Culture Best Bets at Home: June 5th – June 7th

There are some excellent options for entertainment this weekend. Opera fans in particular will find multiple options. Fans of classical music, modern ballet and Shakespeare will also be pleased. We’ve also included a great option for thoughtful comedy as well. In short, here are your Best Bets at Home: June 5th – June 7th.

For those of you who will be missing the annual Tony Awards, we have a clip of James Corden celebrating the pleasure to be found in live performance.

First amongst your Best Bets at Home: June 5th – June 7th stars a man who stood a very good chance of walking away with the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.

Coriolanus – National Theatre Live – Now – June 11th

Tom Hiddleston (most recently seen on Broadway in Betrayal/”Loki” in Marvel’s Avengers movies) stars in this 2013 Donmar Warehouse production of Shakespeare’s play.

The title character is one of Rome’s greatest heroes and fiercest defenders. He answers the call as the city faces an old enemy. But Rome is not the only one with enemies, Coriolanus has them, too. As circumstances get worse for the citizens of Rome, Coriolanus must find a way to keep the people on his side and address their issues.

In Paul Taylor’s review for The Independent he wrote, “Hiddleston’s magnificent performance compels you to feel what an awful fate it is to be Coriolanus. There’s an extraordinary sequence here in which, blood-soaked after battle, he stands under a shower of water gasping with pain. We are suddenly privy to the lonely willpower of the man behind the myth.Hiddleston’s magnificent performance compels you to feel what an awful fate it is to be Coriolanus. There’s an extraordinary sequence here in which, blood-soaked after battle, he stands under a shower of water gasping with pain. We are suddenly privy to the lonely willpower of the man behind the myth.”

Joining Hiddleston in the cast are Mark Gatiss, Hadley Fraser, Alfred Enoch and Deborah Findlay. Coriolanus is directed by Josie Rourke.

Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela – Medici.tv – June 5th – June 7th

Carnegie Hall opened their 2016-2017 season with this concert celebrating dance. Dudamel, best known to audiences as the Music & Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is also Music Director and Conductor of the Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela.

The program for this concert included Ravel’s La valse, Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G Minor; Copland’s Hoe-Down from Rodeo; Strauss Jr.’s Tritsch-Tratsch Polka, Op. 214; Ginastera’s Malambo from Estancia and Leonard Bernstein’s Mambo from West Side Story. The event closed with Gutierrez’s Alma Llanera from Aires de Venezuela as arranged by José Terencio.

Director’s Choice – San Francisco Ballet – June 5th – June 12th

San Francisco Ballet’s Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer Helgi Tomasson selected the three ballets to be included in this performance from February of 2020. Excerpts from the following ballets are included: Tomasson’s own Soirées Musicales and Concerto Grosso and the pas de deux from Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain.

Tomasson, a former dancer, became the Artistic Director of San Francisco Ballet in 1985. Wheeldon is also a former dancer having been a member of the Royal Ballet in London and New York City Ballet. He won a Tony Award for his choreography for An American in Paris.

Il trittico – Royal Opera – June 5th – June 19th

Il trittico is a trilogy of one-act operas by Giacomo Puccini. The three operas are Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. The latter is the best-known of the three as it is the most commonly performed.

Jealousy and murder are on tap in Il tabarro involving the love triangle of Michele (Lucio Gallo), his wife Giorgetta (Eva-Maria Westbroek) and her lover Luigi.

Suor Angelica is the dramatic story of a nun (Ermonela Jaho) dealing with loss.

Gianni Schicchi (Gallo) depicts what happens when someone dies and the will goes missing. And you think your relatives were difficult?

Richard Jones directed this 2016 production (a revival of his 2011 production) and Antonio Pappano conducted.

Agrippina – Great Performances at the Met (PBS) – June 7th (check local listings)

If you aren’t getting enough opera from the daily streaming operas made available by the Metropolitan Opera, PBS is adding another production for your viewing pleasure: Handel’s Agrippina. Joyce DiDonato stars in this David McVicar production from 2020. Henry Bicket conducts.

Agrippina (DiDonato) is the Roman empress who is fixated on the idea of having her highly unqualified son, Nerone (Kate Lindsey), take over the throne. To do that, she will stop at nothing to get her husband, Claudio (Matthew Rose), to cede it to him.

Zachary Woolfe, in his review for the New York Times said, “Three centuries on, Agrippina remains bracing in its bitterness, with few glimmers of hope or virtue in the cynical darkness. But it’s irresistible in its intelligence — and in the shamelessness it depicts with such clear yet understanding eyes.”

As with all PBS broadcasts, it is best to check your local listings. In Los Angeles this production will not air until June 9th at 11:00 PM with additional broadcasts on June 19th at 9:30 PM and June 20th at 4:00 AM. In New York it will air on June 14th at 12 PM.

Cosi fan tutte – Glyndebourne – June 7th – June 14th

Mozart’s opera (written with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte) debuted in Vienna in 1790. It was not warmly embraced and only became popular long after the composer’s death.

The opera hinges on a bet that Ferrando (Topi Lehtipuu) and Guglielmo (Luca Pisaroni) make with Don Alfonso (Nicolas Rivenq) about the fidelity of their fiancées, Dorabella (Anke Vondung) and Fiordiligi (Miah Persson).

This is a film of the 2006 production directed by Nicholas Hytner (The Madness of King George, The History Boys). The orchestra was lead by Iván Fischer.

Uncabaret – June 7th – 10:30 PM EDT/7:30 PM PDT

With everything going on in our world right now, the need for laughter is probably greater than ever. As she has done for more than a quarter century, Beth Lapides is assembling some of the brightest and funniest comedians she knows. They are coming together for an online version of Uncabaret.

For the uninitiated, Lapides describes the “un” part of her cabaret as “Unhomophobic, unxenophobic, unmysogynistic. Unhacky.”

Joining her for this week’s show are Sandra Bernhard, Julia Sweeney, Alec Mapa, Jen Kirkman, Alex Edelman, Tim Bagley and Jamie Bridgers. Music is provided by Mitch Kaplan and his band.

Registration on Eventbrite is required, but there is no fee to watch the performance. Donations, of course, are accepted.

Those are our selections for the Best Bets at Home June 5th – June 7th.

A couple reminders:

SFJazz has Fridays at Five with Marcus Shelby Quartet w/ Angela Davis in a program entitled Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. The concert features Terri Lyne Carrington, Tia Fuller, Tammy Hall, Paula West, Kim Nalley, & Tiffany Austin. This concert takes place June 5th at 8 PM EDT/5 PM PDT.

The Met Opera productions available this weekend are Thomas Adés’ The Exterminating Angel on Friday; Verdi’s Otello on Saturday and Massenet’s Thaïs on Sunday.

As I mentioned, Sunday would have been the Tony Awards. You can always find plenty of Tony Awards clips of performances to entertain yourself in the absence of the annual broadcast. One example: James Corden’s opening from the 2019 show which celebrates the joy of live performance.

There you have it. Enough Culture Best Bets at Home June 5th – June 7th to keep you entertained all weekend long.

Main photo: Tom Hiddleston in Coriolanus (Photo by Johan Persson/Courtesy of National Theatre Live)