TCP Jun09 pp. 16-24 (Page 3)

14
The Canada Post
Arts News
June 2012
transplants the production to its original era. This lack of conviction also affects
the show’s lead. Seriously larger-than-life baritone Ambrogio Maestri is an experienced Falstaff, yet sleepwalks through the role. Everything is faultless. We
chide, forgive and love the man as we are meant to, but are never excited or surprised by him.
However, the rest of the cast, in particular Marie-Nicole Lemieux as Mrs
Quickly, successfully add some punch to Maestri’s polish. As does Daniele
Gatti’s lively conducting, the most coherent and forceful part of an entertaining
but ultimately unfocused show.
Canadian art auction sets records
Falstaff
Ambrogio
Maestri as
Falstaff
Photo:
Catherine Ashmore
Verdi’s final opera, directed by Canadian born
Robert Carsen, is among the best of the season
at the Royal Opera. Scott Lupasko reports ...
IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE any opera director with a competent hand messing
up Verdi’s final work too badly. His musical retelling of Shakespeare’s Merry
Wives of Windsor is so joyful that, like the eponymous protagonist himself, flaws
are easily forgiven in the face of its good nature.
Considered by many to be Verdi’s best work, Falstaff is also atypical. Verdi
had tried comedy in the past, and failed – his memorable arias wanting grander
emotions. Falstaff instead moves quickly along in a flippant unendliche melodie.
You come out happy, not humming.
The challenge thus facing a would-be director of Falstaff is not to bring the
material to life as much as to make the staging matter in its own right – to, in a
sense, have it upstage the material. ROH’s current co-production with La Scala
and the Canadian Opera Company (the production will move to Toronto in 2014,
after Milan) is only partly successful. Staged by Canadian director Robert
Carsen, now a major player in British and international opera after cutting his
teeth at Glyndebourne, it is a production with plenty of good laughs and sharp
ideas that nonetheless fails to leave any coherent or lasting impression.
As seems de rigueur these days, Carsen’s Falstaff is set in the 50’s. Yet it is an
odd, post-modern 50’s, at times very English, while at others all-out American
dream. And to a large extent this works. The second act’s comic climax, where
Falstaff hides in a hamper, is a particular joy in a kitchen the colour of key lime
pie. Never mind that that the previous scene was oak panelled, or that Falstaff is
wearing hunting reds.
But this approach proves self-limiting. In the second half, a horse is brought on
stage. Amusing? Yes. Purposeful? Hmm… And the Shakespearian climax, where
fairies and nymphs get the better of poor Falstaff, looks stunning but simply
doesn’t make sense in a post-modern, post-war setting. One simply forgets and
Discs of the Month
Ruggles of Red Gap
Eureka Video/ Dual Format
£20
TOP marks to Eureka Video for releasing
at long last one the most sparkingly comedies of the 1930s. Directed by Leo
McCarey, it stars Charles Laughton as an
English butler who is lost in a poker game in Paris where
his services are then transferred from his master, a droll
English earl (Roland Young), to a wealthy American cowboy (Charlie Ruggles) whose snobby wife, played hilariously by Mary Boland, is thrilled by the acquisition.
In this, one of the very best comedies ever made,
Laughton is outstanding as Ruggles whose transformation from an uptight and proper valet to a liberated man
of the people is extraordinary. And the pace moves fast
from one uproarious scene to another as Rugglesʼ hidebound life in service shifts to life in the wild west backwater of Red Gap in Washington state where he gradually
becomes his own man, making his recitation of Lincolnʼs
Gettysburg Address just one of the filmʼs many unforgettable moments and making little masterpiece from 1935
an absolute must for your DVD collection. •••••
SOTHEBY’S AUCTION of Canadian
art produced a sale total of $3.55 million
May 24 in Toronto, with record prices for
several Canadian artists, including PaulÉmile Borduas, whose Froissement
Multicolore sold for $663,750.
Borduas’s large and colourful work had
a pre-sale estimate of $350,000 to
$500,000, and surpassed the previous
auction record for the artist by $150,000.
Auction records were also set for Jack
Borduasʼ Froissement Multicolore
Bush, Robert Todd, Fritz Brandtner,
Barbara Astman and Douglas Coupland.
