Art

Claude Monet exhibits Impression, Sunrise (1874)

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In 1872, Claude Mon­et vis­it­ed his home­town of Le Havre in the north west of France and pro­ceed­ed to paint six can­vas­es depict­ing the port “dur­ing dawn, day, dusk, and dark and from vary­ing view­points, some from the water itself and oth­ers from a hotel room look­ing down over the port”. One paint­ing from this series was to become very famous.

Impres­sion, soleil lev­ant (Impres­sion, Sun­rise) was debuted in April 1874 in Paris at an inde­pen­dent exhi­bi­tion launched as an alter­na­tive to the offi­cial Salon de Paris exhi­bi­tions of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The exhi­bi­tion, by a group call­ing itself the “Société Anonyme des Artistes, Pein­tres, Sculp­teurs, Graveurs etc” was led by Mon­et, along with oth­er such future lumi­nar­ies as Edgar Degas, Camille Pis­sar­ro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sis­ley. Two hun­dred works were shown and about 4,000 peo­ple attend­ed, includ­ing, of course, some rather unsym­pa­thet­ic crit­ics.

Mon­et described how he came up with a title for the paint­ing: “They asked me for a title for the catalogue…it could­n’t real­ly be tak­en for a view of Le Havre, so I said: ‘Put Impres­sion’ “. While this title was appar­ent­ly cho­sen in haste for the cat­a­logue, the term “Impres­sion­ism” was not new. It had been used for some time to describe the effect of some of the nat­u­ral­is­tic paint­ings ema­nat­ing from the so-called Bar­bi­zon school of painters. How­ev­er, it was in crit­ic Louis Leroy’s review of the 1874 exhi­bi­tion, “The Exhi­bi­tion of the Impres­sion­ists”, for the news­pa­per Le Chari­vari, that he used “Impres­sion­ism” to describe this new style of work dis­played, and he said it was typ­i­fied by Monet’s paint­ing.

This term, then, ini­tial­ly used to both describe and dep­re­cate a move­ment, was tak­en up by all par­ties to describe the style, and Monet’s Impres­sion, Sun­rise was thus con­sid­ered to have encap­su­lat­ed the start of the move­ment. The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.

 

 

Claude Mon­et
Music

Luciano Pavarotti sings Nessun Dorma (1994)

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To opera buffs, Nes­sun Dor­ma has always been one of the great arias, but my, how the song’s pro­file was raised by its use as the theme song to the 1990 World Cup. That new audi­ence, num­ber­ing in the scores of mil­lions, asso­ci­at­ed the piece inex­tri­ca­bly with the one voice, that of Ital­ian tenor, Luciano Pavarot­ti. Many artists have record­ed their own ver­sions of the song – before and since — but it’s Pavarot­ti who is gen­er­al­ly cred­it­ed with per­form­ing the ulti­mate ver­sion of this song. The per­for­mance I embed below, from a show in Paris in 1994, shows exact­ly why it’s a jus­ti­fied claim. Pavarot­ti deliv­ers an emo­tion­al­ly charged and haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful piece of musi­cal the­atre. Check out the emo­tion on his face at around the 2.40 to 2.50 mark.

Inci­den­tal­ly, for me, Nes­sun Dor­ma does not ben­e­fit from an Eng­lish trans­la­tion or an under­stand­ing of the song’s con­tex­tu­al mean­ing in Gia­co­mo Puccini’s Turan­dot (though it con­cerns a prince, Calaf, and his attempts to win the hand of Princess Turan­dot), so I pre­fer to pre­serve its enig­mat­ic majesty by ignor­ing its mean­ing and just let­ting it be. It’s tru­ly pow­er­ful on its own.

Back in 2009, a few days after my mum’s funer­al, my fam­i­ly and I, after a vis­it up to Blyth and on our way back, called into Durham Cathe­dral, sig­nif­i­cant for my mum’s stone­ma­son dad hav­ing worked on this fine build­ing. It turned out that it hap­pened to be the day before Bob­by Robson’s memo­r­i­al ser­vice, and they were rehears­ing for it as we arrived. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Nes­sun Dor­ma had been cho­sen to be a part of the memo­r­i­al ser­vice (per­formed I believe, by vocal trio, Tenors Unlim­it­ed). Thus, in one of the world’s great cathe­drals, and still raw from my bereave­ment, I heard the resound­ing strains of Nes­sun Dor­ma. An unfor­get­table moment.

