An Advanced Look at the new MET Parsifal

The Metropolitan Opera will premiere its new Parsifal next season.  It is a production conceived by François Girard that just had its premiere in March at the Opéra de Lyon.  Here is an advanced look at what the MET is getting next year. 

In addition, here is an unofficial film, shot during one of the dress rehearsals.  It shows that in this production Klingsor's Magic Castle in Act II is suffering from some major blood flooding.



And, as you can see, by the end of the act, the Flowermaidens get a blood soaking worthy of a Sam Peckinpah final reel.  From the publicity that I have seen, aside from the pool of sanguine fluid, this take on Richard Wagner's last opera also promises a shirtless Parsifal.  Since Jonas Kaufmann is scheduled to sing the title role here in New York, I am sure that that will get a large crowd to the house.  I really wonder how the New York audience will react to this latest Peter Gelb offering.

Juan Diego Flórez: Gelb's Encore Patsy at the MET

Ever since he broke the ban on encores at the Metropolitan Opera a few seasons ago in the new production of La Fille du Régiment, Juan Diego Flórez seems to be the only artist thus far to be allowed this privilege at the MET. My personal feeling is that he is being encouraged to do so. Peter Gelb, general manager of the MET, seems ready to relax this house rule in an effort to make opera more exciting and entertaining.

It all happened during the MET's Toll Brothers radio broadcast of Gaetano Donizetti's L'Elisir D'Amore. Which means that it was heard worldwide by millions. Flórez had just sung a ravishingly beautiful "Una furtiva lagrima" to thunderous well-deserved applause. Towards the end of the ovation, a loud, enthusiastic male voice from the balcony yelled out the word "encore." Juan Diego looked up at the house with a smile, and then he nodded approvingly at the pit. Conductor Donato Renzetti was more than ready to give the orchestra the downbeat. Juan Diego went on to sing the aria a second time, as flawlessly as the first, and even adding a number of vocal ornamentation that turned back the musical style clock on Nemorino and made Donizetti's 'romanza" feel more like a G.F. Handel Da Capo aria. Holy musical de-evolution, Batman!

Why is this being allowed to go on?

When the MET established its ban on encores decades ago, it did so in order to make opera a more realistic, more dramatic art form. Basically it curtailed the excesses typical of 19th century prima donnas and it invented the modern American opera singer. Allowing encores back at the house is a definite giant step backward into a bizarre theatrical world where artifice reigns and singers forget that they are also actors portraying realistic human sentiments.

What made last Saturday's stage shenanigans even worse was that after the second encore the audience went absolutely ape and were on the verge of demanding a -- God forbid! -- third go-round. For the first time since he stepped on the stage that day, Flórez seemed ill at ease. He looked into the wings, obviously exchanging looks with someone. Then unexpectedly he broke character, stepped up to the apron of the stage, and adressed the audience. "Ms. Damrau is waiting in the wings," he said referring to Diana Damrau, his co-star. When Ms. Damrau finally did enter from the place that Flórez had been looking, the audience couldn't help but laugh. The fourth wall had been broken. We all had to make an effort once again to get into the conventions of theater. Encores will do that to an audience.

Of course a few minutes later, during Nemorino and Adina's love duet, a cell phone in the house went off multiple times. But that's another story.

The 2012-2013 Metropolitan Opera Season

The Metropolitan Opera announced this week its 2012-2013 lineup. It features exciting new productions, a totally new work, and a a good crop of revivals. Sadly, nowhere in sight, is there a mention of James Levine's name. Fabio Luisi has taken over all of Mr. Levine's duties, although Mr. Levine continues to be the MET's official music director. This will be the first time since he joined the MET in 1971 that Mr. Levine will not be conducting anything at the house.

Once again, Peter Gelb, general manager of the MET, is presenting us with a batch of new productions that will challenge New York's essentially conservative view of opera. Michael Mayer's new Rigoletto places the action in 1960s Las Vegas. Not too surprising a turn if we remember that Mr. Mayer staged Broadway's Spring Awakening a few years ago. The season, however, will open with what promises to be a more crowd-pleasing offering: Bartlett Sher's new take on Gaetano Donizetti's L'Elisir D'Amore starring Anna Netrebko.

In celebration of Giuseppe Verdi's birth bicentennial the 2012-2013 season will be rich in Italian opera. There will be a new production of Un Ballo in Maschera by David Alden, and a new production of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda by David McVicar. the trilogy of Tudor-era works was foreseen by Peter Gelb as the perfect vehicle for Anna Netrebko to sing the three queens. However, Ms. Netrebko has vowed out of Maria Stuarda (and 2013-2014 Roberto Devereux) and Joyce DiDonato is scheduled to sing the title role in Maria Stuarda this year. Director McVicar is scheduled to direct all three works using different production teams. In addition, Mr. McVicar will bring his new modern dress production of Handel's Giulio Cesare, from Glyndebourne starring David Daniels and Natalie Dessay. The other Verdi operas to be presented include Aida, conducted by Fabio Luisi, Don Carlo, led by Lorin Maazel, La Traviata, with Plácido Domingo taking the baritone role of Germont, his second at the house after Simon Boccanegra, and the Verdi celebration will conclude with the MET's current production of Il Trovatore.

The other two new productions are The Tempest, a new work by composer Thomas Adès, in a new production by Robert Lepage (who brought us the current Ring production), and a much-awaited new production of Richard Wagner's Parsifal by François Girard. This production will have its premiere at the Opéra De Lyon in March. Here at the MET, the production will feature Jonas Kaufmann in the title role, and it will be conducted by Daniele Gatti, who has conducted the work for four consecutive summers at the Bayreuth Festival.

The MET will bring back some of its most spectacular production, namely Poulenc's unforgettable Dialogues of the Carmelites and Berlioz's mighty Les Troyens, two works that have not been heard at the house in quite some years. These, together with three rounds of Mr. Lepage's Ring of the Nibelung and a Christmas production of The Barber of Seville promises a very rich opera season. If you would like to browse the season further click here.

I'm Bayreuth Bound!

After being on the waiting list for about nine years, which of course felt more like nine centuries (there's an Italian bel canto line if I've ever heard one), I have been selected to buy tickets for the Bayreuth Festival this summer. I'll be at Bayreuth from August 6 -12, and will be attending performances of Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, and Parsifal.

