One Week 100 Peope - Met Opera on Demand in Blue and Yellow

Iphigénie en Tauride provided the anguish I needed for my last day of One Week 100 People

One Week 100 People - more opera on demand

Soldiering on.

This is Roberto Devereux (Donizetti)

One Week 100 People - Met Opera on Demand

One Week 100 People. I gave myself a break and sketched from the Met Opera On Demand app. Still couldn't focus, really, but I did try to convey the emotions, particularly the hands. I think I did better in previous years. It's hard to do something like this when people are dying in Ukraine.

Some worked out better than others.

Le Comte Ory (Rossini)

Akhnaten (Philip Glass)

No word from Tom

Lovely podcast from Met HD. You might have to subscribe, now that I think of it. Dawn Upshaw. One of my favourites. 

In case that doesn't work, here is an old video from YouTube

The Enchanted Island

Trying to combine gestures and faces on these two pages. From The Enchanted Island again (Met HD on Demand). Very dramatic gestures and it's an opera I am happy to rewind again and again - Yes, I worked without using the pause button for these, challenging, but each time you rewind, you see something more and bit by bit you build the gesture. I need to work on hands and feet. That's the next job on the list!!

The Enchanted Island and Symphony No3

 More people in action!

I had to loop these over and over to get the gestures, but I didn't pause them. That's a big step! The first page and a half was from The Enchanted Island on Met HD On Demand. And the cellos (and small violins) were from Gorecki's Symphony No 3, one of my favourite pieces of music.

More People!

Here is the homework I did for Suhita Shirodkar's workshop. I enjoyed sketching the crooner the best! All the silhouettes in the second spread are from the Met HD's Streaming channel, and it was their production of Rigoletto, set in Vegas! Not my favourite production of that wonderful opera, but great for sketching practise! And Suhita gave me really useful feedback, so I'll be practising more - when I find the time!

One Week 100 People - Day 5

Final day of One Week 100 People. I'm pretty sure I didn't meet the 100 mark. But I had a lot of fun, and I learned a lot with this new way of working, which really helped me get away from obsessing about detail. Like the little detail of where is the woman's body? No, she wasn't cut up! Iphigénie had put away her knife, and she was actually comforting the woman who was lying with her head on the sacrificial stone. I just didn't see that the woman was actually in front of Iphigénie, and by the time I realised, it was too late. I'll blame it on the lighting. Or on the fact that I was chatting away on Zoom with a friend while I did this!

One Week 100 People Day 4

I enjoyed Iphigénie en Tauride so much that I decided to stay with it. One simple scene alone had so many dramatic expressions. Plus I'm trying to sketch hands better, and there were lots of close-ups! I also tried to include a little bit of the backdrop, again using the techniques described by Marion Rivolier in her wonderful book! 

One Week 100 People - Day 3

Another day, another opera - I moved to Iphigénie en Tauride, an opera I had seen a few years ago at the Met HD with Brendan, and he loved it as much as I did, and he's not an opera fan. But there was so much drama, and beautiful music, that it was hard to not enjoy it!

Basically, Agamemnon kills his daughter Iphigénie to gain favour with the gods and win some war, but she is saved by a goddess and lives in a prison in Tauride for 15 years, when she is reunited with her brother, Oreste. She is told by her captor she has to kill him. She's a priestess of some sort. But she can't. She doesn't know he is her brother, but she feels a connection with him. All very dramatic, with beautifully simple sets. Sung by Susan Graham and Placido Domingo.

So here are my sketches from the first few minutes. By the way, I pause the opera when I'm doing these. I'm a fast sketcher, but not that fast. And I'm a bit rusty with drawing people. Haven't seen many in the last year!! 

 

One Week 100 People - Day 2

Second opera - Carmen.  For some reason, the opera itself isn't one of my favourites. Still, I enjoyed sketching the first part of it, which included the famous "Et si tu m'aimes". Everyone can probably hum that tune! Catchy tune, it is!This is a production from the Met Opera again, with an amazing Carmen, Anita Rachvelishvili!

I kept my watercolour impressions in warm pink tones, in keeping with the setting in this production, full of warm brick tones and soft pink lighting. The overture was accompanied by very expressive dancers.