Nes­sun dor­ma! Nes­sun dor­ma!
Tu pure, oh Principes­sa
Nel­la tua fred­da stan­za
Guar­di le stelle che tre­mano
D’amore e di sper­an­za

Ma il mio mis­tero è chiu­so in me
Il nome mio nes­sun saprà
No, no, sul­la tua boc­ca lo dirò
Quan­do la luce splen­derà
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà
Il silen­zio che ti fa mia

(ll nome suo nes­sun saprà
E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir)

Dilegua, oh notte!
Tra­mon­tate, stelle!
Tra­mon­tate, stelle!
All’al­ba vin­cerò!
Vin­cerà!
Vin­cerò!

Luciano Pavarot­ti 2000
Film, TV, and Theatre

Julie Walters in Victoria Wood’s sketch, Two Soups (1986)

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Vic­to­ria Wood’s col­lab­o­ra­tions with Julie Wal­ters over the years spawned many a rich reward. Wood’s wit pro­duced great ideas for char­ac­ters, and Wal­ters’ instinc­tive com­ic tim­ing and gift for nuanced phys­i­cal com­e­dy bril­liant­ly brought those char­ac­ters to life. The series of sketch­es around Acorn Antiques, for exam­ple, pro­vid­ed the ide­al show­case for Wal­ters to ham it up as the glo­ri­ous char­ac­ter that was Mrs Over­all, or more accu­rate­ly, the glo­ri­ous­ly inept actress that played the char­ac­ter in this send-up of low-bud­get, shod­di­ly per­formed, day­time soap opera.

The show­case I have select­ed for this blog, how­ev­er, is the sketch, Wait­ress (pop­u­lar­ly known as Two Soups), in which Wal­ters plays an elder­ly, deaf, shaky, and painful­ly slow wait­ress, serv­ing a cou­ple who are only too aware one of them has a train to catch and sim­ply want a quick meal. This sim­ple premise, replete with pos­si­bil­i­ties for that typ­i­cal­ly British com­e­dy of frus­tra­tion, is enough for Wal­ters to take the ball and run faster and fur­ther with it than prob­a­bly even Vic­to­ria Wood imag­ined at first.

Wit­ness Wal­ters’ shuf­fling gait, wob­bly head and fixed smile — this is phys­i­cal com­e­dy of the first order, and we’re laugh­ing before she opens her mouth. With her bad mem­o­ry and dan­ger­ous­ly mal­adroit han­dling of the crock­ery, this unfit-for-pur­pose wait­ress should have hung up her apron strings years ago, but for now let’s thank the for­bear­ance of her employ­er as we enjoy this infu­ri­at­ing but hilar­i­ous per­for­mance. Need­less to say, the couple’s plans for a quick meal are thwart­ed.

Julie Wal­ters
Art

The Book of Kells (c.800)

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The Book of Kells, held in Dublin’s Trin­i­ty Col­lege Library, is an illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script Gospel book in Latin, con­tain­ing the four Gospels of the New Tes­ta­ment. It was cre­at­ed in a Colum­ban monastery in Ire­land around 800 AD, and it’s a mas­ter­work of West­ern cal­lig­ra­phy. It rep­re­sents the pin­na­cle of insu­lar illu­mi­na­tion (“insu­lar” deriv­ing from insu­la, the Latin for “island” and refer­ring to post-Roman art of Britain and Ire­land). It is also wide­ly regard­ed as Ire­land’s finest nation­al trea­sure, and although I haven’t yet made it past the pubs of Dublin to view it, it’s def­i­nite­ly on the list.

