Fri. Jan. 27.  8 pm

Augustin Hadelich, violin & Joyce Yang, piano

Pompeian Room,  Doheny Mansion. 8 Chester Place, LA, CA, 90007. 213-477-2929

http://dacamera.org/

Memling’s “Portrait of a Man” on loan from The Frick Collection

Opens Fri. Jan. 27

Norton Simon 411 W. Colorado Boulevard Pasadena, CA 91105 626.449.6840

http://www.nortonsimon.org/

Mahler: Symphony No. 6

Sat, Jan 28, 8:00pm

Los Angeles Philharmonic. Gustavo Dudamel, conductor.

Walt Disney Concert Hall. 111 South Grand Avenue. LA, CA 90012 323.850.2000

http://www.laphil.com/

The Italian Connection: An Evening of Piano Masterworks- Norton Simon

Fri. Jan. 20 7:00 p.m.

Thomas Pandolfi, pianist

Program includes: Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D Minor, transcribed for solo piano by Earl Wild, four sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, a nocturne by Ottorino Respighi, and Franz Liszt’s Dante Sonata

Held in the 20th-century gallery. Stickers for ensured seating will be distributed starting at 6:00 p.m.

411 W. Colorado Boulevard Pasadena, CA 91105 626.449.6840 http://www.nortonsimon.org/

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra presents Mozart (Mostly)

Sat Jan 21- 8:00 p.m Alex Theater, Glendale; Sunday Jan 22 Royce Hall, UCLA- 7:00 p.m.

Andrew Shulman, conductor. Nigel Armstrong, violin.

Mozart Symphony No. 29 in A major ; Mozart Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major;  Walton Sonata for Strings Alex Theatre 216 North Brand Boulevard.Glendale, CA 91203. (818) 243 7700 Royce Hall. 340 Royce Dr. Westwood, CA 90095 For more information, please visit: http://www.laco.org/

 LA Art Show

January 18-22. Los Angeles Convention Center

Artists include: Damien Hirst, Ed Ruscha, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, Arshile Gorky, Andy Warhol, Fernando Botero, and others.

For information on purchasing tickets, please visit:

http://www.laartshow.com/

During the presentations at the 14th 

Plácido Domingo Awards Dinner

Sunday, Feb. 19th, 2012

Eva and Marc Stern Hall of the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion

After the 2:00 p.m. performance of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra

For more information, please visit:

http://www.hispanicsforlaopera.org/ 

or call (213) 792-7338

Today, The Los Angeles Times reported an uplifting story related to the health benefits of music.

Live classical music performances by a harpist and classical guitarist, improved the well-being of patients at a California hospital. The patients were suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder among other issues.Upon observing the significant changes in his patients, one doctor remarked, “It’s like an amazing miracle, and I don’t say that lightly.” 

Vermeer. The Guitar Player. 1672.

For the full story, please read:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ptsd-music-20120116,0,1657849.story

 By Leticia Marie Sanchez

It was the best of times. It was the best of times.

Stepping into San Francisco’s de Young Museum of Fine Arts is stepping into the Venetian Renaissance. Entering the exhibit you feel like one of the many pilgrims shown in the de Young’s reproduction of Bellini’s panoramic scene on Piazza San Marco.

Gentile Bellini: Procession in the Piazza San Marco, 1496.

The Masters of Venice applies to the city’s painters and power-brokers. Canvases of Venetian merchant ships made the city a maritime power. Canvases of avant-garde artists during the Quattrocento and Cinquecento like Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto pushed the creative envelope.

The Venetian School revolutionized painting by shifting away from rigid wood panels, favoring canvases as a medium of choice as well as oil painting instead of the quickly drying and less-forgiving egg-based tempera. The ability to lavish layer upon layer of oil produced a richness of hue and a glossy dimension that distinguished these artists from their Florentine counterparts for whom Disegno, or design, was paramount. For the Venetians color reigned supreme.