A mixture of emotions is going through my head. The realization that I am going to the shrine, to the holy musical place revered by some, hated by others: a place that often elicits emotions as grand as the very works that are presented there. I'm going to the Mecca of Wagnerism, in a town in northern Bavaria that has been coming alive for a month, year after year, since 1876 with the music of just one man. Certainly the most cultured town in Upper Franconia, certainly the most cultured company town along the Roter Main.

I'm looking forward to this first visit, and what intrigues me the most is experiencing that Bayreuth sound and that Bayreuth acoustic everyone talks and writes about.

A few years after Richard Wagner's death Mark Twain visited Bayreuth. This is how he described his first time: the moment when the music first starts inside the famous auditorium:

"Finally, out of darkness and distance and mystery soft rich notes rose upon the stillness, and from his grave the dead magician began to weave his spells about his disciples and steep their souls in his enchantments. There was something strangely impressive in the fancy which kept intruding itself that the composer was conscious in his grave of what was going on here, and that these divine souls were the clothing of thoughts which were at this moment passing through his brain, and not recognized and familiar ones which had issued from it at some former time."

I can't wait!

Robert Lepage's Götterdämmerung at the MET

Robert Lepage's Metropolitan Opera Ring of the Nibelung has finally come to a conclusion with the unveiling of Götterdämmerung, the last music drama in Richard Wagner's mighty trilogy. Readers of this blog, and those who have been following the Peter Gelb years at the MET, are probably aware by now that the crux of this production revolves around a 45 ton 24 plank behemoth known simply as "the machine," a complex mechanical apparatus that twirls into different shapes and intricate formations, while hyper-realistic projections are shone on its planks, thus creating environments that oftentimes react to the singers' voices and movements. The machine is the perfect metaphor for the one major fault in the conception of this production: on the one hand the gizmo is a marvel of up-to-date technological stagecraft, and at the same time it is a clunky and noisy piece of 19th century machinery.

And like the machine, the production is of two minds: half conservative and wanting to please the MET Old Guard with the moneybags, and half radical and innovative, and hungry for younger audiences that will hopefully keep the MET afloat in the years to come. When Peter Gelb was guest of honor at the Metropolitan Opera Club a year before the unveiling of this production he was asked if the new Ring would take place in mythological times and he assured the club that it would. He did not tell a lie. Once the machine arranges itself into place, the scenes that it creates are quite traditional. The problem is not the machine's ability to create beautiful settings, it is the machine itself. And it is not just the critics that object to this dychotomy. MET audiences are not buying that the end justifies the means. On opening night of Götterdämmerung, Lapage and his creative team were once again booed, as they were last year when Das Rheingold's rainbow bridge failed to work. I'm not sure if the booing came from the Parterre or from the Family Circle, but one thing is clear: the outburst that followed Götterdämmerung seemed not to be directed just at the final opera, but at the whole conception of the tetralogy.

These days solid, across-the-board Wagnerian singing is hard to come by, and modern audiences seem to have accepted this. This Saturday afternoon the performance of Götterdämmerung featured some stellar singing from Waltraut Meyer in her sole scene as Waltraute, and from Hans-Peter König, whose dark, cavernous and nasty Hagen brought Golden Age singing back to the MET. Also fairly strong were Wendy Bryn Harmer as Gutrune, as well as Iain Paterson as her brother Gunther. Eric Owens, who scored a triumph as Alberich in Rheingold, was back reminding his son Hagen of their rightful ownership of the ring. Mr. Owens's voice sounded a bit tired this time around, and he resorted to a hint of the Bayreuth bark in his scene.

Deborah Voigt's recent vocal problems have no doubt been precipitated by too many journeys down the Rhine. Her choice to sing Brünnhilde was a brave one, and at the same time the logical role to take on at this point of her career. The results have been mixed. Her voice lacks luster, and is devoid of much warmth these days, and without these the role of Brünnhilde fails to be complete. Jay Hunter Morris, as Siegfried, got through the role, and actually improved as the afternoon went along. His heldentenor voice is strong and able to ride above the crowded pit, but the quality of his instrument is not too appealing, and ultimately he produced some sharp ugly sounds along the way.

The chorus, an absent commodity in the rest of the Ring, is a very vivid presence in Götterdämmerung, and it sang with incredible power and masterful diction. At times, I thought it sang too loudly, though, seemingly starting at fortissimo and increasing in volume from there. However, their sound managed to stay solid and impressive, making the vassals scene and the welcoming of Brünnhilde and Gunther the show stopper that it should be.

Fabio Luisi has taken over the Ring from the ailing James Levine. It is too early yet to make an objective decision as to his conducting. The orchestra still seems to be in Levine-mode, and Mr. Luisi seems to like that just fine. There were a few uneven entrances from the brass section, but overall, the orchestra handled this huge score with its usual expertise, producing some luscious, incredibly beautiful sounds. We might get a wonderful Italianate Ring a la Toscanini from him in the future, and I am sure that by the time the MET mounts its three Ring Cycles towards the end of the season, Mr. Luisi's interpretation will be in place.

The end of Götterdämmerung should wow an audience. This is when every production team and every opera house has a chance to pull out all the stops. Unfortunately, this production doesn't even come close. Though it is nice to see Grane, Brünnhilde's steed back in the Ring, this particular nag looked like a reject from the production of War Horse next door, and not the noble horse that once upon a time flew around with a Valkyrie on its back. Then the fire that consumes the world looked digitized, fake, and ultimately quite cold. The very last image of the production: an empty machine surrounded by thick clouds of fog was somewhat memorable -- but only because deep down I wanted the machine to just die and never rotate, twirl, or do any other production aerobics ever again.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

It soon becomes clear as you watch the new American adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that director David Fincher is the perfect person to direct Stieg Larsson's runaway international best seller. This story, involving a twisted serial killer with fragments of the Bible on his mind, is a terrain that Fincher has memorably explored in perhaps his best known film, Se7en. Further, as the title character, he has cast Rooney Mara, an actress that last year played the role of the girlfriend of computer hacker and creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. It is now Ms. Mara who assumes the role of über computer geek Lisbeth Salander, an unusual girl who assists journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) to piece together the events that connect a wealthy Swedish family to a series of unspeakable crimes.