The illus­tra­tions and orna­men­ta­tion of the Book of Kells are exquis­ite. The dec­o­ra­tion com­bines tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian iconog­ra­phy with ornate, swirling motifs. There are fig­ures of humans, ani­mals, myth­i­cal beasts, along with Celtic knots and inter­lac­ing pat­terns in vibrant colours, all scribed onto leaves of high-qual­i­ty calf vel­lum with iron gall ink (the stan­dard ink used in Europe, made from iron salts and tan­nic acid extract­ed from oak galls) and colours derived from a wide range of sub­stances import­ed from dis­tant lands.

The man­u­script takes its name from the Abbey of Kells, in Coun­ty Meath, which was its home for cen­turies. Its exact place of ori­gin is uncer­tain, although it is wide­ly thought to have been start­ed at Iona and then lat­er com­plet­ed in the scrip­to­ri­um at Kells itself. Regard­less, it’s true to say that the Colum­ban monks respon­si­ble for its cre­ation had skills in cal­lig­ra­phy honed to a remark­able degree.

Art

John Thornton’s Great East Window at York Minster (1408)

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The last time my fam­i­ly and I vis­it­ed York, we wan­dered out­side York Min­ster but our indige­nous fru­gal­i­ty (being our­selves of York­shire soil) baulked at the then-recent­ly intro­duced admis­sion fee of £10 to go inside. If you too vis­it York and find your­self in sim­i­lar fru­gal mode, let me advise you to take a hold of your­self, with an option­al shake, and remind your­self nev­er to put filthy lucre ahead of artis­tic splen­dour. For York Min­ster, as well as in itself being one of the great goth­ic cathe­drals of north­ern Europe, and thus replete with the resplen­dent archi­tec­tur­al beau­ty for which such cathe­drals are known, con­tains also the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in the world, includ­ing the sub­ject of today’s blog, the Great East Win­dow.

Some call it England’s Sis­tine Chapel, and indeed, had it been done in paint, instead of in glass, it might well be con­sid­ered a rival to Michelangelo’s mas­ter­piece in Rome. How­ev­er, stained glass has always fall­en on the wrong side of that divid­ing line between fine and applied art, and thus it is seen pri­mar­i­ly as a craft. Let’s not fall for that one. The great east win­dow in York Min­ster is one of the tri­umphant achieve­ments of the Mid­dle Ages: 1,690sqft of art­ful­ly exe­cut­ed stained glass, recount­ing the sto­ry of the world from Cre­ation to Apoc­a­lypse.

It was in 1405 that John Thorn­ton of Coven­try was com­mis­sioned to glaze the east end of the Lady Chapel. A copy of Thornton’s con­tract for the win­dow sur­vives, spec­i­fy­ing that he was to draw all the car­toons, and paint a large num­ber of the indi­vid­ual pan­els. For all this Thorn­ton was paid a total of £56, and con­tract­ed to com­plete the job inside three years. For doing so, Thorn­ton received a £10 bonus, and proud­ly put the date of com­ple­tion – 1408 – at the very apex of the win­dow.

Doubt­less Thorn­ton had behind him a team of glaziers, hired local­ly or brought with him from Coven­try, but the paint­ing on the glass would pri­mar­i­ly have been his. It was Thornton’s task too to turn the commissioner’s high­ly the­o­log­i­cal and pre­cise con­cept into a work of art. And this he self-evi­dent­ly did.

While much medieval glass is dom­i­nat­ed by reds and blues, John Thorn­ton had a pen­chant for yel­low as his base colour. In addi­tion, the paint­ing in Thornton’s faces had greater real­ism (and metic­u­lous­ly drawn hair) than his rivals. The typ­i­cal Thorn­ton face is sen­si­tive, with eyes down-turned, a small mouth and a some­what promi­nent nose. What Thorn­ton was pio­neer­ing in his glass­work was the Euro­pean style – new to Eng­land – known as Inter­na­tion­al Goth­ic. It is ele­gant­ly stylised work; for sure, the York com­mis­sion­ers were buy­ing cut­ting edge art, and, of course, good glass can’t be made with­out a cut­ting edge.

