The PHANTOM of the OPERA

~By Andrew Lloyd Webber, September 1986
~Awards (too many to be listed here)
~Cast

~The Story
~Some facts and figures: It is estimated that Phantom has been seen by more than 80 million people worldwide, with total ticket sales of more than $3.2 billion.

(c) Official website

Although we got ripped off with the tickets (balcony seats being in fact the upper circle!), I enjoyed the familiar dramatic musics, I giggled at the comic lines, wowed at the sensational scenography and appreciated the clashing insertion of the opera within the musical.

The voice of the young female protagonist was armonious and in sharp contrast with the acute prima donna's voice. This *oxymoron* was reiterated in the wider structure of the musical. The phantom, a deformed man in flesh and blood, is hiding himself in a sort of limbo separated by the living world by a Caronthian foggy lake, at the border between life and death. His feelings are very alive, but it is not clear whether he is a ghost or a man in flesh and blood and this will remain ambiguous throughout the perfomance. His sensitiveness is in antinomy to the colourful masquerades staged in a spectacular meta-theatre, whose masks could be bizzarrely mistaken for tribal masks; for a licentious Venician carnival; or even as a caricature of Dangerous Liaisons.

Charade, 1963

Director: Stanley Donen
Written by: Marc BehmPeter Stone ( story and screenplay

Cast:
Cary Grant as Peter Joshua
Audrey Hepburn as Regina Reggie Lampert
Walter Matthau as H. Bartholemew
James Coburn as Tex Panthollow
George Kennedy as Herman Scobie

Plot: Romance and suspense in Paris, as a woman is pursued by several men who want a fortune her murdered husband had stolen. Who can she trust?

It is a story of intrigues and deceipts, in which the poor widow Reggie tries to make sense and finds herself in danger and sorrounded by people with multiple identities.

The Duo Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn works splendidly... but then, didn't the partnership Peter O' Toole/Audrey Hepburn in How to Steal a Million or Albert Finney/Audrey Hepburn in Two for the Road or Gregory Peck/Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday work divinely too?
Audrey is at her best comicity in this lively comedy!

Some lines which made me smile and laugh:

Reggie Lampert: I already know an awful lot of people and until one of them dies I couldn't possibly meet anyone else.

[Touching the cleft in his chin]
Reggie Lampert: How do you shave in there?

I am not sure whether they make much sense out of their context, but out of her mouth they sounds hilarious.

Wait until Dark

Director: Terence Young

Written by: Frederick Knott (play); Robert Howard-Carrington (screenplay) & Jane Howard-Carrington

Cast: Audrey Hepburn as Susy Hendrix
Alan Arkin as Harry Roat
Richard Crenna as Mike Talman
Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Sam Hendrix
Jack Weston as Carlino

Runtime: 107 mins

Language: English

Plot: Susie's husband is asked to hold a doll for a woman as they get off an airplane. She disappears. Mike and Carlino are small time hoods who find the woman's body in Susie's apartment, placed there by her partner, Harry Rote. Susie's blindness is the key to them searching the apartment for the doll that contains smuggled drugs. Mike pretends to be an old friend of Susie's husband while her husband is away and together the crooks invent a story of a police investigation of her husband that only the discovery of the now missing doll can save him from. Rote is a killer, and his stalking of Susie becomes more and more obvious as the story unfolds, leaving us with the question, how does a blind woman defend herself?

Summary written by John Vogel

Imdb

In Wait Until Dark, an experienced Audrey Hepburn successfully moves from her more typical impish parts to the difficult and challenging role of interpreting a blind woman, whose privacy and safety is invaded and threatened by the irruption of impostors into her basement flat. Hepburn, unconditioned protagonist of this film, proves here to be a mature and adaptable actress splendidly expressing fears, innate optimism, love and gratitude towards her husband and an acute intuition which makes her a strongly independent woman even though deprived of the most attractive sense: the sight.

