This weekend begins with Juneteenth and several programs are available in celebration of that important date in history. We have quite a few Best Bets at Home: June 19th – June 21st, but we’ll start this weekend’s listings a little differently.
To acknowledge Juneteenth, the Metropolitan Opera shifted their scheduled operas a little bit. La Forza del Destino, starring Leontyne Price from the 1983-1984 season, has added a second day of showings and is available through Saturday, June 20th at 6:30 PM EDT/3:30 PDT. This pushes the two Philip Glass operas, Akhnaten and Satyagraha one day each. Akhnaten now begins streaming on Saturday and Satyagraha will begin streaming on Sunday. The previously announced production of La Traviata will start Week 15 at the Met.
Here are your Culture Best Bets at Home: June 19th – June 21st.
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Live with Carnegie Hall: Juneteenth Celebration – June 19th – Carnegie Hall Website – 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT
Carnegie Hall celebrates Juneteenth with a program that combines music and commentary. Rev. Dr. James A Forbes Jr. will be front and center for this event that will features performances by pianist Joseph Joubert and the Juneteenth Mass Choir. There will be speeches by Bill Moyers and Bishop Michael Curry. Comments from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Wynton Marsalis and Carnegie Hall’s Chairman, Robert F. Smith, will also be part of the program.
Small Island – National Theatre Live – Now – June 25th
British author Andrea Levy’s 2004 novel, Small Island, was the inspiration for this 2019 National Theatre production. The play was written by Helen Edmundson and, like Levy’s novel, earned raved reviews.
The setting is the second World War and culminates in 1948. Two women are at the center of the story: Hortense (Leah Harvey), a Jamaican immigrant who believes a life in England will be far superior to the one she leaves behind and Queenie (Aisling Loftus), a woman of great generosity and kindness who allows servicemen to use her home while her husband is off at war. Between the two is Gilbert (Gershwyn Eustache Jr.), Hortense’s husband who wants to become a lawyer.
The struggle of Jamaican immigrants to England is ultimately what’s at stake in the play.
Rufus Norris directed this production which features a company of 40 actors. Critics talked about Small Island as being one of the most important plays in the history of the National Theatre.
It should be noted that the website for this NT Live presentation does come with the following warning: “As part of depicting the experience of Jamaican immigrants to Britain after the Second World War, at times characters in the play use language which is racially offensive.”
Dance Theatre of Harlem: Vessels – June 19th – June 21st – DTH’s YouTube Channel
This is a 2014 work choreographed by Darrell Grand Moultrie set to the music of Ezio Bosso. Vessels has regularly been a part of Dance Theatre of Harlem’s touring program.
Moutrie’s work is divided into four sections: Light, Belief, Love and Abundance.
Light features dancers Chyrstyn Fentroy, Jenelle Figgins, Ingrid Silva, Nayara Lopes, Alison Stroming, Fredrick Davis, Da’ Von Doane, Dylan Santos, Anthony Savoy and Samuel Wilson. Belief features Figgins, Silva, Lopes and Stroming. Love showcases Fentroy and Davis and the whole company performs Abundance.
Vessels is important to the company. Earlier this year they created a social-distanced interpretation of Moultrie’s works and its themes in celebration of composer Bosso who passed away in May.
YES! Reflections of Molly Bloom – Irish Repertory Theatre – June 19th and June 20th
Aedín Moloney stars is this one-woman show inspired by James Joyce’s novel Ulysses.
Set in Ireland in 1904, Molly struggles to find meaning in her life after her children are gone, her marriage has lost its luster and the affair she was having ran its course. She doesn’t fully know what she wants, but she knows this isn’t it. With a true Irish sense of both doom and humor, Molly follows an untraditional path to rediscovering who she is.
Moloney, who won the Outer Critics Circle Award for her performance, adapted the novel with Colum McCann. YES! features music from Paddy Moloney, best known for his band The Chieftains.
The two performances (Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT and Saturday at 3:00 PM EDT/12:00 PM PDT) require reservations made at least two hours in advance. There is a suggested donation of $25. Once a reservation has been made you will receive details how to watch the performance.