Film, TV, and Theatre

Jack Nicholson plays Badass Buddusky in The Last Detail (1973)

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Three sailors on a road trip. Two Navy lif­ers, por­trayed by Jack Nichol­son and Otis Young, are assigned to escort the hap­less 18-year old recruit, Mead­ows (Randy Quaid), from Nor­folk, Vir­ginia, to mil­i­tary prison in New Hamp­shire, after he was caught steal­ing from a char­i­ty, which unfor­tu­nate­ly for him hap­pened to be the favourite char­i­ty of the Admiral’s wife. “Badass” Bud­dusky (Nichol­son) and “Mule” Mul­hall (Young), are giv­en a week to car­ry out their duty, and ini­tial­ly aim to hus­tle Mead­ows to prison while keep­ing his per diem expens­es for them­selves, allow­ing for a bit of hol­i­day drink­ing and whor­ing on their way back.

As the dis­pro­por­tion­ate sever­i­ty of the eight-year sen­tence hand­ed down to Mead­ows dawns upon them, Badass and Mule change their objec­tive; now they want to show Mead­ows the best time of his life before he is incar­cer­at­ed. Numer­ous shenani­gans ensue, as the three eat, drink and fight their way across a nat­u­ral­is­tic 1970s Amer­i­ca.

Nichol­son is a mar­vel to watch. Ini­tial­ly in a sour mood and under­whelmed by this “detail” that has been hand­ed to him out of the blue, even­tu­al­ly the real­i­sa­tion of free­dom sinks in and the prospect of fun beck­ons, at which point Nichol­son ignites. His char­ac­ter, Bud­dusky, soon shows why he got his “Badass” nick­name. He lives in the moment, is high­ly impul­sive, and nev­er squan­ders an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a good time, like the scene in which he spots some Marines enter­ing the pub­lic lava­to­ries at the sta­tion. He prompt­ly fol­lows them in to start a ruckus, draw­ing Mule and Mead­ows into the caper by dint of mil­i­tary sol­i­dar­i­ty. After bat­ter­ing the Marines in typ­i­cal­ly chaot­ic fash­ion they charge reck­less­ly and hilar­i­ous­ly out of the toi­lets and the sta­tion itself to seek their next adven­ture.

The film was nom­i­nat­ed for three Acad­e­my Awards, but it failed to win any, and good crit­i­cal notices did not trans­late into box office suc­cess. A few months lat­er, Chi­na­town explod­ed onto the scene, and The Last Detail was some­what eclipsed. Nichol­son would soon go on to win an Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuck­oo’s Nest — and quite right­ly — but for me, his per­for­mance in The Last Detail is as fine an achieve­ment as that role.

Here, we’ll see two rep­re­sen­ta­tive scenes: first, a sim­ple mas­ter class in how to eat and rel­ish a ham­burg­er, Bud­dusky-style; and sec­ond, the infa­mous bar scene in which Badass com­plete­ly los­es it when the bar­tender refus­es to serve the under­age Mead­ows and con­trives to push all the wrong but­tons as far as Badass is con­cerned. The dis­turb­ing and high­ly intim­i­dat­ing over-reac­tion from Badass toward the bar­tender is then tem­pered by a huge release of ten­sion on the side­walk after­wards as they laugh like drains at their escapade. “I am a bad ass, ain’t I?” says Bud­dusky. Yes sir, you cer­tain­ly are.

Jack Nichol­son as Badass Bud­dusky
Film, TV, and Theatre

Laurel & Hardy in Thicker Than Water (1935)

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Stan Lau­rel and Oliv­er Hardy were arguably the most suc­cess­ful com­e­dy team of all time, thriv­ing dur­ing the ear­ly Clas­si­cal Hol­ly­wood era of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s. Known and loved through­out the world under a large vari­ety of names (among them Dick und Doof
in Ger­many, Flip i Flap in Poland, and Cric e Croc in Italy), to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world they were of course Lau­rel and Hardy: Stan the love­able sim­ple­ton and Olly the ambi­tious but pompous butt of many a “fine mess”.

