SHARING WITH ME

A few days have gone by and yet I have been very busy. Once again a few filmed operas. One of great interest for me was CANDIDE (Leonard Bernstein) - After «Westside Story» Bernstein had always wanted to write a serious opera. «Candide» (but hardly a serious opera) was presented without much success on Broadway in 1956. Bernstein died in 1990. A stage production was produced in France in 2006 with an overwhelming success. Why I didn’t see it I don’t know. Lambert Wilson played the role of Dr. Pangloss/Voltaire. I am sure if high school adolescents had seen that, they would have found their literary preparation of Candide for the Baccalaureate very much easier. A reasonably modern day production which sticks closely to the original and so called philosophical adventure of Candide. However, highly controversial and many scenes, political, may not have appealed to an American audience. Lambert Wilson is remarkable. I have only seen him in films but he sings well and of course this chang

Going through the Bozar Expo magazine at the end of last year I discovered that a painter I knew nothing about - was to have a retrospective of his work in Brussels. What I think attracted me most to this exhibition was that it was called The «Forbidden Paintings» of Kurt Schwitters. This is a period in Germany when the artist’s work did not «correspond to history» . Expressionism. I talked about in an earlier chapter. A period which I am passionate about. Energy, coulour, space, movement and works which are so unpredictable for so many artists we know. «Is that really Nolde?» «No, it couldn’t be a Kandinsky?»I was never wildly attracted to Schwitters collages but knew little about his painting. This was going to be a «double» discovery. Kirkeby had fallen in love with Schwitter’s landscapes and could identify with his liberated style of painting. Would I? Kirkeby, Danish, born in 1938, has always explored the relationships between nature and abstraction, landscape and architecture