One Week 100 People - Day 1

One Week 100 People - I can't believe how quickly and slowly this year has gone. It feels like the last One Week 100 People is such a long time ago. And yet, I remember it so clearly, when I sketched on the tram, the thrill of it! We're still stuck to our 5 kms, cafés and shops and museums are closed and I had to find something else to keep me motivated. So I turned to opera, first on YouTube, then on the Met Opera On Demand app, and had a wonderful time sketching dramatic figures from various pieces. I am still making my way through Marion Rivolier's book and her chapter on sketching people in watercolour proved extremely useful!

The first page is from Orphée et Eurydice, from the Paris Opera, a very stylised production!

Then I moved to the Met Opera New York, with the wonderful production of Philip Glass's Satyagraha. I experimented with washes, drawing with a brush, switching to my left hand and painting in negative space. Then I had fun with the crazy colours that were presenting themselves to me!

Dido's Lament

 Two different versions.

Living the classical life

Just sharing this because I enjoyed watching this interview.
Anthony Roth Costanzo has got a lot more depth than I'd assumed at first. An amazing performer and an interesting person.

Akhnaten

I could write lots and lots about this opera, but the videos say it much better. Philip Glass at his best, Anthony Roth Costanzo at his best.

At the movies

I was a little early at the cinema before the Met Opera transmission of Dialogue des Carmélites started. So I had time to do a sketch. The opera was brilliant by the way.

Marnie

The reason I was at the cinema on Saturday was to see Marnie, the opera by Nico Muhly, based on the book by Winston Graham (and also the Hitchcock movie). It was my first opera in a few months and it was good. With the stunning Isabel Leonard.



PS: I loved the clothes too! (Click on the link for the lovely sketches!!)

The Exterminating Angel

It wasn't to everyone's taste. There were only about 20 people in the cinema. Some left at the interval.
But I found The Exterminating Angel, by Thomas Adès, a thrilling experience. The singing was interesting more than pleasing to the ear. The highest note ever sung by a soprano at the Metropolitan Opera New York was much talked about, but my ear found it hard to appreciate it. Still, what a fantastic story (based on the 1962 film by Luis Buñuel), striking setting, and chilling acting by the wide cast (except for one mezzo, whom I think suffers from an over-acting habit). I'm glad I experienced it. But I thought that Adès's The Tempest was a better opera overall.

The Magic Flute

I'm running behind, as always at this time of year - lots of things to do. Not much time to document everything.

I was delighted when The Magic Flute was announced for the Met HD programme, as I had never seen it before, and I had heard a lot about the magical production by Julie Taymor, who directed The Lion King, a show that's been running nightly since 1997 on Broadway! I've never seen The Lion King (the original 1994 Disney animated movie, nor the musical).

And I loved The Magic Flute, despite reports of sexism by a friend who saw the Covent Garden production. Yes, Mozart is not exactly a feminist. But hey, it was sung in German, so I could ignore the subtitles if I found them too offensive (a major element of the plot has got to do with the hero having to ignore his beloved's pleas, as "women are the cause of a lot of trouble for men", or words to that effect). Beautiful singing. Beautiful production. And the Queen of the Night is such a great baddie.

Unfortunately, the Odeon in Stillorgan cut the ending before the opera was actually finished. A lot of angry punters. Apparently, the transmission ran late and they cut it off automatically because they had another movie in that theatre. Annoying, yes. But not the end of the world.

The clips below are from the English language version.

Norma

I can't believe a week has gone by already. The days are flying. Actually more like burning this week (in-joke - battling with Feedburner - why is something that's supposed to be so simple so complicated?)

Back to the cinema, for the new Met HD season of operas. I'm going to be busy this winter - lots of old and new productions!

An excellent start, with Bellini's Norma. Sondra Radvanovky (soprano) and Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano) as the two druid priestesses who have been seduced by a Roman soldier, Pollione, sung by tenor Joseph Calleja (he had a good voice, but I don't think he had enough charisma to make me believe that Norma, a powerful high priestess, would fall for him). So for me, it was all about the two women, the older priestess, and her apprentice, a relationship of power, but also respect and deep friendship.

Sir David McVicar's production included his signature moving trees (not my favourite bit), but also a live scene change, where the whole stage smoothly moves up to reveal a completely different stage set, with singers ready to go - Apparently the Met have 5 stages that they can move back and forth, left and right and up and down. Amazing stuff!