June 2007

Highlights ¦ Agenda

Highlights

Jazz ta parta (Sunday 17th, 6.00 pm)

We are proud to present the young and promising band jazz ta parta to close the first year of the Jazz @ the Museum Club. The group will play a wide variety of jazz standards as well as original songs, ranging from Jazz-Funk to Fusion and Afro beats. The group comprises André Capela (Sax & Flute); Leon Baldesberger (Trumpet); João Araujo (Piano); Amadis Monteiro (Drums); and Marco Martins (Bass).

The concert will be held outside and we are looking forward to having a great party! Anyone who comes along with an instrument and joins in the jam session after the concert won't have to pay the entrance fee!!!

Bar and Refreshments from 5.30 pm

Entry: 5 €. Sunday 20th, 6.00 pm

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A Night At The Opera (Sunday 10th)

Video presentation by Helga Hampton of the 1990 production of Salomé (Richard Strauss) by the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli), with Catherine Malfitano in the lead role.

Salomé is a story of sex and violence involving a dysfunctional family. Dad, nominally in charge of a Kingdom, suffers from paranoia and is unable to focus properly on anything in particular apart from his step-daughter after whom he lusts. She, the teen from hell, is a mixed-up kid with hormones dangerously rising who is sexually fixated on an unkempt eccentric who is locked up in an underground dungeon. Her mother, the nagging wife from hell, eggs on her daughter in order to annoy her husband. All is bound to end in tears. But it turns out much worse than that and by the end we have had, among other things, sexual blackmail, variant necrophilia and three fatalities one of which involves Dad killing his step-daughter.

The success of any production of this opera is going to hinge on the portrayal of Salome, however good other aspects of the staging may be. What a casting nightmare. Where do you find a soprano who can convince as a teenage girl who bowls over men with her allure – from common soldiers to Kings; who has supreme acting ability, is an expert dancer and has a voice of seductive lyricism. That voice has to be able to ride over Strauss’s huge orchestra when it comes to the increasing bombardment of high notes as the end approaches. She must also have the stamina to survive a performance ordeal from entrance a few minutes into the opera and on to curtain without a break.

Catherine Malfitano is probably as near as you could get to this balancing act, certainly within living memory of opera buffs. Her age - at the time of this filming she was around three times the age of the young woman she is portraying - is a disadvantage she overcomes magnificently so that most people, I suggest, would forget the issue once they are stuck into the performance. This is not just the acting but physical endowment as well, for she has sufficient confidence in her figure to finish the Dance of the Seven Veils totally naked.

Entry: 2 € (Friends free). Sunday 10th, 6.00 pm

Film Club (Monday 4th)

Sideways is a 2004 Academy Award-winning and Golden Globe Award-winning comedy/drama film, co-written and directed by Alexander Payne. It is based on the 2004 novel of the same name by Rex Pickett.

The film starts with two old friends setting off on a wine-tasting road trip . . . only to veer dizzily SIDEWAYS into a wry, comedic exploration of the crazy vicissitudes of love and friendship, the damnable persistence of loneliness and dreams and the enduring war between Pinot and Cabernet.

The misadventures begin when Miles (Paul Giamatti), an un-recovered divorcé and would-be novelist with a wine fixation, decides to gift his old college buddy and washed-up actor Jack (Thomas Haden Church) with a celebratory trip to the vineyards of Santa Barbara wine country the week before Jack's wedding. The two couldn't be an odder couple. Jack is an over-sexed charmer; Miles is a sad-sack worrier. Jack is looking for his "last taste of freedom;" Miles is just hoping to not get even more depressed. Jack is fine with cheap Merlot; Miles pines for the perfect Pinot. Indeed, the only thing they seem to share in common is the same heady mix of failed ambitions and fading youth.

And yet, as they make their way up the coast, Miles and Jack soon find themselves drowning in wine and women (Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen). When Jack falls head-over-heels for a local wine pourer and threatens to call off his nuptials, Miles tries to keep his friend on the straight and narrow. But Miles's own romantic encounter with a wine-savvy waitress interferes and sends them both careening headlong into reality. Now, the wedding approaches and with it the certainty that Miles and Jack won't make it back to Los Angeles unscathed or unchanged . . . if they get there in one piece at all.

Entry: 2 € (Friends free). Monday 4th, 5.30pm

The Life & Times of Salazar (Friday 29th June)

The topic of this month's meeting of the History Group is The Life and Times of António de Oliveira Salazar - led by Peter Booker.

Friday 29th June, 4.00 pm

Agenda: June 2007

See also: Regular Events

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