But the similarities between Salander and Zukerberg's main squeeze end the moment we first see Ms. Mara on screen in this film. With her pale face covered with piercings, her jet black hair in a mohawk, (which she later lets hang down in a downtown version of Louise Brooks), and her lithe body covered in ink she is the very essence of 1970s punk rebellion, and the total antithesis of last year's perky Ivy League coed. In fact, Ms. Mara creates an iconic figure in this film. An unforgettable portrait of a no-nonsense drifter who can hack into computers as well as get decent results when she uses a tattoo gun for the first time. A rape victim, she now callously calls the shots in bed: she can pick up a luscious brunette at a lesbian club one night, as well as make all the right moves that get her in bed with Blomkvist. Tough as nails (or as the metal that pierce her alabaster skin), she is the very essence of femme fatale and hardboiled detective wrapped up in one cool biker chic. But Ms. Mara makes sure that we also see her other side. In one of the closing moments of the film we discover that she is as sentimental as they come, and that her heart is quite vulnerable.

Although very much a film that centers around Ms. Mara and Mr. Craig, there are also fine supporting performances from Christopher Plummer and Stellan Skarsgård as patriarchal members of a family with a dark past.

The script by Steven Zaillian is quite faithful to the English translation of this Swedish novel, whose original title Män som hatar kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women) takes the focus away from the Salander character and places the novel squarely in the realm of pulp noir where it belongs.

Hugo, Movie Magic via Martin Scorsese

When Martin Scorsese's point of departure for a film is personal, the result is always an outstanding movie. This is the case with Hugo, a family film with a feel-good warm glow that surely on the surface does not feel at all like a Scorsese picture, but one that harbors, at its core, a loving homage to the magic of film making, making it perhaps the most personal of all the films that he has directed in his brilliant career.

When young Marty was a kid growing up in New York's Little Italy, often his health did not allow him to play with the other neighborhood kids. He would observe the world from his Elizabeth street window, and fill notebooks with storyboards of imaginary films. As a child, he was already measuring reality through the frame of a window, similar to the way the camera eye composes a shot. When we first meet young Parisian orphan Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) his big sad blue eyes are staring at the world from inside the giant clock in the large railway station in which he lives. His "Hunchback of Notre Dame" existence consists of winding the big clock to ensure that he will not be sent to an orphanage by the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), as well as stealing gears from a toy seller with a past (Ben Kingsley) in order to make a mechanical automaton -- a legacy from his dead father (Jude Law) -- come to life. As young Hugo begins to work for the mysterious toy seller he learns that the old bitter man is a very special person, none other than Georges Méliès the great film pioneer magician who between 1896 and 1913 made more than 500 short films including the classic "A Trip to the Moon" but who fell into bankruptcy and obscurity after the Great War. Before long, young Hugo and his pal Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) are on a mission to deliver Méliès (Isabelle's godfather) back from obscurity.

This is Mr. Scorsese's first 3-D film, and it finds him in a playful mood with his new toy, echoing the world of cinema right and left. His trademark moving camera, traditionally always on the prowl, here achieves a sense of depth that Alfred Hitchcock was able to capture in his one and only 3-D film Dial M for Murder. As a matter of fact, there are many homages to the Master in this film. The way that Hugo spies on the regulars that gather at the railway station reminds us of Jimmy Stewart looking out of his Rear Window. Even Hugo's dwelling inside the clock, with dozens of moving gears and mechanical parts, reminds us of the inner workings of a motion picture projector. The stairs that lead up to it bring us back to the Master by giving us a sense of Vertigo.

But when the movie flashes back to the end of the 19th century, that's when the real cinematic magic begins. Scorsese's recreation of the heyday of Georges Méliès and his wondrous, hand-tinted, theatrical and fantastical films is an unforgettable, loving homage to the time when the movies began. Ben Kingsley gives a memorable performance as Méliès, forgotten and wounded in his old age, but as a young man sunny, full of enthusiasm, and wide-eyed at the possibilities that this new medium can offer.

In many ways I picture Martin Scorsese sharing this enthusiasm when making this film. A work so different from the rest of his other works, and yet so close to his own heart and imagination. It might just become the movie that he will be best remembered for.

J Edgar, Clint Eastwood's film with Leo DiCaprio

In a memorable scene from J Edgar, Clint Eastwood's new biopic of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's first director, the young J. Edgar Hoover, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is entertaining actress Ginger Rogers at the Stork Club and gets invited to dance with the Hollywood hoofer. Immediately Hoover declines, gets nervous, says that he does not know how to dance and perspiring he excuses himself from the premises taking along with him his assistant Clyde Tolson (played by Armie Hammer). Later that night at his home, which he shares with his mother, Mrs. Hoover (Judi Dench) wonders what people will think of her son if he refuses to dance with women and is constantly seen with his male assistant. She tells him that she'd rather have a dead son than a "daffodil." That night, J. Edgar Hoover gets his first dancing lessons, with his mom leading.

In 1995, three years before the titanic turn that turned him into "Leo," DiCaprio showed that he could portray sexually ambivalent characters convincingly. In Total Eclipse, he played the young French poet Arthur Rimbaud, a performance soaked in absinthe and featuring a torrid and graphic lust affair with older poet Paul Verlaine (David Thewlis). It was the first and last time that we would see DiCaprio having sex with a man on screen. After Titanic the very thought of it seemed ludicrous. Now, In J. Edgar, DiCaprio once again plays a character awash with feelings for a man, but whereas his Rimbaud was a sexual animal on the prowl, the extent to which his Hoover shows affection does not go beyond a momentary touch of Clyde Tolson's hand. As played by Mr. Hammer, Tolson is just as sexually inept as his boss, and this leads to quite a memorable scene in a hotel room.

Aside from spying upon J. Edgar Hoover's sexual peccadilloes, the film largely focuses on delineating the beginnings and growth of the FBI, while portraying Hoover as a monster who seeks the limelight at any cost and who keeps secret files on everyone. Clint Eastwood relishes the chance to do early 20th century period once again as in his Changeling back in 2008. The color palette provided by cinematographer Tom Stern (who also shot Changeling) captures well the 1930s as well as the 1970s, the two decades which the movie explores.