Set within a two-dimensional arena: Susy's flat, Wait Until Dark was originally a theatre piece subsequently transposed into the big screen. Her confident movements within the confined space of her flat, her penetrating looks and calibrated voice were the core elements of her dramatic acting. As pointed out elsewhere, films and live performances ought to be considered as different means of expression, endowed with different potentials, aiming at different objectives and emphasising different aspects of the performance arts. However, in this occasion the cinematic version appeared to me like a *filmed theatre performance*. I bet her execution would have changed little, had she performed on a stage instead that behind a camera.

Again, a portrait of a great character to reflect the great woman she was in real life.

Edward Scissorhands ~ from the big screen to the stage

Edward Scissorhands (the film)

Director: Tim Burton
Written by: Tim Burton and Caroline Thompson
Cast: Jonny Depp as Edward Scissorhands, Winona Ryder as Kim and Dianne Wiest as Peg, amongst others
Year: 1990
Language: English
Country: USA
Runtime: 105 min

Edward Scissorhands (the stage adaptation)

Director: Matthew Bourne (musical Mary Poppins)
Music composer: Terry Davies
Cast: Sam Archer as Edward Scissorhands, Kerry Biggin as Kim Boggs et al
Two acts


After re-watching the film on a DVD, I booked a ticket for the theatre/dance adaptation at the Sadler’s Wells in Islington (London).

The stage version was a mixture of dance, theatre and musical without words and was rather faithful to the original film directed by Tim Burton, within certain (technical) limits. All the settings and costumes were delightfully recreated with admiring accuracy. However, the dance, choreographed by Matthew Bourne, and the live music, composed by Terry Davis, gave a new dynamic and rhythm to the story, which was generally more joyful and comic than the cinematic version and simplified to suit the needs of a bi-dimensional space. The result was still as poignant as the original. For exactness’ sake, let it be pointed out that only the opening and final scenes actually incorporated some variations to the plot, which, although significantly different, did not spoil the zest of the story. Through the initial scene narrating Edward’s conception, Bourne gave a personal justification of Edward’s scissor-hands by offering an *ancestral* background to the story: the inventor’s son had previously died in green age while playing with scissors, making Edward’s scissor-hands the lively result of his patron’s nostalgic fantasies. Whereas, in the film we only know that Edward is unfinished and that this stage is simply a(n odd) intermediate step towards the final human being he was planned to be.

A dive into the story

Edward Scissorhands is a moving family story in which reality is odder than fantasy, and the meeting of the two realms is as dramatic as we could expect. The neat contrast between the suburb where apparently happy and ordinary families live and Edward’s gothic estate look impossible to conciliate.

At a closer look, this cheerful village is the caricature of a hypocritical American middle class society. The historical setting of the film was in fact undefined, and therefore timeless, oscillating between the fifties and the eighties, or even the nineties (for the extravagant futuristic haircuts ably styled by Edward); whereas, the stage director opted for an ironic and caricature-style representation of a more defined fifties American micro-society through the employment of an eclectic choreography mixing ballet, modern dance, folkloric balls and Grease type of dances.

The encounter with this bizarre community, where people lived in pastel coloured detached houses with coordinated cars and coordinated life styles, was at first less traumatic than expected. Edward was warmly welcomed by his host family and soon attracted the interests of the locals treating him as a zoo animal and, sometimes, with the bigoted pity for a disabled, but always with a basic respect. Long before his exposure to society, in the film more than on stage, Edward’s awareness of his limitations were clearly stressed, and this self-conscience made him paradoxically more human than the other characters. By way of example, in the film, his host mother looked an exceptionally (and therefore otherworldly) good-hearted mother and wife, and an outsider herself, with an economically unfulfilling job, a matter-of-fact husband and a tactless teenage daughter. For this reason, she shared an intellectual affinity with Edward and showed an unconditioned love and care for his situation since their first meeting.

Edward, interpreted in an equally amazing manner by an expressive Jonny Deep in the cinema version and by Sam Archer in the dance performance, responded to all these attentions with shyness, embarrassed clumsiness, sweetness and love. Jonny Depp’s acting strength was all concentrated on his sullen face, made possible by the frequent cinematic close-ups communicating fear and sorrow with little dialogue, while Sam Archer’s vigour was based on his faultless movements.

