Opera Archives – Riot Material

Elektra, An Opera In One Act

April 6, 2018 By Donald Lindeman Leave a Comment

by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal
at Metropolitan Opera, New York City
Reviewed by Donald Lindeman

Pity the legendary royal families of ancient Greece. Their stories, so incredibly complex, rarely end well. Blood feuds abound, and seldom are they fully resolved. Richard Strauss’ and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s opera, Elektra, debuted in Dresden in 1909, bringing Sophocles’ account of the Argive house of Agamemnon to a modern iteration. In ancient Athens, everyone would have known the story of Electra before they’d even seen Sophocles’ telling of it. [Read more…]

The Exterminating Angel

November 21, 2017 By Donald Lindeman Leave a Comment

An Opera In Three Acts
at Metropolitan Opera, New York City
Reviewed by Donald Lindeman

Hailing from Salzburg and London, Thomas Adès’ opera The Exterminating Angel made its much anticipated New York debut on October 26th at the Metropolitan Opera. Adès himself conducted, and the opening night audience greeted him, the opera, and its superlative vocalists with considerable enthusiasm. The opera is based on the 1962 surrealist film by Luis Buñuel of the same name, featuring an elegant after-opera dinner party attended by upper-crust denizens of Francisco Franco’s Spain. It should be noted that Adès and director Tom Cairns eschew the deeply ironic and grim conclusion found in Luis Buñuel’s film in their opera. Instead they opt for a more ambiguous outcome and fate for their characters. This marks a significant alteration to the filmic source, and it invites alternative interpretations to the original tale. [Read more…]

On The Beloved Jonathan Gold

by Ruth Reichl Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times Jonathan reveled in flouting the rules. In the ’80s, when I first met him, he cheerfully drove around without a driver’s license. He wore what he wanted — in the early years his constant costume was a slightly too small black motorcycle jacket — lived where […]

Los Angeles Loses Its Greatest Living Writer, Jonathan Gold

by Andrea Chang Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times restaurant critic who richly chronicled the city’s vast culinary landscape and made its food understandable and approachable to legions of fans, has died. He was 57. Gold died of pancreatic cancer at St. Vincent Medical Center on Saturday […]

Jenny Saville Still Manages To Amaze With Ancestors

at Gagosian, NYC Reviewed by Phoebe Hoban Jenny Saville has always reveled in rendering flesh. Her earliest show at Gagosian, at the tail end of the 90s, established her ambitious scope: big, generously impasto’d gestural nudes that flew in the face of current painting trends. Lucian Freud once famously said that he wanted his “paint […]

Under The Silver Lake Is A Twisted Love Letter To Hollywood

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko “Jesus and the Brides of Dracula. Hipster pirate. Topless bird-lover. Paddleboat stalking. Literally barking mad women. Hobo king with a cardboard crown.” The notes that I scrawled while watching Under The Silver Lake at its North American Premiere at Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival look like the scribbles of a madman. […]

D.A. Pennebaker And Chris Hegedus On Their New Doc, Unlocking The Cage

by Cynthia Biret Unlocking The Cage offers an intimate look at an unprecedented battle to obtain the status of legal personhood for animals. Co-directed by D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, the film follows attorney Steven Wise and his legal team, The Non Human Rights Project, into the courtroom and behind the scenes of this truly […]

Passing Through Time, Memory, Decay: A Journey That Wasn’t

at the Broad Museum (through February 2019) Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch Time. It can be both friend and foe. It eludes us, slips through our fingers and yet also seemingly extends ad infinitum. The fourth dimension in all of its frustratingly enigmatic glory serves as spellbinding subject matter for the Broad Museum’s current group showcase, […]

Getting Lost On The High Ground Of Greater Than L.A.

at Desert Center, Los Angeles (through 21 July 2018) Reviewed by Shana Nys Dambrot There’s something about Los Angeles that makes people constantly wrestle with what it means and never tire of describing how life is lived here. No other place, not even Paris or New York, has sponsored such a compendium of self-reflexive art […]

Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade Is Exquisitely Excruciating

Review by Kristy Puchko I was not prepared for Eighth Grade. Since its rave-rousing Sundance premiere, stand-up comedian turned writer/director Bo Burnham’s debut feature has been gaining buzz as a great coming-of-age tale. I knew my peers thought it was “so good,” and I assumed that meant captivating and fun with occasional streaks of agonizing secondhand embarrassment. Basically, […]

A Conversation With Artist And Esteemed Butch Hero Ria Brodell

by Ellen C. Caldwell Painter Ria Brodell has gained fame in the way they disrupt and update both the artistic cannon and history itself. In their painted series “Butch Heroes,” Brodell takes the form of traditional Catholic Holy cards depicting saints and martyrs, and instead paints “butch heroes” on a reinterpretation of the cards. Brodell highlights […]

Manifesta 12 Promises The World, And Delivers

by Arabella Hutter von Arx “I have pushed for the transformation of Manifesta . . . into a more inclusive, pragmatic and sustainable format that turns signals into substance.” – Hedwig Fijen, founding director of Manifesta 1. Opening Rites To Our Common Humanity Buzz words fly around at the press conference launching Manifesta 12 in […]

Recoupment Through Roses: A Word With Artist and Activist Amitis Motevalli

by Carrie Paterson Amitis Motevalli’s Golestan Revisited project, now in its exhibition phase, has several aims. One is to perform a revisionist botanical history to “decolonize the roses.” Motevalli explained to me that the flowers originated in an area of the world now described partly as Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Iran, where she was born. Ancient […]

Judy Chicago’s Birth Project: Born Again

at the Pasadena Museum of California Art through October 7 (upon which time the museum will permanently close) Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch “If men had babies, there would be thousands of images of the crowning.” – Judy Chicago, 1982 Since 2002, East Union Street’s illustrious Pasadena Museum of California Art has reliably showcased some of the […]

The Color Purple Is A Joyous Affair

at the Pantages Theatre, Hollywood Reviewed by Seren Sensei A limited two-week run of The Color Purple recently closed at the famed Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, and it was a spectacle to behold. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Alice Walker (that was later adapted into a landmark movie starring Whoopi Goldberg and directed […]