Any film that covers half a century for its character is going to need old age makeup, and as usual, this is where today's films always falter. The glory days of Citizen Kane, where with simple theatrical makeup Orson Welles was able to transform himself into an old man, have disappeared. The credits to this film lists twenty makeup artists, and the results are mediocre. The film features liberal use of prosthetics in well-lit scenes: never a good combination. For example, one daylight exterior scene at the racetrack reduces Armie Hammer's face to that of an immobile waxen dummy. Somehow, DiCaprio pushes his performance through the latex and in the struggle with makeup he manages to survive. Naomi Watts, who plays Helen Gandi, Hoover's longtime secretary, ends up looking creepy.

If you can get through the makeup I am sure that you will enjoy J. Edgar. It is the kind of well-made, well-paced film that Hollywood tends to favor around Oscar time. Already, the buzz is on for DiCaprio. This is the closest he has come in his career to making us forget that he is Leo and making us believe that he is the character. Maybe it's the make-up, after all, adding gravitas to his performance. Perhaps this year the Academy will honor his efforts.

Richard Peña to Step Down from the NY Film Festival

I received the following press release this evening from the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced this evening that FSLC’s longtime Program Director and Head of the NYFF Selection Committee, Richard Peña, will step down from those posts at the conclusion of next year’s 50^th New York Film Festival, and his 25^th year with the Film Society. At that time, Peña will continue his involvement and has agreed to stay on to help design and organize a new educational initiative at the Film Society.

Dan Stern, President of FSLC’s Board of Directors made the announcement prior to the Closing Night Gala screening of THE DESCENDANTS, saying, “For the past 24 years Richard Peña has served as the Chairman of the Selection Committee for the Festival as well as the Program Director of the Film Society. Richard has informed the Board that at the end of 2012—after the Festival’s 50^th anniversary, and his 25^th at its helm—he will step down from both posts. Richard has been with the Film Society through the opening of the Walter Reade Theater as well as the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and we are pleased that he has accepted our invitation to stay on to help create a new educational initiative at the Film Society.”

Regarding the timing of the move, Peña said, “Heading into the fiftieth anniversary of the Festival, it seems a perfect time for a transition, both for me personally and for the organization. Working at the Film Society has been beyond a "dream come true," but in the years left me I would like to possibly explore other areas of interest, both within and beyond the cinema. I also feel that, like at any other cultural institution, change can be important, as it will bring in fresh ideas and approaches to lead the Film Society into its next fifty years.”

FSLC’s Executive Director, Rose Kuo said,“Richard Pena has been a shining light for more than two decades at the Film Society, guiding us in the discovery of artists like Pedro Almodóvar, Mike Leigh, Lars Von Trier, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Hong Sang Soo and many more. It has been an honor and a privilege to work with Richard and I am delighted that he will continue with us as he transitions to a new period in his career and life.”

Peña has been the Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Director of the New York Film Festival since 1988. At the Film Society, he has organized retrospectives of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sacha Guitry, Abbas Kiarostami, Robert Aldrich, Roberto Gavaldon, Ritwik Ghatak, Kira Muratova, Youssef Chahine, Yasujiro Ozu, Carlos Saura and Amitabh Bachchan, as well as major film series devoted to African, Israeli, Cuban, Polish, Hungarian, Arab, Korean, Swedish, Taiwanese and Argentine cinema. In addition, he is a Professor of Film Studies at Columbia University, where he specializes in film theory and international cinema, and from 2006-2009 was a Visiting Professor in Spanish at Princeton University. He is also currently the co-host of WNET/Channel 13’s weekly Reel 13.

The 10 Best at this Year's NY Film Festival

I did not see all of the films that played at the 49th New York Film Festival, but I saw enough of them to be able to put together a top ten list. Here are the best films from this year's festival.

1. The Skin I Live In. Grand guignol horror and stylish melodrama from Pedro Almodóvar, with an outstanding debut by newcomer Elena Anaya and an amazing comeback performance by Antonio Banderas.

2. Shame. Director Steve McQueen's analysis of a 30 something's addiction to sex, with an unforgettably explosive performance by Michael Fassbender that goes from sexy beast to heartbreaking. In only his second film, McQueen has managed to capture the inner soul of sex.

3. Carnage. Roman Polanski's claustrophobic examination of four contemporary educated adults and how their seething anger rises to the surface when confronted with the problems caused by two of their children. Delicious performance by the quartet of stars: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, and an amazing John C. Reilly.

4. Ben-Hur. An incredibly beautiful and pristine restoration of William Wyler's 1959 classic. The film has never looked so good, and the grander than life emotions of the story play beautifully on the big screen.

5. A Dangerous Method. The volatile relationship of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung via director David Cronenberg, who has left behind the world of horror in this film and decided to explore a truly scary terrain: the landscape of the mind. A memorable performance by Keira Knightly.

6. A Separation. The breakup of a married couple and the repercussions it has on the people surrounding their orbit. An acting and directorial gem from director Asghar Farhadi, and one of the best films to emerge from Iran in years. Despite our many cultural differences, the film shows the universality of a marriage on the rocks.

7. My Week With Marilyn. A sunny tale of showbiz legends Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier, via director Simon Curtis. Fluffy entertainment featuring great performances from Eddie Redmayne, Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh.

8. Melancholia. An examination of the mental breakdown of a recent bride as the world is threaten by total annihilation. An enigmatic story from Lars von Trier with tour-de-force cinematography, memorable Richard Wagner music, and a knockout performance by Kirsten Dunst.

9. Tahrir: Liberation Square. A cinéma vérité documentary about the recent revolution in Egypt. Stefano Savona's work puts you right in the middle of the action, his camera uncannily acts as a magnet that draws forth the events right to you, and you right to the middle of history.

10. The Artist. A loving Valentine to classic Hollywood movies. French director Michel Hazanavicius's silent film is a lot of fun to watch and an audience crowd-pleaser. It features many fine performances by a French and American cast, and one canine actor that almost steals the whole show.

Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In at the NY Film Festival

When Mikhail Bakhtin writes about the polymorphously perverse and carnavalesque nature of the novel, the great Russian literary theorist could have been referring to The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito), Pedro Almodóvar's latest, and most fascinating film. Also his most disturbing. Here we find the director in top form, juggling Felliniesque imagery, Hitchcockian suspense and throwing in a good dose of the grotesque via Tod Browning, as well as a good amount of Douglas Sirk melodrama. He tops it all off with lots of film noir darkness and Spanish baroque pessimism together with fetishism worthy of Luis Buñuel. The result under lesser hands would be a stylistic mush, but Almodóvar has been at it for a long time, and he knows how to toss all the ingredients of his cinematic paella into one kaleidoscopic ride that is certain to entertain and surprise you, as well as creep you out.

