Word: maeterlinck
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Debussy's opera, based on the play by Belgian symbolist poet Maurice Maeterlinck, is set in the mythical kingdom of Allemonde, but director Peter Sellars has updated the locale to modern Malibu, California. The production was hailed when first seen in June 1993 at the Netherlands Opera; now, 20 months later in Los Angeles, the thematic overtones already present are eerily redoubled. Call it zeitgeist synergy...
Beloved of musicians, Pelleas has long been a challenge for audiences. There are no conventional arias or ensembles, and the tenebrous music never fully breaks into song. Like Maeterlinck's poetry, the music is allusive rather than specific. Accordingly, most Pelleas productions take place in twilight or the dark; Sellars and set designer George Typsin have chosen to let the sun shine in. Instead of a vaguely medieval setting, the scene is a huge beach house constantly irradiated by the sunlight that glints off the ocean's waves. The gloom is gone, but the doom remains. To underscore the sickness...
Blessed with a private income from his parents in Lancaster, Pa., coddled in childhood, lame, diabetic, vain, insecure and brilliantly talented, Demuth lacked neither admirers nor colleagues. He was well read, his tastes formed by Pater, Huysmans, Maeterlinck and the Yellow Book, and he gravitated to Greenwich Village as a Cafe Royal dandy in embryo. Perhaps the main reason Demuth has not been seen in depth before is that some of the paintings that meant the most to him were not thought exhibitable. For Demuth was homosexual; not a flaming queen, in fact rather a discreet gay, but still loath...
...Blue Bird, as the publicity puts it, "brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union together for the first cinematic coproduction, a distinction accorded to 20th Century-Fox on the American side." The picture is a cultural casualty. The lesson it preaches may have found its origin in the Maurice Maeterlinck play, first performed by the Moscow Art Theater in 1908. An American popular song of somewhat later vintage, however, says it all, and at least as well: "That bird with feathers of blue/ Is waiting for you/ Right in your own/ Backyard...
...filming of The Bluebird, the first full-length movie collaboration between the Soviet Union and the U.S., has gone a lot less smoothly than hoped. The picture, filmed in Leningrad and based on Maurice Maeterlinck's classic fairy tale, first faltered when the Russian cinematographer overexposed much of the early film and had to be replaced. Then one U.S. star (James Coco) dropped out for gall-bladder surgery and another (Elizabeth Taylor) fled to a London hospital suffering from amoebic dysentery. Last week everything seemed back in focus as members of the crews and cast gathered at the Leningrad...