Moretto da Brescia. Portrait of a Young Woman, circa 1540 

Not only does the exhibit give the viewer a sense of the Venetian Renaissance, it provides context to the paintings’ permanent home in Vienna. By a stroke of luck and excellent timing, the entire temporary exhibit (Closing February 12th) was transferred lock, stock, and barrel to San Francisco (as the only US destination) from Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, which houses the collection of the Hapsburg Empire.

Who is the gentleman surrounded by so many paintings? One of the first galleries in the de Young exhibit contains an intriguing depiction of Hapsburg mega-collector Archduke Wilhelm standing in his well-stocked Brussels gallery. This lucky man eventually owned many of these Venetian beauties.

Look closely at these “paintings within the painting.” Like a game of clue, you will discover nine of the Archduke’s paintings in the de Young, including Giorgone’s The Three Philosophers, Titian’s Christ and the Adulteress, and Titian’s Il Bravo.

This clever image at the exhibit’s opening encourages the viewer to embark on a treasure hunt through the galleries to spot the Archduke’s paintings. What once belonged to the Archduke, now belongs to everyone in the de Young, if only for another month.

Above, David Teniers the Younger. Hapsburg Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery in Brussels. Circa 1650

Do not miss Andrea Mantegna‘s “David with the Head of Goliath.”

Mantegna set out to prove that painting was just as good as sculpture, and he certainly proved his point. The sculptural quality of this David sets it apart from every other work in the exhibit.

Andrea Mantegna. ”David with the Head of Goliath. Circa 1490.

“The Fashion Police won’t arrest me”

The Sumptuary Laws of Renaissance Venice governed the manner of dress and required that citizens dress within norms governing each specific class. The rules permitted extravagant colors for the chosen few, like this red-garbed Procurator of San Marco, the second most powerful man in Venice after the Doge.

Bernardino Licinio. Portrait of Ottavio Grimani. 1541 

 ”Et tu Pentheus?”

Titian’s “Il Bravo” illustrates the moment in Ovid’s Metamorphoses when Bacchus is arrested by Pentheus, King of Thebes. While at the exhibit, be sure to get close to Pentheus’ armor. Its shiny dimensionality reflects Titian’s superb talent in evoking luminosity.

Tiziano Vecellio, “Titian.” Il Bravo. Circa 1520.

Who is the real voyeur, here?

Tintoretto’s “Susana and the Elders” depicts the Biblical tale of a virtuous woman spied on by two elderly lechers. Despite their futile attempts to seduce and slander, the men are soon proven prevaricators. The painting embodies the literal and figurative contrast between light and dark. Up close, one can admire Tintoretto’s skillful rendering of the luxurious jewelry, earrings, and the human body. It is a bit ironic that a morality tale about the pitfalls of voyeurism presents us the voyeurs, or viewers, rather, with an unabashed celebration of a voluptuous nude.

Jacopo Rusti, called Tintoretto. Susanna and the Elders. Circa 1560

Perhaps Tintoretto’s work reflects the nature of art itself. While contemplating a work of art, whether painting, music, or drama we become privy to a complete stranger’s exterior and sometimes psychological world.

The moment that the artist reveals himself or herself to us, are we also voyeurs?

Masters of Venice: Renaissance Painters of Passion and Power from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

de Young fine arts Museum of San Francisco

http://deyoung.famsf.org/

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive  San Francisco, CA 94118

415.750.3600  

Not too shabby, LA Phil. Not too shabby, at all! 

Thurs. Dec 29- Royce Hall- UCLA- 8pm

For information on tickets, please visit:

http://www.uclalive.org/calendar/event_detail.asp?id=204

A Noise Within’s “Desire Under The Elms”

By

Leticia Marie Sanchez

For those in Los Angeles without power, head straight to A Noise Within’s “Desire Under The Elms,” the riveting production has all the electricity you need, and then some.

Pasadena is no stranger to the works of Nobel Prize-winning American playwright Eugene O’ Neil. In 1928, the Pasadena Community Playhouse staged the world premiere of O’ Neil’s Lazarus Laughed. Directed by Dámaso Rodriguez, A Noise Within’s current, explosive production of Eugene O’ Neil’s Desire Under The Elms brings rawness to a narrative rooted in the myth of Euripides’ Hippolytus. It is a story steeped in ego, revenge, desire and the nature of human beings themselves.