Munich Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall – Medici.tv – June 19th – June 21st
Continuing with the Fridays with Carnegie Hall Fridays series on Medici.tv, this week’s program features the Munich Philharmonic conducted by Valery Gergiev. This concert took place October 26, 2019.
On the program is Jörg Widmann’s Con brio; Brahms’ Violin Concerto and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.
The soloist for the Brahms is Leonidas Kavakos. His encore is Enescu’s Ménétrier (“The Fiddler”) from Impressions d’enfance, Op. 28, No. 1.
You do not have to subscribe to Medici.tv to see this concert. You do need to register with them, however, to do so.
Act One – Lincoln Center at Home – June 19th – July 3rd
If you ask most theater professionals what one book should be read by anyone contemplating a career in theater or anyone who has a career in theatre and almost universally the answer is Moss Hart’s biography, Act One.
Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner James Lapine adapted Hart’s book and turned it into a Tony-nominated play that ran at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center in 2014. Santino Fontana (last year’s Tony Award winner for Tootsie) and Tony Shalhoub (Tony Award winner for The Band’s Visit) each play Hart at various points in his life. Andrea Martin (Tony Award winner for Pippin) heads the rest of the company that finds 22 actors playing over 40 roles.
Hart is best known as the playwright who gave us You Can’t Take It With You (for which he won a Pulitzer Prize) and The Man Who Came to Dinner. He directed the musical My Fair Lady and won a Tony Award for his work. He wrote several screenplays including the Oscar-nominated Gentleman’s Agreement and the script for the 1954 version of A Star Is Born (the Judy Garland version.)
Ann – Great Performances on PBS – June 19th (check local listings)
You have to have real drive and passion for a project to leave a hit television show like Two and Half Men to pursue a play. That’s precisely what actress/writer Holland Taylor did when she left the sitcom to realize her dream of putting the life of Texas governor Ann Richards on stage.
That play, Ann, played at Lincoln Center (earning Taylor a well-deserved Tony Award nomination for her performance) and has been filmed. Ann will air this weekend on PBS’s Great Performances series.
Richards was bigger than life and had a quick-wit. An classic example of her quick turn of phrase was during the 1988 Democratic Convention when she said of George H.W. Bush, “Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
Salome – San Francisco Opera – June 20th – June 21st
Richard Strauss worked with Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name to create his opera, Salome. The opera had its world premiere in 1905 in Dresden. The opera was controversial with several companies not allowing it to be performed until many years after its premiere (including the Metropolitan Opera where performances in 1907 were cancelled after its first performance and the opera was not seen again until 1934.)
What made it so controversial? No doubt it is the “Dance of the Seven Veils.” That dance inspires the warning that this production contains nudity and scenes that viewers might find disturbing.
In this 2009 production, Nadja Michael sings the role of “Salome.” Herod is sing by Kim Begley. James Robinson directed and Nicola Luisotti conducted. The opera is performed without an intermission and runs approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes.
Jessie Mueller with Seth Rudetsky – June 21st – 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
Tony Award winning actress Jessie Mueller (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) joins Seth Rudetsky in this weekend’s concert. Her other Broadway credits include originating the role of “Jenna” in the musical Waitress and she was Tony nominated for her performance as “Julie Jordan” in the most recent Broadway revival of Carousel.
If you are unable to watch Sunday’s live concert, there will be a rebroadcast of it on Monday at 3 PM EDT/12 PM PDT. Tickets for either viewing are $25.
That’s it for this week’s Best Bets at Home: June 19th – June 21st. But before we go we want to remind you that the world premiere of a reimagined Immediate Tragedy (a long-lost work by Martha Graham) takes place on Friday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT on the Soraya Facebook Page and will be shown on Saturday on the Martha Graham YouTube Channel on Saturday at 2:30 PM EDT/11:30 AM PDT.
Have a great weekend.
Photo from Small Island by Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Courtesy National Theatre Live
Update: We erroneously credited Moss Hart with having written the book for MY FAIR LADY. Alan Jay Lerner was the sole writer of the book of the musical. We regret the error.