It's hard to discuss this movie without giving away its juicy secrets. Let's just say that it is always chilling to watch any story where a doctor disregards his Hippocratic oath. It is a premise that takes us straight into the horror genre and the world of mad scientists breaking the laws of nature. In this film, Antonio Banderas, back working with Almodóvar after a hiatus of twenty some odd years, plays Doctor Robert Ledgard, a brilliant but obsessed scientist who early in the film, in the middle of an academic presentation, announces to the medical community that he has invented a type of synthetic skin more resilient to damage. His invention could very well revolutionize plastic surgery. What his colleagues don't know is that this seemingly altruistic doctor is obsessed with a mysterious woman whom he has locked up in his house (The beautifully radiant Elena Anaya), and whose perfect skin is a result of the experiments that he has performed on her. There is more here than meets the eye, and as The Skin I Live In starts shedding its layers the film goes deep beyond the outer epidermis. Almodóvar manages to pull off this feat with the mastery of a skilled surgeon digging his scalpel as far in as it can go.

Lately, Almodóvar's scripts have examined how events in the past color our present existence. With this film, the director weaves a Freudian tale (based on a French novel by Thierry Jonquet) that descends into the darkest side of sex. We flashback in the story in order to reveal past events that are key to understanding the narrative. In this respect, this film owes much to Hitchcock's Vertigo. Even Alberto Iglesias's startling music reminds us very much of Bernard Herrmann's memorable score to that film. Throughout his career, but especially in his last few films, Almodóvar, like Hitchcock, has examined and re-examined the psychological aspects of sexuality, and this film might just be the pinnacle of that deep obsession. His films have always been obsessed with flesh, and now this one takes this subject to a new level.

Stylistically, Almodóvar has never been afraid of showing his characters running the gamut of emotions. In an Almodóvar film one can expect raw nerves and usually one gets a fair share of them. At times, though, this style does not translate well outside of the Spanish-speaking world and oftentimes Almodóvar is accused of allowing his actors to overact, and his stories to go out of control in a passionate avalanche of excess. Spanish language and culture can, indeed, be more baroque and likely to relish in excess than American audiences are accustomed to. As a result Almodóvar and kitsch are words that often and sometimes unfairly go together in the minds of many film goers. Without a doubt, The Skin I Live In is the most over-the-top that Almodóvar has been in a long time, but somehow, the director makes it work because he believes in the logic of this crazy world that he has created.

The Skin I Live In will haunt you for a long time after you've seen it. It is a totally satisfying well-made film, if at times too frank, too gruesome, and too self-absorbed in its own world. It is a chance to witness a modern master of the cinema at work in the territory that he knows best.

My Week with Marilyn at the NY Film Festival

The Weinstein Company is back with another mid 20th century story set in England about a British royal and a commoner to rival last year's The King's Speech. The new film My Week with Marilyn tells the story of Sir Laurence Olivier, the greatest British actor of the first half of the twentieth century, and Marilyn Monroe, the most sought after actress-sex symbol of the time, and how their paths met when the classically trained, soon to be Lord Olivier invited the Stanislavsky Method American actress to come to England to be his co-star on the film The Prince and the Showgirl. The battle of wits between them, which led to one of the stormiest shoots in the history of the cinema, is told through the eyes of young, wide-eyed innocent Colin Clark who starts as third assistant director on the set, and ends up becoming Monroe's true friend and confidant.

If all of this sounds a bit familiar, it's because it's more or less the same territory covered in the 1982 hit comedy My Favorite Year. The locale has changed from the Sid Caesar show in New York City to Pinewood Studios in England, but the premise feels essentially the same. In My Favorite Year young intern Mark Linn-Baker is hired to make sure that his movie idol, the alcoholic devil-may-care Peter O'Toole, stays out of trouble for a week and shows up for a live TV broadcast. In My Week with Marilyn, Eddie Redmayne's Colin Clark, an underling who works for Olivier (Kenneth Branagh), ends up becoming the only person on the set who can reach out to pill-addicted Marilyn (Michelle Williams) and ends up becoming her one true friend.

Despite the fact that we've all seen this before, the casting is quite inspired making the movie a sheer pleasure to watch. Gathered here are the very best American and British actors, sometimes in tiny blink-and-you-miss them roles. There's the remarkable Dame Judi Dench playing Dame Sybil Thorndyke, as well as Simon Russell Beale, Toby Jones, Emma Watson, and Derek Jacobi in relatively miniscule roles. Zoë Wannamaker as Marilyn's acting coach/guru Paula Strasberg, and Dominic Cooper as Marilyn's photographer/Svengali Milton Greene have more screen time and are quite memorable in their roles.

But the film is all about Eddie Redmayne's Colin Clark in the middle of the Olivier/Monroe storm. Mr. Redmayne, who was wonderful in London and New York in the play Red playing Mark Rothko's assistant (and incidentally winning the Olivier Award for his performance), is totally believable as the ingenue who in a week matures into a man. His fresh, freckled face and full lips contrasts well with Mr. Branagh's airbrushed thin lipped near-caricature of Olivier. Branagh plays the great actor/director as a lion in winter who mistakenly thought that hiring Monroe would make him feel young again. Soon he realizes that her natural qualities sharply accentuate how much he is aging and how dated his technique can seem. This Olivier detests method acting but longs to be relevant to a young audience. Ms. Williams gives a memorable performance as the troubled and needy Marilyn Monroe. Beautifully photographed in vibrant 1950s style by Ben Smithard, she plays her as a child who might have grown up way too soon without having had a childhood at all. Now, caught up in the whirlwind of fame, photographers, fans, and the pills that her entourage keeps feeding her, she longs for somebody real, and that's where Mr. Redmayne's Colin comes in. The scenes where they both leave the set and visit the English countryside have an idyllic, warm quality. Forget about Marilyn the sex symbol, this is the Marilyn anyone would have loved to have hung around with -- vivacious, fun, naughty, but always with a complex center that was hard to reach.

