Charpentier X 2

Up until a month ago, I had never heard a Charpentier opera.  Now I have heard two.  The first, in Victoria, BC, was a Boston Early Music Festival production of Charpentier's
Orpheus opera.   The singing and instrumental performance were truly superb; every rhythmic nuance came through, and the blending of the voices in Charpentier's frequent ensembles was superb.  The opera itself is more of a pastoral than a real drama, and a little disappointing.   The second opera we heard, "Acteon", though also a kind of pastorale, was more compelling. It was performed by Julliard students, conducted by the renowned William Christie. Again, the rhythmic pacing and instrumental performance were outstanding, but the voices were problematic.  Several of the singers seemed to have very little sense of baroque style and seemed unacquainted with the notion of dynamics.  It was fortissimo and vibrato all the way.   Surprising, given Christie's reputation as a developer of voices.  
I once wrote a ballet score based on the music of Rameau, and fell in love with his unique phrasing and rhythmic style, which is characteristic of the French baroque.  Charpentier, though earlier, has a lot of the same stylistic proclivities.   I much prefer the French style to the more rhythmically square rhythms of other Baroque composers, such as Telemann, for example.

Johns and Gauguin at MOMA

I saw two absolutely wonderful, and complimentary shows at MOMA today.  One was of very recent work by Jasper Johns, and the other of work by Gauguin.   The Johns, two rooms, showed a series of works based on this photo of painter Lucian Freud:

This was the theme; and what you see is two rooms of variations on this theme.  It really works just like a musical theme and variations; we recognize aspects of the theme in each.   Johns is astonishingly creative as he transforms this image through different kinds media.  (In most cases, he mirrors the image.) Here is just one:

Who would have thought in the 1950's that Jasper Johns would become our Grand Old Master in 2014?   Not to mention that his technique and imagination put most contemporary artists to shame; he is definitely out of step with today's ideological art.
(If he were a young artist today, would he be summarily dismissed?  Craft and technique?  How quaint.)

The Gauguin show was equally exciting, though my enthusiasm was somewhat tempered by MOMA's characteristic teeming hordes.   It completely transformed my ideas of Gauguin's work.   We are all familiar with his paintings; they are instantly recognizable.  What this show does is focus on all the other media that he used; woodcuts, relief carving, and even a technique he called oil transfer.  We see him working in exactly the same fashion as Johns; making variations on themes (and there are not many themes).
He does woodcuts, and then prints out many different versions, sometimes adding watercolors or other materials.

Here are a few examples:

 

I still find the overall environment of MOMA extremely unpleasant; too many people, stifling air, overwhelming noise .  In addition, I notice things like the second floor "MOMA books", which was originally established as a bookstore within the museum with the idea of a more comprehensive selection that the gift shop downstairs.  Now the tables that used to have the latest and most interesting new books on art have piles of Van Gogh calendars and knick-knacks.   Appalling!   We need to put the true cultural connoisseurs, Jim Jarmusch's vampires, in charge.