Not used to voice his feelings through words, Edward expressed his affection through art. He was a talented gardener; an inventive sculptor; and a creative hairdresser, whose abilities and the charm he naturally emanated (through his gaze in the film and through the dance movements in the performance) quickly captured the town’s inhabitants. Thus, there seemed to be all the premises for Edward’s successful integration into society. Unfortunately, at the first incident shaking the community’s peace, fingers are soon pointed against him. Edward, well aware of the destructive potential of his hands, always tried to contain his emotions accordingly, but when his sense of justice prevailed and his feelings of provoked rage finally exploded, the outcome was devastating. Regardless the efforts of his adoptive family to rescue him and his reputation (another detail bypassed in the theatre adaptation), an inexorable cause-effect chain kicked off making the union a utopia. These last emotional scenes were movingly performed on stage, demonstrating Bourne’s capability to shift from jubilant and hilarious scenes to a dramatic final act.

A parallel

Edward’s story inevitably reminded me Frankenstein’s *monster* and his encounter/clash with the real world. Both characters (Edward and Frankestein’s unnamed creature) are profoundly human and endowed with a fine sensitiveness. In Frankenstein’s book, the creature’s human side is due to his nature: he is in fact made of assembled corpses’ limbs. But, unlike Edward, he was not loved by his creator; he was instead rejected by Frankenstein, once this latter acknowledged the aberration of his invention which had defeated any scientific boundaries. On the contrary, Edward was cared and looked after by his *genitor* who had great plans for his development. As explicitly chronicled in the film (but not on stage), Edward’s spiritual side was nourished with poetry and literature, until his *father* unexpectedly passed away leaving him alone, unfinished and isolated.

From my analysis, it appears that many meaningful details have been amended or lost in translation. However, I do not think that the two versions clash one against the other. Instead, I reckon that they should be simply read in a complimentary way and fully enjoyed as two separate productions using two distinctive languages.

Leonardo's Exhibition in Ancona

In December I went to this exhibition with my dad. It was disappointing. Why? Simply because there was hardly any work by Leonardo. The majority of the art displayed included his drawings--some of which were replicas, portraits by some of his pupils and a few prints showing his bizarre habit to write backwards and a couple of his essays studying the phenomenon of flight and the anatomy of birds. Leonardo, obsessed with flying and unaware of the aerodynamics laws, thought that the secret of flying lay on the structural reproduction of the bird's wing. There was also a video, in English, in which Angelica Huston exposed Leo’s view on nature and art through the reading of extracts from his writings whose exordium sounded like this: "Leonardo used to see nature with the sensitiveness of an artist and with the eye of an architect”.

Only one painting in oil and of decent size dominated the room: La Vergine delle Rocce. But this latter was neither the controversial version from the Louvre nor the second version hold by the National gallery.* It was a third copy privately owned and much more similar to the second replica than to the supposedly original, and much more interesting, work. So, what differentiates the two main editions of the painting dealing with the same theme (the Madonna surrounded by baby Jesus, John Baptist and the angels)? Well, the changes and their reasons were neither explained nor even mentioned in the exhibition. A plaque next to the frame limited itself to remark that the former painting was refused by the commissioners because it did not meet the agreed requirements. The then controversy about the Immaculate Conception was hinted at, but it was not clear how this was linked to the painting in question. Vaguely reminiscent of the Da Vinci Code’s allusions to this masterpiece, once at home, I made some researches to find out a bit more about it.

History: On the 25th April 1483, Leonardo was contracted to deliver an altarpiece which would decorate the chapel of the Immacolata at the church of San Francesco Grande in Milan. Leonardo's contract had a very short deadline which required the painting be delivered before December 8th, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, but he failed to comply; this piece then became the source of two lengthy lawsuits which lasted for many years. He agreed to do a second work—or to have another artist do one on his behalf—and to deliver it on time, which he did. And the Louvre painting may have been given by Leonardo to King Louis XII of France in gratitude for settling the law suit between those who commissioned the works and the painter.