Despite all the backstage and personal drama, director Simon Curtis manages to keep things sunny throughout. We are even reminded at the end of the film that following the Sturm und Drang of the Prince and the Showgirl, Olivier went on to score one of his biggest successes playing Archie Rice in John Osborne's angry young man play The Entertainer, and Marilyn went on to do Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot, one of the most beloved comedies of all time. Sir Larry got to be relevant with the young crowd, and Marilyn went back home to prove to everyone that she was a great actress. One leaves a showing of My Week with Marilyn with the feeling that everything is right with the world.

As The King's Speech proved last year, this is the kind of film that Hollywood adores. American audiences love British drama, and in this one you have one of the best loved American icons in the center of it all. I expect that My Week with Marilyn will do very well at the box office, and especially well come Oscar time.

Melancholia by Lars von Trier at the NY Film Festival

Little remains of DOGME95 in the current films issuing from the mind of Danish film director Lars von Trier. In his latest, Melancholia, a trace of the Danish manifesto manages to surface in the quirky hand held camera ever-present in the majority of the film, and in the jagged jump cut editing style that, in reality, owes more to the French New Wave than to the ten commandments of the rigid film manifesto with which Mr. von Trier came to prominence. The most impressive sequences in the film break every rule of the manifesto of von Trier's youth by presenting us with a series of visually stunning, slow-motion scenes of a bride on the brink of a deep depression as a rogue planet heads towards a collision course with Earth. We are a long way from Dogma here. There's even lots of computer generated images and the name of the director is emblazoned above the film's title.

This inevitable interplanetary crash can now be seen as a metaphor for Mr. von Trier's recent escapades. At this year's Cannes Film Festival, Melancholia took center stage as a result of Mr. Von Trier's wrecking ball behavior and his comments about Nazism. At the screening of the film this week at the New York Film Festival, the absent von Trier sent an e-mail to the Film Society of Lincoln Center stating that in the future he will no longer be giving any press conferences. If he keeps his promise, this is a good decision. Many times he fails to recognize that his films speak for themselves, and that no show-biz shenanigans are needed to supplement what to this moment has been a uniquely successful career. Artistically and stylistically he is one of the great talents in world cinema, and many feel that with Melancholia he might have reached the zenith of his career.

Melancholia begins with an amazing tour-de-force prologue featuring scenes reminiscent of Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad to Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey. While the soundtrack plays Richard Wagner's prelude to Tristan und Isolde we see images of irrepressible beauty, and surreal splendor that introduce us to Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst, who gets married while in the throes of a deep depression as we see a planet called Melancholia approaching and ultimately colliding with planet Earth. In essence, the prelude offers us a complete film in the same way that Wagner's prelude is a musical encapsulation of his entire opera, or how the "News on the March" documentary that begins Orson Welles's Citizen Kane offers a miniature version of the story that will follow. But it takes Richard Wagner many hours to resolve the harmonic conflict that he sets up with the famous "Tristan chord" in the third measure of his score. It is not until many hours later that his music resolves itself into a crescendo of tonality, very much the process of Mr. von Trier's film which ends with an apocalyptic crescendo reminding us of Wagner's other work, the end of the world opus, Götterdämmerung.

The nucleus of Melancholia is structured in two acts. The first, labeled "Justine," is devoted to a disastrous wedding reception, the length of which makes the interminable wedding scenes of The Deer Hunter appear the length of a freeze frame, but which feature incredible performances by the likes of John Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, and Charlotte Rampling, who play the most salient characters of Justine highly dysfunctional family. The second half, called "Claire," named after Justine's sister played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, develops the mental landscape of several of the main characters while focusing on Justine's descent into the kind of madness where we realize that the impending interplanetary cataclysm might just all be in her mind.

Melancholia is a long and tedious film filled with sumptuous imagery that harbors an empty nihilistic core at its center. And although most of the performances are memorable (especially Ms. Dunst and Ms. Gainsbourg) we fail to connect with very few of its characters at any level.

Ultimately, I recommend the film because of its deliriously beautiful imagery coupled with a very impressive use of music. In addition, Lars von Trier is a serious artist, and any new work of his ought to be experienced. Here is an artist who has never sold out to popular tastes or become commonplace. You may not understand all of Melancholia (I don't think anyone, including von Trier does) but it will make you think beyond the proverbial box where Hollywood persists on trapping us.

Roman Polanski's CARNAGE at the NY Film Festival

God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza's international smash hit play has been brought to the screen by director Roman Polanski, featuring an all-star cast headed by Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, and John C. Reilly. It has been selected as the opening night selection for this year's New York Film Festival, and it will be shown this Friday.

In it's move to the screen the title has been shortened to Carnage, but the punch of the original stage work has not diminished, and much of the original dialogue remains intact. The story is a deceivingly simple one. Two couples meet in order to hash out the reasons why the child of one couple attacked the child of the other. This meeting, which starts with all the cordiality and good manners of a house warming visit soon turns into an ugly battleground where resentfulness and pent up anger lead to an afternoon of drunkenness and revelations that leaves all the participants with their nerves exposed and raw. It's the "Walpurgisnacht" of Mike Nichol's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, coupled with a dose of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and a dash of Luis Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel. The result is the kind of exhilarating filmmaking that allows great acting to shine.

Carnage retains it's theatrical setting, never departing from that apartment set except for a prologue that shows us the public park incident between the two 11 year-olds that sparks the conflict, and an epilogue that should set out minds thinking about the events we have witnessed.

Unable to come legally to the United States, Roman Polanski shot the film in Paris, although the Brooklyn setting of the story is maintained. As the two couples, Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly play Penelope and Michael, and Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz play Nancy and Alan. All the performances are first rate, and the script allows each actor more than one moment to shine in the spotlight. Ms. Foster, as the righteous, art-loving Penelope gives a performance of theatrical dimensions, at times verging on over the top histrionics. Kate Winslet, her American accent perfect as always, goes from sophisticated elegance to bitter drunkenness with convincing results. Christoph Waltz, playing her lawyer husband, a man more in tune with his Blackberry than with his own wife or son, has an air of detached ennui that fits the character perfectly. But perhaps the most satisfying of the quartet is Mr. Reilly, who slips into his role so effortlessly and convincingly that the performance is totally worthy of a well-deserved Academy Award.

