David Helfgott
It’s almost four years since the film ‘Shine’ made a global star out of this mentally disturbed piano maestro, and it seems that he’s been touring the world ever since. Whether this is a tragic case of exploitation or hard-cash payback for all those years of purgatory is open to debate. Helfgott’s repertoire is sure to contain a few crowd-pleasers from the film, including ‘The Rach’ and, on the evidence of his past visits to Tokyo, you can expect an evening of sublime musical entertainment, punctuated by the occasional odd lapse of concentration.
Sigmar Polke – Works on Paper 1963-1974
While Warhol and Oldenburg were mocking mass culture in the US, Sigmar Polke was developing his own ironic critique of banal consumerism in Germany in a body of work as diverse in its themes as in its media. His witty paradoxes and subversive visual commentaries combine to create a language of images all of its own, emblematic of the drolly-dubbed ‘Capitalist Realism’ school of which he was a leading exponent – more fiercely critical than its American Pop Art equivalents of consumer culture. MOMA’s retrospective includes approximately 180 drawings and gouaches and some 20 sketchbooks, emphasising the spontaneous, subversive and experimental nature of Polke’s highly influential work.
Les Fêtes de Nuit de Versailles
The dazzling sound and light spectacular in the gardens of Versailles attempts to recreate the spirit of the lavish court pageants given by Louis XIV. Costumed actors and dancer perform a six-act ‘entertainment’ unimaginatively described as ‘Four dreams, one reality and a final’, against a background of fireworks, music and – most importantly – Le Nôtre’s Baroque fountains. Not to be missed.
Stay in cities cheaply
We’ve now identified the problem, and I can hear you asking, “But is there a solution? Cities just seem so expensive. How could one possibly survive there?” There are two solutions.
Solution 1: You are a billionaire oil Sheikh who regularly spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a day.
Solution 2: This second solution is a bit more complex. Cities are easy places to spend/lose money, but that does not mean you should drop them from your itineraries. It would be a shame to visit England and never see Big Ben or to travel to France without singing “La Marseillaise” on the Champs-Elys?es or go to the East Coast of the U.S. and not flip off a New York cabbie. If you wish, however, to spend extended periods of time in these urban centers, you should plan accordingly.
Begin your fiscal resourcefulness by choosing your accommodations carefully. Hotels and hostels on the outskirts of cities are generally cheaper, but what you save in room rates you might lose in transportation costs. If you want to be in the thick of things, Hostelling International hostels generally offer the “sure thing” in terms of clean quarters and good location, but they may not be the cheapest alternative. Private hostels may have cheaper beds, but sometimes “private hostel” actually means “rat-infested cardboard box run by crazy dude.” Cross-reference accommodations with several different guide books or ask someone who lives in the city you are visiting to check out the hostel before you arrive.
L’Art copte en Egypte
The art of the Egyptian Christians, or Copts, consists primarily of church and monastery architecture, and the sculpture and painting that decorated these and funerary accoutrements. Much reflects themes from Greek and Roman mythology, mixing Christian with pagan symbols and taking on Byzantine and Islamic influences. There’s a palpable sense of fun in the grinning virgins and saints with a mischievous glint in their eye. Finds from the excavations at the turn of the century – dubbed the Egyptian Pompeii – some of which were shown at the Exposition universelle in 1900, are said to have influenced artists such as Matisse and Rodin, and even fashion designers. Look out for the Copt-inspired silk coat by the Venetian textile maestro Mariano Fortuny.
Taxis
I caught a taxi from the Praha hlavni nadrazi train station in Prague to Ruzyne airport and paid a ridiculously high price. Because of earlier experiences with taxis in Prague, I thought I would be better off paying the metered fare rather than negotiating a possible inflated price. Unfortunately, taxi fares were deregulated in November, 1996. A negotiated price would have been much better. I’ll allow plenty of time to get to the airport in the future to avoid using a taxi or to at least make sure I get a much better deal.
The Taming of the Shrew
The outdoor Theatricum Botanicum opens its season with Shakespeare’s story of deception, disguise and intrigue, ‘The Taming of the Shrew’. When Petruchio arrives in the Italian city of Padua looking for a wealthy wife, he spies Kate, the bad-tempered daughter of Baptista Minolo, and instantly decides to tame her. It’s not an easy task but he is helped out by Kate’s sweet-tempered sister Bianca’s three suitors, in a comic story of the battle of the sexes. This production stars Richard Tyson from the blockbuster movie ‘Battlefield Earth’ and Jim LaFave from ‘The Crucible’.
