one morning this week at a long table set up in a rehearsal hall in the Portland Opera studios. “I don’t go to movies a lot.”
An odd confession from Glass, the 72-year-old composer who was in town for several days in conjunction with Friday night’s [...]
… into the next great adventure of his life.
Barry, who had the idea of Art Scatter in the first place and was the doctor on duty who slapped it on the bottom in the delivery room and sent it off squawking into the world, has told his many friends and followers he’s leaving The Oregonian [...]
Martha Ullman West, Art Scatter’s esteemed global correspondent for the terpsichorean arts, files this report from last night’s action in the balletic trenches of Mississippi — that is, North Mississippi Street in Portland. Sounds like a good place to move your feet tonight or tomorrow:
Last night at Mississippi Studios, where six of Oregon Ballet Theatre’s [...]
Queen Marie of Romania dedicating the still unfinished Maryhill Museum in 1926.
Eventually the world seems to show up on the doorstep of the Maryhill Museum of Art.
Which is a funny place for the world to show up, in this isolated concrete mansion overlooking the Columbia River Gorge in the semi-desert landscape of Klickitat [...]
ABOVE: “Orpheus and Eurydice,” Nicolas Poussin, 1650-51. Musee de Louvre, Paris. INSET: Philip Glass, composer of “Orphee.” Wikimedia Commons.
DON’T LOOK BACK. Bob Dylan gave that sage advice, possibly after considering the experiences of Lot’s wife, who turned into a pillar of salt after peeking back at the lost pleasures of Sodom, and of Orpheus, who doomed [...]