Mr. Polanski is no stranger to filming in enclosed spaces. Repulsion (1965) showed us what he can do inside of a claustrophobic London flat as a schizophrenic Catherine Deneuve descends into madness. Two years later Rosemary's Baby (1968) explores how a dream Manhattan apartment can turn into a prison -- complete with next door witches and warlocks -- for Mia Farrow. Likewise, in this film, the Brooklyn apartment where all the action takes place, is not big enough to contain the emotions that erupt within it.

Once again, Roman Polanski gives us a film filled with ironies and unanswered questions, and in the process, puts us in the middle of a ride that will take us a long time to forget. At the heart of his latest work are four performances that will remain with us long after the last frame flickers on the screen.

NY Film Festival: Tahrir: Liberation Square

At the press screening of Tahrir: Liberation Square the new documentary that chronicles the Egyptian revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak's regime, NY Film Festival's program director Richard Peña assured director Stefano Savona, via a Skype press conference, (see picture above) that his film was chosen over some of the other Tahrir Square films that were submitted to the festival due in large part to the uncanny film's ability to put the audience right in the middle of the events that happened there beginning on January of this year. Peña went on to declare that all the other films he saw about the event tried to explain the popular uprising. Savona's film, on the other hand, with it's cinema vérité style, marches right into the heart of the action and succeeds in capturing the days and nights of the struggle for freedom, and putting you right in the center of it all.

I couldn't agree more: it's not so much that Savona's camera invades the space, the feeling one gets is that the revolution somehow manages to come to him. His camera is both a curious observer and an active participant. But it is not a foreign hungry lens capturing earth shattering events of a foreign nation, but rather a homegrown magnet where the various episodes just seem to naturally gravitate towards him in wave after wave of memorable images that become indelible in our minds.

The documentary has neither narration nor music. Only the natural sounds of people speaking, arguing, and dreaming of a new day in Egypt. The staccato rhythms of the people chanting political slogans reveal a soundtrack more powerful than any music background could provide. It is guerrilla filmmaking at it's best. Just a lone wolf armed with a Cannon digital camera, while the rocks fly around him and us, and the unforgettable images of the walking wounded and the dead remind us that these events cost many lives during those tumultuous days back at the start of the year.

An unforgettable scene features an older man passionately talking straight into Savona's camera explaining that this revolution was started by young people, and that even though he is in his sixties he wants everyone to know that he feels like a young man who is ready to die for his country. Savona at times allows his images to go momentarily out of focus, thus giving the documentary a news report immediacy that creates the illusion of putting us right inside the front ranks of the revolutionaries. At the same time, we also know that this is a carefully crafted film, its 91 minutes having being boiled down from more than thirty hours of raw footage.

Egypt is currently a work in progress, and Savona's documentary feels unfinished in a good way. He didn't start filming at the beginning of the revolution simply because he was not in the country to capture the opening salvos. His "in medias res" results reminds us that the politics of Egypt currently are in a state of transition. This he captures beautifully in the last shots of the film where a woman rants and raves to a crowd of onlookers yelling at them that once the revolutionaries leave Tahrir Square the old regime could come back. It is a chilling reminder of the uncertainty of the political tides after a revolution, and it addresses the current problems that the country is going through today.

If you want to know the details of the Tahrir Square Revolution and its aftermath keep following the world's newspapers or buy any of the books that have recently been appearing about the events. If you want to be there, watch Stefano Savona's unforgettable documentary.

The Main Slate for the NY Film Festival is Set

The Main Slate for the 49th New York Film Festival is set. Twenty-seven films are in the main section of the festival, including Roman Polanski's Carnage, Simon Curtis' My Week With Marilyn, David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method and Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In. The festival will close with Alexander Payne's The Descendants, starring George Clooney.

Here are the rest of the films of the 49th New York Film Festival:

4:44: Last Day On Earth, directed by Abel Ferrara (USA)
A Separation, directed by Asghar Farhadi (Iran)
Corpo Celeste, directed by Alice Rohrwacher (Italy/Switzerland/France)
Footnote, directed by Joseph Cedar (Israel)
George Harrison: Living In The Material World, directed by Martin Scorsese (USA)
Goodbye First Love, directed by Mia Hansen-Løve (France/Germany)
Le Havre, directed by Aki Kaurismäki (Finland/France/Germany)
Martha Marcy May Marlene, directed by Sean Durkin (USA)
Melancholia, directed by Lars von Trier (Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany/Italy)
Miss Bala, directed by Gerardo Naranjo (Mexico)
Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey)
Pina, directed by Wim Wenders (Germany/France/UK)
Play, directed by Ruben Östlund (Sweden/France/Denmark)
Policeman, directed by Nadav Lapid (Israel/France)
Shame, directed by Steve McQueen (UK)
Sleeping Sickness, directed by Ulrich Köhler (Germany/France/Netherlands)
The Artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius (France)
The Loneliest Planet, directed by Julia Loktev (USA/Germany)
The Kid With A Bike, directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Belgium/France)
The Student, directed by Santiago Mitre (Argentina)
The Turin Horse, directed by Béla Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky (Hungary/France/Germany/Switzerland/USA)
This Is Not A Film, directed by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (Iran)

This year's festival promises to be an exciting one with the return of Abel Ferrara, Steve McQueen, Aki Kaurismäki, Martin Scorsese, and Wim Wenders. It has been a long while since Mr. Wenders has been represented at the festival, and any new film he makes is always eagerly awaited. Lars von Trier's Melancholia will certainly be one of the hot tickets in lieu of the fact that the director scandalized the Cannes Film Festival this year by confessing to the press that he was a Nazi. If he makes an appearance here to present his film, both the Q&A and the audience's reception promises to be very interesting.

Roman Polanski Film to Open New York Film Festival

I just received the following Press Release from the New York Film Festival:

New York, NY, July 29, 2011 - The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that Roman Polanski’s CARNAGE will make its North American Premiere as the Opening Night film for the upcoming 49th New York Film Festival (September 30 – October 16).

"From KNIFE IN THE WATER (which screened at the first edition of NYFF in 1963) to REPULSION to THE TENANT, Roman Polanski has shown himself to be an absolute master at making the most restricted spaces come to dramatic life. In CARNAGE, aided by four remarkable performances, he has reached a new pinnacle in his already extraordinary career," says Richard Peña, Selection Committee Chair & Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Based on Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage”, the 2009 Tony Award-winner for Best Play, CARNAGE follows the events of an evening when two Brooklyn couples are brought together after their children are involved in a playground fight. Produced by Said Ben Said, the Sony Pictures Classics release stars Academy Award winners Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz and Academy Award nominee John C. Reilly.

