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LuminaTO

Benc7 said:
I gritted my teeth and got a ticket, willing to forgive Rufus Wainwright his Toronto slagging in hopes of seeing something different, if not good. I see it on Saturday.
Click to expand...

Rufus' comments are so typical of where he comes from.

Musically, I have never cared for his folksy roots -- the McGarrigle and Wainwright stuff (actually I just can't stand that stuff!!!). And as for himself, perhaps he deems himself "royalty". Have you ever noticed that royalty often acts a little common now and then - he just has to get in there with his Toronto bashing.

Rest assured Benc7, I've got a whole mass of Montreal relatives who are developing a collective nervous tic about Toronto's ascendancy. That's how I read Rufus' comments. He can shove it. I'm not buying a ticket.

Edit: On the morning following this post, I find that the Toronto Star music critic has trashed the crap out of Dufus' opera. I would supply the link but I'm far too lazy on this gorgeous day :)

Heck, I was lazy when I wrote this whole thing, I just re-examined the post, and found several things to correct. Original intent kept, though.
 
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I heard Rufus on Jian Ghomeshi's show on Monday. Jian asked Roof if he was excited about bringing Prima Dona to Canada, and Wainwright immediately jumped about Toronto. Rufus apologized for his past remarks by way of saying that where he grew up everyone was always pissy about Toronto, so he was too, but he has come to see that Toronto is not what he thought it was and that Torontonians, and especially Luminato, have really been there for him, and were responsible for keeping Prima Dona alive when it looked like it would collapse, more than once. Seems he's remorseful for his earlier TO-bashing.

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Haven't paid much attention to Luminato this year, I must admit. However! I strongly recommend stopping by Queen's Park to check out the installation by Friends With You. The park is filled with giant inflated, candy-coloured characters. At least one of them blows steam out their nose. There are people walking around in costume. It's entirely charming. I've never seen so many Torontonians walking about with big silly grins. Took a couple pictures; they're in this Flickr set. I apologize in advance for being a rubbish photographer.
 
Julia Domna-Macmillan Theatre

Ye gods! What the Enana Dance Theatre didn't throw on stage last night isn't worth mentioning. This Syrian Dance Company's interpretation of the story of "Julia Domna, Roman Empress, is a little bit Vegas, a little bit Riverdance and a little bit Bollywood. There must have been fifty people in the cast, leaping and tumbling, across the stage when they weren't changing costumes every minute and a half. Very, very glittery colourful costumes and SO many of them! The wardrobe master/mistress deserves special congratulations; this is a travelling show, and to cart hundreds of costumes, plus the enormous cast and set must be a logistical nightmare. Terrific lighting too, I might add.

Eighty minutes, no intermission; a visual feast, a spectacle with some dancing.


http://www.luminato.com/2010/events/151

Video clip on their website above.
 
Prima Donna-Elgin Theatre

I hope Rufus writes anther opera (no, really I do). It's obvious he loves the art form;you can hear the influences from a dozen composers in his work. Prima Donna reminded me of Sunset Boulevard (the movie, not the musical) faded star, trapped in a decaying apartment with her loyal butler and a hot new kid she hopes will rekindle more than her career. Good voices, and I grew to love the lead Janis Kelly as the beautiful, damaged, frightened Regine. Charlotte Ellett as the servant, Marie, had an aria at the beginning of the second act that showed off her pipes really well. The set was great; all dirty, decaying mirrors and enough candles burning in the second act to make me fear for the safety of the lead.

BUT, it should have been set at the beginning of the 20th century not in 1970; the sentiments and plot are too creaky and antique; Men are nasty creatures and women would be better off without them and yet, they go to break their hearts on them again and again. Right. And the score is all over the map, not quite sure what year it is.Like I said, I hope Rufus gets to write another opera. Now that he's got all this dated melodrama out of his system he might give us something new and good.
 
A stroll through Queen's Park today

Click on the thumbnail to enlarge, then click again on the image for full size.

 
Thanks for the pics, dt...I was down there this afternoon and it was fun watching people having fun. A sharp contrast with all that security fencing further south; the antithesis of Luminato.
 
Luminato 2011

I'm reviving the Luminato thread; it provides an interesting contrast, and a reminder of the dreaded G20. That freakin security fence was the most disturbing art installation I've ever seen in this town.

This year, they've moved the heart of Luminato down to the newly christened David Pecaut Square, (formerly Metro Hall Square), and that may have been a mistake. It's a beautiful venue, surrounded by the tall buildings we write about so much, the trees and grass lending a park-like setting, but the vibe is completely different. At Dundas Square, located at the busiest corner in the country, there were always crowds of people. Not so at the new location; the L'Oreal tent, that had line-ups at its former location, was nearly empty everyday I've gone to the square.

I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but the box office had no line-ups either, and every performance had tickets available. This at 2:30 in the afternoon on three separate days. In past years, if I wasn't at the Tix office when it opened, there was nothing left. Again, not looking at that horsey mouth, the location of the rush seats available this year is superb; these are seats that would have been snatched up at top dollar well before the festival in years past.

One Thousand and One Nights: I saw Part A and loved much of it, seduced by the story ( and there are many of them). Definitely not Disney; it opens with an orgy scene, and is filled with sex, violence, some terrific acting, and a great deal of humour. Spoken in Arabic and French, this play is as much read as watched, thanks to the screens located around the stage. It falters when the actors switch to English; the accents are so thick I couldn't understand them.

Tout Comme Elle: Fifty, yes, fifty women on stage! An English Premiere, thanks to Necessary Angels. An examination of the mother-daughter relationship, explored in movement, word, and sometimes, song. Some touching observations, but I think this was for the benefit of the actors, who got to meet and work with each other, some of the best in the business. Nothing like networking.

There's a singular lack of in-your-face art installations this year. “Sargasso” at Brookfield Place, is a feathery, shimmery piece that is too small for the building it's in. I saw “Habit” at OCAD, where you could spy on the actors living in house, and saw “My name is Raj” at TIFF. Saw, and was not moved.

If Year One of Luminato is the festival to beat, then Year Five is the one not to repeat.

http://www.luminato.com/2011/
 
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Sargasso disappointed me. I, too, had expected something bigger ( yes, that old line ... ), had expected something interactive - heaving and undulating and breathing as the audience moved beneath it, maybe. And those little suspended bottles of urine, or whatever they were, don't appear to contain the distilled by-products of the process of audience participation as they might have done, either.

I missed Luminato entirely last year, but I agree that this is the least engaging so far.
 
Seemed to me Luminato had a pretty low profile this year. I don't pay attention, and seldom attend anything, but in previous years I've seen a lot of media coverage and was well aware it was on.

This year, I had no idea until I saw some tweets the day before.
 
Tonight, I'm off to see Confluence at the MacMillan Theatre - where both the New York based Mark Morris Dance Group and the Nederlands Dans Theater played a few years ago, both of which were part of Luminato and among the strongest dance events I've been to. Then downtown to catch some of k.d. lang's concert. Though Taj and One Thousand and One Nights have disappointed some of us, they may well be reworked ( the latter especially, since is playing at the Edinburgh Festival in August and, apparently, Chicago's Shakespeare Theater before then ) as is often the way with these things. Lipsynch was, for instance, as was Prima Donna before both came to Luminato. I think it would be silly for anyone who goes out on the town now and then ( especially in a city such as ours, with so much to see on stage and in the galleries and a reputation of excellence to maintain ) to dismiss the quality of Luminato's presentations out of hand, given their generally quite strong track record, even in what may be an off-year.
 
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