The contract was very complicated and carefully designed to ensure the monks received precisely the picture they wanted:

"Item, Our Lady is the centre: her mantle shall be of gold brocade and ultramarine blue. Item, her skirt shall be of gold brocade over crimson, in oil, varnished with a fine lacquer... Item, God the Father: his gown shall be of gold brocade and ultramarine blue. Item, the angels shall be gilded and their pleated skirts outlined in oil, in the Greek manner. Item, the mountains and rocks shall be worked in oil, in a colourful manner...”

The Virgin or Madonna of the Rocks addresses the theme of the Immaculate Conception; this being the belief that the Christ child was conceived without original sin on Mary's part. This was a hotly debated topic in Leonardo's day and he was required to convey the purity radiating from the Virgin. In both paintings she was depicted as flat-chested and sitting in a cavern. The setting was perfect for the chapel as it was built over catacombs.

Some changes were made to the contractual description: St. John** was emblematically introduced, while an angel was removed.The paintings illustrate a popular story of the time. It is that of Jesus meeting an infant John the Baptist, who is in the care of the angel Uriel. Both are on the run to evade Herod's massacre of innocents. As John pays homage to Jesus, he is blessed and the Baptism prophesied; this explains the pool in the foreground of the Louvre version, set in the autumn. The original sketches showed the angel as very feminine; this was changed in the final painting where the angel can be seen as either male or female.

The first version of the Virgin of the Rocks appears to be full of hermetic symbols. Analysts (like Pentusaglia) presented a semiotic interpretation of the painting by detecting the recurrent number *6* alluding to the episode narrated by St Luke in which Maria goes and visit Elizabeth who, although in her old age, is at her 6th month of pregnancy blessed by God’s grace. Maria stays with her three months before going back home. This sixth month in the woman’s pregnancy is when the embryo assumes the shape of a formed human being and gives shape to the placenta around him creating a sort of doppelganger, which can be identified in the figure of baby John Baptist looking Jesus' twin brother. Furthermore, the background of the painting looks like a cave surrounded by phallic rocks and womb images, and the drapery of Mary’s dress seems to hide & reveal a recent pregnancy.



Virgin of the Rocks in London's National Gallery displays a number of changes from the Louvre piece. It brings the viewer closer to the figures, is much bluer and has an air of flowing waters. Other new or changed elements include St. John's cross of reeds; the hand of the angel which no longer points at St. John; the halos and the lighter drapery. Both the halos and the cross were a later addition done by an unknown artist. Portions of the painting are slightly unfinished, the left-hand of the angel being one area, concealing the numerical symbol detected by Pentusaglia. It is also likely that the foreground was intended to be containing a pool similar to that of the Louvre version. Areas to compare are the rocks which seem badly lit, and the flesh of the children which is flat looking. Finally, Mary's drapery is more plastic and less ethereal.


In conclusion, the original painting illustrates a more human, and sinful, image of conception, while the second and third paintings see the addition of explicit catholic symbols, the conceal of some hermetical signs and the attempt of delivering a more spiritual and less fleshy image of the children, with poorer quality results. This theses could offer a more intriguing reason, than the missing of a deadline, why the original painting was rejected by the commissioners.


* For historical accuracy, I ought to say that experts have studied both paintings closely and consider the Louvre version to be entirely by Leonardo, while the National Gallery version is still the source of some debate. Critics continue to take issue with which is the earlier version of Virgin of the Rocks and there is no proof either way. However, it appears that the style of the Louvre version belongs more to the 1480s and this painting was probably completed early in 1490. The London painting is a more mature work and, assuming it is the later version, dates to around 1506.

** John was the prophet who preached the coming of Christ as the Messiah. He was related to Jesus through his mother Saint Elizabeth, cousin of the Virgin Mary. John preached in the desert, baptising in the river Jordan those who repented their sins. Jesus came to be baptised, and was revealed as the Son of God; this was the most important act of John's life. John criticised King Herod for taking his half-brother's wife, Herodias. Shortly after Jesus' baptism, Herod ordered John to be beheaded at the request of Salome, Herodias' daughter. Salome's dancing had so pleased Herod that he had agreed to grant her anything that she wanted. At her mother's prompting she asked for the head of John the Baptist.

