Astounding – at least in this clip:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8709592.stm.
I did not mean that heading in some jokey or generic way. And I hate travel books with titles like that. I meant specifically Mozart in specifically Kinshasa.
But I love it when Elgar is taken out of his “context” – to Ramallah, for example, where he belongs. When European music is taken out of Europe, or English music is taken into Europe. I watched a televised concert when staying in the Grand Hyatt in Hong Kong in 1989 where Chinese players in the PRC were performing Britten’s Frank Bridge Variations. This would not be surprising now, but it was then, and it was wonderful to hear these great European winds blowing through China for a moment.
I loved being with ultracool Japanese who were picking up Vaughan Williams’s sixth symphony, conducted by Adrian Boult, from a pile in a shop in Roppongi, no longer there, called WAVE, one Sunday morning in 1991.
But where there is a personal European initiative with opera houses? Alexander McCall Smith’s opera initiative in Botswana? If I had any interest in Smith, I might know more. Christoph Schlingensief’s opera initiative in Burkina Faso? I did not have to google that: I was recently reading about him. Is that more than an exploitative and egotistical fantasy? Isn’t this just a kind of high tourism for a German director?
June 13 2010 at 11:53 am
Perhaps that’s not fair to Schlingensief:
http://www.festspielhaus-afrika.com/weblog/?lang=en
June 13 2010 at 1:58 pm
What an astonishing series of capers are the Frank Bridge Variations. They were first performed at the Salzburg Festival in 1937 and announced the arrival of Britten to Europe. Writing this post made me download them. I recommend the version with the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra under Gordan Nikolić.
Britten and Elgar both arrived with variations, though Britten was as precocious as Elgar was a late developer. Perhaps they are a good form for inexperienced composers.
June 19 2010 at 1:15 pm
The Kimbanguist Symphony Orchestra will now be given the Susan Boyle treatment.
June 26 2010 at 7:03 am
Have you seen Fitzcarraldo, by Werner Herzog?
Klaus Kinski plays Fitzcarraldo, an Irishman obsessed with the idea of bringing an Italian opera house to the natives of the Peruvian jungle.
June 26 2010 at 2:23 pm
No, but thanks for mentioning. That film also refers to the Manaus opera house in Amazonia.