What the World Needs Now

November 26, 2024 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | Modern Music, MUSIC |

A celebration of Burt Bacharach (Festival Theatre, 22 November 2024) Burt’s songs are deceptively light. Famously grumpy critic Lester Bangs called him “the Master of the Superficial.” But his love melodies, entwined with the lyrics of Hal David, among others, are, in fact, little masterpieces of intimate, intricate concision. He co-wrote 73 US top-40 songs, so he must have been doing something right. On Friday night, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, under Benjamin Northey, was in full lavish-and-lush mode, providing a gorgeous backdrop to accomplished singers David Campbell, Emma Pask, Thndo and Chantelle Ormandy. Unfortunately, vocalist Elise McCann was indisposed, but…

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Simone and the Valkyries

November 25, 2024 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | MUSIC, Opera, OPERA, WAGNER |

Die Walküre, Sydney Opera House, 15 November 2024 (Simone Young, Conductor /Sydney Symphony Orchestra/Stuart Skelton, Siegmund/Peter Rose, Hunding/Vida Miknevičiūtė, Sieglinde/Tommi Hakala, Wotan/Alexandra Ionis, Fricka, Roßweiße/Anja Kampe, Brünnhilde/ Helena Dix, Helmwige/Madeleine Pierard, Gerhilde/Natalie Aroyan, Ortlinde/Deborah Humble, Waltraute/Margaret Plummer, Siegrune/Kristin Darragh, Grimgerde/Liane Keegan, Schwertleite) The Sydney Opera House does not have the capacity to mount a proper Ring Cycle, but its beautiful concert hall can put on a brilliant concertized version, and Die Walküre offers a chance to savour the key spoke in Wagner’s wheel without the distractions of the monumental amount of staging required for a full-scale production. Instead there were…

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René Magritte

November 24, 2024 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | ART |

It's raining men ("Golconde", 1953)

(New South Wales Art Gallery, 18 November 2024) René Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was one of the leading Surrealists, along with Chirico, Meret Oppenheim, and (of course) Dali, who tried to represent the “elusive dream of a private person to which we hold no key.” Magritte’s entire oeuvre “is not copying reality but rather creating a new reality, much as we do in our dreams…painted with meticulous accuracy and exhibited with puzzling titles, [which] are memorable precisely because they are inexplicable.”* Magritte at the NSW Art Gallery in Sydney is described by the curator as “an…

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An Obvious Disavowal

November 10, 2024 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | Drama, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS, TV SERIES |

“Disclaimer” (Directed by Alfonso Cuarón Orozco from Renée Knight’s novel, 2024; Apple TV) Prima facie, this appears to be a clever, intriguing, well-made, beautifully-performed dramatic series, with a cast headed by Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen and Lesley Manville. A revenger’s tragedy, where a woman’s wicked past comes back to haunt her, undermine her marriage, further alienate her son, and damage her career. A series of flashbacks – the default of weak or flawed narratives, real and confected – terminates with cartoon-telescoping straight from a Warner Bros. cartoon, or Happy Tree Friends. These scenarios, unfortunately, are not only…

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Christmas in Estonia

November 8, 2024 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | HISTORY, LIFE |

(By Hugo Jakobsen, 3 October 1919 – 8 October 2010) “It begins on Christmas Eve, the 24th of December. It is cold and dark outside and the snow is gently falling. Our family is ready to go to Church to attend the special Christmas service. We enter a Church full of people and find our seats. In front of the altar is a huge Christmas tree lit up with wax candles. Further to the right is a nativity scene: the baby Jesus in the manger attended by his parents Maria and Joseph. The Lutheran minister tells us the story of…

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