More about the Hidden Leonardo can be found here.

Vinopolis Patinum Tour

London, 11 December 2005

This tour was both an art lesson and a self development experience, therefore it deserves a post on both pages.

The visit started with 20 minutes of wine tasting class held by a Californian young lady. She kept it really simple and basic, but it was still interesting to get some fundaments before starting the drinking session, because this is what this tour essentially was. I was hoping to have more information about the different grapes and the different fermentation procedures, but I found only some brief explanatory notes on the panels for each country which did not really enrich my (limited) knowledge. The tour was organised geographically, but, although Italy was one of the countries (as it should be being the largest producer of wine—in terms of quantity and not of exportation), there was hardly any Italian wines to sample.

So, what did I learn?

The four sensual steps in wine a wine tasting involve three senses: 1. sight; 2. smell; and 3. taste.

First step—the colour is an indicator of the wine,
A purple colour indicates a young wine, while a orange/brown nuance is the sign of a mature wine. The intensity of the colour should tell about the body of it: does it look light? Medium? Or full bodied? Swirling the wine is a way to give it oxygen and assess the quantity of alcohol and sugar by looking at the tears (lacrime in Italian) depositing on the wall of the glass. The more they are the more the wine is sugary and the slowest they sink down the more the wine is alcoholic, and viceversa.

Second step—a quick sniff should tell us a lot about the flavour which can be metaphorically compared to four natural varieties of essences: flower, spices/herbs and fruit. A second deeper whiff should confirm the first impression. So Shiraz* resembles blackcurrant, Sauvignon blanc* reminds cider and lemon, etc. As my dad observed, they are compared to cocoa, tarragon, vanilla, melon, etc., but never to grape. :o )

Third step—Slurping, which means keeping a small sip of wine on the top of your tongue and softly inhaling with the mouth, i.e. allowing some air to pass through the lips and through the wine in order to release all the aromas and different component of it, including the alcohol! You are allowed to spit that intense sip and can proceed to a second proper drink to enjoy the tastes your tongue would recognise: sweetness on the top of it; bitterness at the back and intermediate savours on the sides of it. Note the after taste, i.e. how long does the taste stay in your mouth? If more than 6 seconds, it is definitely a quite strong wine: in technical terms a “full bodied” wine.

In conclusion, one point was made clear: there is no way to ascertain the quality of a wine, unless it is corked** or high sulphured, in which case you should simply return the bottle. With the experience you can describe the quality of different wines more accurately and simply express your opinion and your taste, because, after all, this is the ultimate subjective encounter.

[I took note of each wine I tasted and will post the description later on--I can’t find the notes right now!]

* Types of grapes.
** When the cork gets to dry it can be attacked by a bacteria. This happens in one bottle out of 20, so it is quite common and very normal to send it back. A corked wine is unmistakeable by the bad smell.

The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, 2003, Corgi Books (imprint of Transworld Publishers), London.

Plot: "Murder in the silent after-hour halls of the Louvre museum reveals a sinister plot to uncover a secret that has been protected by a clandestine society since the days of Christ. The victim is a high-ranking agent of this ancient society who, in the moments before his death, manages to leave gruesome clues at the scene that only his granddaughter, noted cryptographer Sophie Neveu, and Robert Langdon, a famed symbologist, can untangle. The duo become both suspects and detectives searching for not only Neveu's grandfather's murderer but also the stunning secret of the ages he was charged to protect [...]."
Jeremy Pugh

@ Amazon

Dan Brown's official Website

The Da Vinci Code as a work of fiction—It was a smooth and flowing reading. Dan Brown is gifted with an elegant and clear way of narrating, which offered me, unlike many other readers who devoured the book in two days, the privilege of enjoying it slowly, without rush or thirst of reaching the end. In fact, although abounding of intriguing symbols to decode, surprising turns and elements of suspense as a virtual appendix to each short chapter, Langdon’s long didactic explanations did not leave anything unexplained. Everything was virtually self-contained within each chapter like within the scenes of a script. No wonder why the book is going to be transposed onto a cinematographic set.

