"SPOSA SON DISPREZZATA" by Giacomelli and Vivaldi.
Scenic concert "Setaro, el constructor de utopías" concieved by Mario Pontiggia with Vivica Genaux, Borja Quiza and Orquestra Barroca de Mateus, directed by Ricardo Bernardes. This project was organized by Casa de Mateus Foundation (Portugal) and Amigos de la Ópera de A Coruña (Spain). The concert tells the amazing story of the "impresario" Nicola Setaro that brought the Italian opera to Spain and Portugal in the mid-eighteenth century.
ORQUESTRA BARROCA DE MATEUS Ricardo Bernardes – direcção musical Violinos I: Tera Shimizu, Elena Vasquez Ledo, Boyana Maynalovska Violinos II: Álvaro Pinto, Philip Yeeles Viola: Maria Pampano Violoncelo: Raquel Reis Contrabaixo: Tiago Pinto-Ribeiro Oboé: Fabio D’Onofrio Trompas: Edouard Guittet, Jorge Fuentes Arce Cravo: Catarina Sousa Tiorba: Pedro Martins Bandolin: António Vieira
PROJECT: NICOLAS ET ADRIEN. A WORLD WITH TWO SONS. Nicolas et Adrien consists of two interconnected bodies of work, “Teen Tribe” (2005–10) and “The Twenties” (2010–18). "I seek out mysterious tensions between the spontaneous and the staged." -Martine Fougeron
PROJECT: NICOLAS ET ADRIEN. A WORLD WITH TWO SONS. Nicolas et Adrien consists of two interconnected bodies of work, “Teen Tribe” (2005–10) and “The Twenties” (2010–18). "I seek out mysterious tensions between the spontaneous and the staged." -Martine Fougeron
[intro, in a bar: my life, to something, something bigger, than me]
I wish I could dedicate my life My life to something bigger Something bigger than me The earth ever spins on its axis I'm spinning in echopraxis My life does not belong to me
I gave my life To something Something bigger Than me
The galaxy's a broken mirror Slowly the asteroid gets nearer My strife does not belong to me
For that big blue bold I'll let go For the gold medal Surrender
My life To something Something bigger Than me I give my life To something Something bigger Than me
Early 18th-century Italian opera companies often cast female voices in male roles, and sometimes castratos took female roles according to the vicissitudes of local circumstances. For example, during some periods female performers were forbidden on stage in Rome, but throughout the rest of Europe good female singers were the preferred option for leading male characters if no suitable castrato was available. Beyond that, there are plenty of Baroque operas in which characters disguise themselves as someone of the opposite gender. Such fluidity inspires a playful double album by Vivica Genaux and Lawrence Zazzo, who take turns to sing every conceivable kind of character within the compass of their voice-type (male, female, and covertly disguised), regardless of the genders of the characters or their original performers.
WTF texts Josey, and I text back OMG. We had to tell Maggie what LOL meant– it's not Lots Of Love, though that almost always fits. Major emailed LMAO when I assumed his inbox gets dealt with by an underling, some undergrad, assumed it was Major's minor who invited me to read but "can not pay much sum of monies." Sum of Monies? I emailed back.
Who wrote this? Your assistant's a Nigerian prince? WTF. For a while we just played with these, joking, like I tried on Wicked when I moved to Boston, called Lisa Liser, pizza pizzer, said Fucken, wicked, pissah, dood. But before you know it, it's part of how you talk, how I talk, fucken guy. Dude. When my ex
student saw me she said Sick a dozen times, amazed, delighted, meant it's super I've moved back, and, whoda thunk it, come in to her cafe. She checked out Josey, my instant street cred. Josey bought new pants for work with a cell phone pocket; the cell phone pocket pants are Husky Boys' Dickies, which I can't get enough of, laugh every time
I think of them, or try to name them out loud. Josey wears Husky Boys' Dickies. My darling, my husky, my husky little boy. Hey, Husky, we say, around the house, just waking up, just bumping into each other en route from basement to garden to kitchen. Hey, Husky, do you want coffee? Hey Husky, Hey Bunny, Hey Hon.
When I'm helping my students translate Sappho's Fragments 1 and 31, I get them to make a list of many-colored things, so they don't feel stuck with colorful throne. One girl can't think of anything but Skittles. Terrific, I tell her, you're breaking product placement ground. Then I ask them to think of voices they love, the voice of someone they love. It's hard to describe a voice, but
I ask them each to try, put his or her beloved in the place of Sappho's, make her theirs, more real than just sweet-voiced and lovely-laughtered. You have three minutes. Get something down, I tell them, some adjective or comparison, even if you just write the same word over and over again. 5:47 p.m. on a Wednesday, me saying Do your best and You could just say husky husky husky husky husky.
Over the course of one year I invited over fifty men to my home to be photographed naked. Most were strangers, and it would be the first time we met. Stripping my bed to a white sheet, my most intimate space became a site for the man to be at his most intimate. An area with defined boundaries to move within, into which I would look, and he would be looked at.
Being a woman, at the age of forty, contemplating the naked male body feels curiously problematic. With representations of the male nude predominantly made by male artists, there is a lack of imagery exploring a female sensual response to male beauty. Regardless of the advances made in recognising women’s capacity for and right to visual pleasure, the historically dominant male gaze prevails.
Pursuing a way of looking at and portraying man, I questioned the cliched symbols of a ‘hard’ and ‘active’ masculinity which deny vulnerability or the supposed feminine qualities of ‘soft’ and ‘passive’.
Allowing oneself to be the object of another’s gaze requires yielding one’s control and allowing for a revealing to occur, both physically and emotionally. To be naked-as-an-object – to become a nude – furthers this uncovering. In photographing this series of men I was entrusted with this exposure.
Within this encounter, between him and me, what would I see?