Biogas at Bayreuth: The new Tannhäuser production

A pregnant Venus, a Wartburg transformed into a biogas plant breaking down organic matter, a Venusberg filled with caged subhumans right out of the original Planet of the Apes, and Wolfram von Eschenbach singing the well-known "Song to the Evening Star" while taking a dump sitting on a toilet. What does this have to do with Richard Wagner's romantic opera Tannhäuser? Nothing! As expected, the audience shook the very foundations of the Festspielhaus with their booing after the performance. The verdict? This new production by Sebastian Baumgarten scored another Bayreuth opening night triumph!

When Festspielchief Katharina Wagner staged her revisionist, controversial production of Die Meistersinger in 2007 she opened the Regietheater floodgates at the Green Hill, assuring the world, as she inherited the helm of the festival from her father Wolfgang Wagner, that Bayreuth would remain a place of outrageous experimentation in the staging of her great-grandfather's works. Four years earlier avant-garde artist Christoph Schlingensief had already set down the template for what was to come with his notorious production of Parsifal that set the action in Africa and featured film footage of a decomposing rabbit. When Katharina's turn came up to stage Meistersinger critics and puzzled audiences questioned what a shower of sneakers and masturbating statues of famous Germans had to do with Wagner's only comedy. But the die was already cast. It became clear that the principal aim of these productions was to provoke. As music critic Alex Ross wrote in his insightful review of the Schlingensief Parsifal "The trouble with this sort of provocation is that if you criticize it ... you end up playing a role that the instigator has written for you." In other words, they want you to hate it, they want you to boo, and if you do, then they have a triumph on their hands.

This opening night saw Thomas Hengelbrock conduct the Dresden version of Tannhäuser with a professional swift hand. The orchestra and especially the chorus received the biggest hand of the evening, and they deserved it. The chorus was particularly focused, achieving a smooth, pure sound that suddenly reminded everyone that the Bayreuth sound is quite special when things are done correctly. Unfortunately, Lars Cleveman, in the title role received only a lukewarm reception from the audience, and Stephanie Friede, as Venus, was booed. Camilla Nylund as Elisabeth sang with an assured tone. Both Günther Groissböck (Landgraf Herrmann) and Michael Nagy (Wolfram von Eschenbach) received the biggest applause of the evening. Needless to say, Sebastian Baumgarten and the rest of the production team were booed very loudly.

Hopefully, this production will remain at the Festspielhaus for only a few years. No doubt it will be replaced, in the near future, with another more indignant exercise in provocation. This is what Bayreuth is all about these days.

First video of Sebastian Baumgarten's Tannhäuser

Here is a news report, in German, about Sebastian Baumgarten's new controversial production of Tannhäuser, with actual video clips from the production. The report also includes short comments by Camilla Nylund who plays Elisabeth, as well as scenic designer Joep van Lieshout, and Baumgarten himself. This short video report gives you a hint of the production that premiered today at the Festspielhaus.

Israeli Musicians to play at the Bayreuth Festival

The following article appears through the courtesy of AFP News Agency:

Germany's 100th Richard Wagner opera festival kicked off here Monday in an edition that will include a taboo-busting performance by an Israeli orchestra.

The annual tribute to the works of the 19th-century composer, a fervent anti-Semite who later inspired Nazi leaders, will include for the first time a concert by musicians from Israel, which maintains an unwritten Wagner ban.

On Monday afternoon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet led a parade of political and business elites mounting Bayreuth's famed Green Hill to the concert hall built in 1876.

Audiences were keenly awaiting the opening performance of Tannhäuser, a romantic opera considered the seminal work of Wagner's younger years, but the Israel Chamber Orchestra's concert Tuesday was the hottest ticket in town.

The musicians are scheduled to perform Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll" during a concert otherwise dominated by works by Jewish composers including Gustav Mahler and Felix Mendelssohn.

Performances of Wagner's work are almost unheard of in Israel.

When Israeli-Argentine conductor Daniel Barenboim led the Berlin Staatskapelle in a performance of an excerpt from Tristan und Isolde in Jerusalem in 2001, dozens of audience members stormed out.

Israel Chamber Orchestra first clarinettist, 27-year-old Dan Erdmann, said he had attended that concert with his father.

"He (Barenboim) indicated to those who wanted to leave to do so but at the same time, the orchestra was ready to play for those who chose to stay," he told AFP.

"Thirty or forty people left, some of them shouting and cursing and slamming the doors. The rest stayed and gave a standing ovation at the end."

Ten years on, the Israeli concert is not part of the official Bayreuth Festival program but it has nonetheless set some tempers flaring.

"The decision of the Israel Chamber Orchestra sadly represents an act of moral failure and a disgraceful abandonment of solidarity with those who suffered unspeakable horrors by the purveyors of Wagner's banner," said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.

"Nobody suggests that Wagner's music not be played. But the public Jewish refusal to do so was a powerful message of indignation to the world that exposed Wagner's odious anti-Semitic ideas and those who championed them."

The city of Bayreuth and the Wagner family, which notoriously courted Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, are meanwhile trying to break with the past.

Bayreuth plans to start a Jewish cultural centre while Katharina Wagner, the 32-year-old great-granddaughter of the composer and co-director of the festival, has pledged to open the family archives revealing the extent of her ancestors' entanglement with the Nazis.

Felix Gothart, a leader of the Bayreuth Jewish community, which now has about 500 members, twice the number in 1933 when Hitler came to power, was also critical of the decision to invite the Israeli musicians to play this year.

"As soon as a single person was offended by the fact that Wagner is being played by Jews in Germany it would have been better to keep a lower profile," he told AFP.

However the president of Israel's fledgling Wagner society said he was delighted that an Israeli orchestra would be performing in Bayreuth, saying it could represent a new beginning.

"I hope that the concert will mark a new step towards the lifting of the taboo in Israel against Wagner, one of the principal composers of the 19th century, and that he will soon by performed freely in our country," Jonathan Livni said.
The Bayreuth Festival runs to August 28.