I was impressed by Brown's ability of fishing notions of classical disciplines and popular culture (such as visual art, literature, history, ancient languages, semiotics and philology) and ably throwing them on a plate like the ad hoc ingredients of a well-balanced salad. Myriads of codes, symbols and unexpected twists were mingled at art, and were convincing within the scheme of the novel. Nothing was left to the case; everything had a calculated function, a reason, and a double meaning, which was sometimes too easy to discern and, in any case, eventually revealed. For example, while the protagonists were intent in deciphering an enigmatic and mysterious writing, I was sardonically laughing at them, since the enigma was nothing more than a crossword-style puzzle, which did not require any philological expertise, whereas it took them three pages of conjectures to finally reach the point.

Surprisingly, the action was not the centre of this *detective* story; although the treasure hunt was the absorbing matrix setting the novel into motion, the quest was far too easy. The characters encountered one impediment after the other, but each of them was quickly solved. Only at chapter 85 (out of 105) the situation got more complicated and therefore more entrancing. At the beginning of the novel, there were only two Manichean opponents: the Church, represented by Opus Dei, and the Priory of Sion, represented by Sophie and Langdon. Towards the end of the book, the church, the priory of Sion, the French & English police, the dissident historian, Sophie & Landon are all on the battle field, each with their own personal and clashing reasons to find, or to hide, the grail’s nature and location. The real protagonist of this novel is the woman, but not in psychological terms--all the characters lacked of any personality whatsoever, and Brown was not interested in Sophie and Langdon's romance which he settled in two pages. This book is rather a tribute to the theoretical concept of femininity.

Personally, while reading it, I did not care to know whether his shocking statements were true or not, because in that context they made perfectly sense. But I admit that I got curious to check them out on internet afterwards.

Here what I found:

The Da Vinci code as a work of history—The book is full of historical errors and inaccuracies. First of all, the Priory of Sion was founded in the ‘50s as a local movement opposing local gentrification and it is not a secret society preserving shocking revelations about the Christian tradition and History. Secondly, Brown based his novel on the best selling pseudo-historian book Holy blood, holy Grail published in ’82 and presenting a conspiratorial view of western history. The authors have accused Brown of plagiarism.

On the basis of the aforementioned, here are two considerations:

One. Why should a work of history blame a work of prose for re-narrate in fictional form something assumed to be the *truth*?

Two. Is it that important that Brown lied?
Well, according to Opus Dei, this book is heretical and a threat to the basis of the Christian faith. Someone could believe to Brown's statement of reality at the beginning of the book declaring the factuality of the event narrated. The factual intent is also double-proved by a theatre-within-the theatre situation: Langdon is the author of a revolutionary manuscript as much as Brown is the author of this contentious novel. It is not a case that Langdon’s editor’s name (Jonas Faukman) is the explicit anagram of Brown’s editor (Jason Kaufman). Of course that statement is part of the fictional agreement between the reader and the author. But, as Umberto Eco points out echoing the cleric fears, this hypothesis of an alter Jesus can be misleading for those "amateur readers" in search of a complot. “Everybody likes complots”— it is self-ironically claimed by Brown through Teabling’s words.

Two points finally interested to me:

One. To read that many of the theories presented in the book were inspired by some medieval occultist writers and that such ideas were circulating at the time and managed to avoid the rogue surviving the censorship.

Two. The concept of intrinsic net of correspondences, only here presented in a conceptual rather than mystically sensorial way, as Baudelaire describes them in Correspondences. In any way, this sub-link between the pagan and the Christian symbols is not a new discovery and has always pervaded visual arts, literature and popular culture. Even in Tim Burton, Nightmare Before Xmas the Pagan feast of Halloween meets the Christian celebration of Christmas. Instead of finding this connection subversive, I find it charming and somehow mysteriously transcendental.

Photo: George La Tour's Penitent Magdalene