The duo, like W C Fields and the Marx Broth­ers, had deep roots in stage and music
hall before mak­ing the suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion from stage to screen. Stan Lau­rel began his career, when he was plain Arthur Jef­fer­son, as Char­lie Chaplin’s under­study when they were both sta­ble­mates of “Fred Karno’s army”, Karno being an influ­en­tial the­atre impre­sario and pio­neer of slap­stick com­e­dy. Oliv­er Hardy, mean­while, was cut­ting his teeth per­form­ing vaude­ville and work­ing for the Lubin motion pic­ture pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, appear­ing in scores of one-reel­er movies, most­ly play­ing the “heavy”. Their paths began to cross when both worked for Hal Roach Stu­dios in the ear­ly 1920s, but it was in 1927 that the two shared screen time togeth­er in the silent com­e­dy films, Slip­ping Wives, Duck Soup, and With Love and Hiss­es. The pos­i­tive audi­ence reac­tions to the pair­ing was not­ed, and a com­e­dy duo was born, and then cement­ed as they trans­ferred so per­fect­ly to the advent of the talkies.

Their com­e­dy tim­ing was impec­ca­ble, their phys­i­cal com­e­dy honed to per­fec­tion. With a pair of unmis­take­able, born-for-com­e­dy faces and phys­i­cal mor­phol­o­gy, just look­ing at a pic­ture of them is enough to bring a smile to the face. Whilst so much ear­ly com­e­dy has become dat­ed, the com­e­dy of Lau­rel and Hardy remains time­less, a whole eighty-odd years lat­er. Tes­ta­ment to their endur­ing charm is the large group of mod­ern-day Lau­rel and Hardy fans known as the “Sons of the Desert” (tak­en from their 1933 film of the same name) with chap­ters all over the world. A few years ago I took the fam­i­ly to a screen show­ing of some Lau­rel & Hardy reels at Birstall, and was both amused and reas­sured to see some of the chaps in the audi­ence sport­ing the trade­mark Sons of the Desert fez! I was equal­ly delight­ed to see my young daugh­ters lap­ping up the phys­i­cal com­e­dy and gig­gling at these gags from a dis­tant age.

Here, I have cho­sen a nice clip of the two get­ting into typ­i­cal­ly amus­ing both­er, with Olly, as usu­al, pay­ing for his impe­ri­ous and blus­ter­ing treat­ment of Stan, by com­ing off con­sid­er­ably the worst. It’s from the 1935 film, Thick­er Than Water.

 

Lau­rel & Hardy
Poetry

Robert Browning’s How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix (1845)

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In 490 BC, the Athen­ian army defeat­ed the invad­ing Per­sian army in a bat­tle on the plain of Marathon, rough­ly 26 miles north of Athens. Accord­ing to leg­end, and brought down to us via the writ­ings of Herodotus, Lucian and Plutarch, the Athe­ni­ans then ordered the mes­sen­ger Phei­dip­pi­des to run ahead to Athens and announce the vic­to­ry to the city. Phei­dip­pi­des raced back to the city in the intense late sum­mer heat. Upon reach­ing the Athen­ian ago­ra, he exclaimed “Rejoice! We con­quer” and then col­lapsed dead from exhaus­tion.

This trope, of the long dis­tance chase to deliv­er vital news, we see again in Hen­ry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride (1860). This told the (high­ly embroi­dered) tale of Paul Revere’s valiant ride to Con­cord to warn the mili­tia that the British were com­ing, thus pro­mot­ing him in Amer­i­can cul­ture to the sta­tus of hero and patri­ot of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion.

In the same spir­it – though this time whol­ly imag­i­nary – is Robert Browning’s How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. The poem is a first-per­son nar­ra­tive told, in breath­less gal­lop­ing meter, by one of three rid­ers, only one of whose hors­es, the nar­ra­tor’s brave Roland, sur­vives to ful­fil the epic quest. The mid­night errand is urgent — “the news which alone could save Aix from her fate” — but what that good news actu­al­ly is, is nev­er revealed. The sequence of towns flash­ing by between Ghent and Aix-la-Chapelle is true to life, though they are char­ac­terised only by the asso­ci­at­ed times of night, dawn, and day (also a fea­ture of Paul Revere’s Ride) as the nar­ra­tor charges through them.