The strength of this production lies in the talent of its cast.

William Dennis Hunt powerfully interprets the role of “tough as hickory” septuagenarian patriarch Ephraim Cabot. His physically and emotionally intimidating presence can be seen in his interaction with his children, particularly his youngest son, Eben. Jason Dechert successfully captures the complex spirit of Eben Cabot, a boyish youth simultaneously filled with hopeful integrity and intense edginess. When Eben steps away from the menacing figure of his decades older father, we feel him flinch at his shadow.

At the end of Act II, Scene II, when Ephraim pulls his young bride Abbie to the ground to pray for offspring, he intones, “An’God hearkend unto Rachel! An’ God Harkened unto Abbie.” Hunt’s forceful and moving interpretation of these lines render them chilling, to the point where we believe that he has the power to defy earth itself.

Eben’s older half-brothers, portrayed by Stephen Rockwell and Christopher Fairbanks, infuse comedy into the play’s serious overtones. “We’re aimin’t start bein’ lilies of the field,” the rustic Simeon quips about their desire to quit back-braking labor on their father’s farm.

Monette Magrath adroitly navigates the gray area with her nuanced portrayal of Eprhaim’s new bride Abbie Putnam. Not an overt seductress, she carries herself with the icy blond dignity of a 1940’s femme fatale, managing to elicit empathy for her character, a hardened orphan with the chance to gain a home for herself through marriage to an elderly man. Magrath successfully portrays the vulnerable cracks under Abbie’s cold, calculating surface; we get the sense that her passionate love for Eben is the only love she has ever known. Like Eben, who does not know what to believe from her conflicting behavior, neither do we. After a heinous murderous act, we somehow feel sympathy for the star-crossed lovers, like an 1850’s New England Romeo and Juliet, a testament to skill of Dechert and Magrath.

The original music composed for this production by violinist Endre Balogh (who also performed the pieces) adds a haunting element of foreshadowing to the tragedy, like that of a Greek chorus. The mid-nineteenth century New England dialect adds an immediacy and vibrant realism to the play, making the ancient myth come alive on the Eastern frontier.

Philosopher Frederich Nietzche deeply impacted the work of Eugene O’Neil, particularly his notion of Amor Fati: the acceptance of one’s fate in the world. A Noise Within’s electrifying production depicts three protagonists struggling against their natures on John Ioacovilli’s sparse set: Eben’s desire to revenge his deceased mother, Abbie’s desire for security, and Ephraim’s desire for immortality by creating an heir. The electrifying clash of these desires makes A Noise Within’s production one not to be missed.

Performances: Dec 17th 2pm, 8pm; Dec 18th, 2pm

A Noise Within. 3352 East Foothill Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91107

(626) 356-3100

http://www.anoisewithin.org/

6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

Visit Nicolas de Largillière’s Portrait of Lambert de Vermont, c. 1697, and craft a fancy paper wig. Program free (with Museum admission) Designed for families with children ages 4 to 10 .411 W. Colorado Boulevard Pasadena, CA 91105 626.449.6840 http://www.nortonsimon.org/

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra

Sat Dec 10 Alex Theatre. 216 North Brand Boulevard. Glendale, CA 91203 8 pm Sun, Dec 11 Royce Hall 7 pm UCLA.340 Royce Drive LA, CA 90095 Jeffrey Kahane, conductor; Ralph Kirshbaum, cello; RAVEL Le Tombeau de Couperin; TCHAIKOVSKY Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra; THOMAS ADÈS Three Studies from Couperin; RESPIGHI Gli uccelli (The Birds) For information about tickets, please call: 213 622 7001 or visit: http://www.laco.org/

Free Concert at LACMA- Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra

Sun. Dec. 11 6 pm

Performing Bruckner: String Quintet in F Minor and other works to be announced. Bing Theater.No reservations. 5905 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90036. (323) 857-6000 http://www.lacma.org

Enjoy!