“Sotheby’s sale of Canadian artworks once again proved collectors’ appetite for
exceptional quality in the current market,” said Sotheby’s Canada president
David Silcox. “We are proud to have set new records for prices achieved at auction for several of Canada’s most influential and beloved artists.”
Bush’s 1971 abstract canvas Glide earned a record $267,000, more than doubling its presale high estimate of $120,000.
Todd’s landscape of Montmorency Falls in Quebec set a record for the artist,
earning $439,500.
Other notable sales included:
David Milne’s Boston Corners Landscape, for $244,000.
William Ronald’s Back Thru Spring, for $100,250.
Harold Town’s Stretch #1, for $42,000.
One of the evening’s highlights, Mountain Sketch XCI, by Group of Seven
artist Lawren Harris, failed to sell. The mountainscape carried a pre-sale estimate
of up to $600,000, but did not find a buyer.
Quebec actress captures Cannes prize
SUZANNE CLÉMENT has been
awarded the Best Actress prize in
the Cannes Film Festival’s sidebar
competition, Un Certain Regard.
The Quebec actress claimed the
prize for her role in Xavier Dolan’s
cross-dressing drama Laurence
Anyways.
The film tracks the story of a man
trying to salvage his relationship
Clement & Dolan
with his fiancee after revealing to
her his aspirations of becoming a woman.
Clement is sharing the award with Emilie Dequenne for her performance in
Joachim Lafosse’s A Perdre la Raison.
The competition’s top prize went to After Lucia by Mexican director Michel
Franco.
Un Certain Regard focuses on new and emerging filmmakers.
The winners were chosen from a slate of 20 films by a jury headed by British
actor Tim Roth.
This year marks Dolan’s third time at Cannes.
His debut film, J’ai tué ma mere (I Killed My Mother) won three awards at
Cannes in 2009, while his second picture, Les amours imaginaries (Heartbeats),
was also critically acclaimed at the festival.
Nicholas Nickleby
The Old Curiosity Shop
Studio Canal
£15.99 each
AS homage to the Dickens bicentennial
comes two outstanding film versions of the
celebrated Victorian novelistʼs works.
The Ealing Studioʼs 1947 production of
Nicholas Nickleby stars Cedric Hardwick
in one of his best performances as the
eponymous Nicholas Nicklebyʼs rich, manipulative and malevolent Uncle Ralph who
exploits his late brotherʼs suddenly impoverished family by pawning them off to cruel
business associates to abuse. Thus
nephew Nicholas is dispatched to teach at a miserable
school in Yorkshire while his sister Kate is hired out to a
clothierʼs. Much suffering ensues, but will the secret of
Uncle Ralphʼs wealth finally be discovered? •••••
The Old Curiosity Shop is a rarely seen but wonderful
screen version from 1934 starring Hay Petrie in the most
memorable portrayal of the arch villain Quilp ever filmed.
In the style of a Hogarth painting coming to life, this is
the story of Little Nell and her grandfather who fall on
hard times and, after being forced from their home by
Quilp, embark on a series of picaresque adventures
behind which lurks the vindictive Quilp whose comeuppance is guaranteed. This is Dickens, after all. ••••
A great afternoon in, with loads of informative extras!
The Prisoner of Shark Island
Diplomatic Courier
Odeon Entertainment
£9.99 each
AS one of John Fordʼs early films, The
Prisoner of Shark Island (1937) is the
story of Dr Samuel Mudd (Warner Baxter),
a kind country doctor who unwittingly sets
the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth soon
after his assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
As a result, the hapless Mudd is soon
accused and then convicted as one of eight
conspirators in the American presidentʼs
death. Unlike the others, however, Mudd is
not hanged. Instead he is imprisoned on a shark surrounded island off the coast of Key West Florida where his gripping struggle for freedom unfolds. •••••
Diplomatic Courier is a stylishly noir Cold War thriller
from 1952 starring Tyrone Power as an American government courier dispatched to Salzburg to collect supersecret
spy information from an old Navy pal and fellow agent.
Along the way, he meets a beautiful American widow
(Patricia Neal) who pursues him romantically. But his attentions are soon diverted by an equally attractive Austrian
(Hildegarde Neff) who may be a double agent responsible
for his colleagueʼs death.
With plenty of twists that eventually take him to Trieste,
this highly entertaining tale, directed by Henry Hathaway,
will hold you breathless for a full 97 minutes. ••••