This poem is one of my ear­li­est mem­o­ries of poet­ry, from school­days, and its rol­lick­ing move­ment and sense of adven­ture res­onates with me now as it did then. There is a record­ing of Brown­ing him­self recit­ing the poem on an 1889 Edi­son cylin­der, but it’s far too crack­ly for our pur­pos­es, and besides, he for­gets the lines and gives up after the first verse (“I’m ter­ri­bly sor­ry but I can­not remem­ber me own vers­es”) so instead I offer this more mod­ern and pro­fes­sion­al ver­sion!

 

Robert Brown­ing
Dance, Music

Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Swan (1886)

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Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris in 1835 and raised by his wid­owed moth­er and his great-aunt, who intro­duced the young Camille to the piano and gave him his first lessons. The boy was a real prodi­gy, demon­strat­ing per­fect pitch at the age of two and giv­ing his first pub­lic con­cert at five. Over the course of his long life Saint-Saëns was incred­i­bly pro­lif­ic: after writ­ing his first sym­pho­ny at 16 he went on to write four more, along with five piano con­cer­tos, three vio­lin con­cer­tos, two cel­lo con­cer­tos and some 20 con­cer­tante works.

Nor were his tal­ents lim­it­ed to music. He was pro­found­ly knowl­edge­able about geol­o­gy, botany, lep­i­dopterol­o­gy, and maths, and his celebri­ty allowed him to enjoy dis­cus­sions with Europe’s finest sci­en­tists.

Of all Saint-Saëns’ aston­ish­ing out­put, though, the most famous is undoubt­ed­ly The Car­ni­val of the Ani­mals, com­posed in 1886. He hadn’t con­sid­ered it a seri­ous piece at all and in fact wor­ried that it might dam­age his rep­u­ta­tion. He needn’t have wor­ried. The 13th and penul­ti­mate move­ment of The Car­ni­val of the Ani­mals, The Swan (Le Cygne), became acclaimed world­wide as The Dying Swan after 1905 when it was chore­o­graphed for leg­endary bal­le­ri­na Anna Pavlo­va, who per­formed it about 4,000 times.

The leg­end of the “swan song” grew from the pop­u­lar belief among the ancient Greeks that the mute swan is silent until its final moments of life, at which point it sings the most beau­ti­ful of all bird­songs. Saint-Saëns cap­tures this idea in the music…and here we see bal­le­ri­na Uliana Lopatk­i­na effort­less­ly evok­ing in dance the grace­ful­ness of the ani­mal (almost entire­ly en pointe) and the heart­break of its demise. Beau­ti­ful.

 

Music

Andrea Bocelli sings Con Te Partirò at Sanremo Music Festival (1995)

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Most peo­ple are famil­iar with the 1996 col­lab­o­ra­tion between Andrea Bocel­li and Sarah Bright­man, Time to Say Good­bye, since it was a world­wide smash, sell­ing over 12 mil­lion copies and mak­ing it one of the best-sell­ing sin­gles of all time. How­ev­er, it was the year before, in 1995, that Andrea Bocel­li first per­formed this sump­tu­ous neo-clas­si­cal song in its orig­i­nal Ital­ian form, as a solo piece: Con Te Par­tirò.

The song was writ­ten spe­cial­ly for Bocel­li by Francesco Sar­tori and Lucio Quar­an­tot­to, and appeared on his sec­ond album. Bocel­li had already had his big break a few years ear­li­er in 1992 when Luciano Pavarot­ti heard a demo tape of Bocel­li singing Mis­erere, a song intend­ed for Pavarot­ti (and co-writ­ten by U2’s Bono of all peo­ple). Pavarot­ti was impressed and in the end, he and Bocel­li record­ed it togeth­er. That song became a world­wide hit and cat­a­pult­ed Bocel­li into the lime­light. At Italy’s San­re­mo Music Fes­ti­val in 1994 he won hon­ours in the new­com­ers’ cat­e­go­ry, and suc­cess was cement­ed.

In the fol­low­ing year, Bocel­li appeared at San­re­mo again. Watch him here, per­form­ing his sig­na­ture piece, Con Te Par­tirò. His hon­eyed voice and dis­tinc­tive tim­bre, togeth­er with the beau­ti­ful melody and rich orches­tra­tion, pro­duced a mas­ter­piece of emo­tion­al strength. Stu­pen­dous.

Andrea Bocel­li

 

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