The Arts Fuse Newsletter, February 5
Coming Attractions, February Short Fuses, Tribute to Marianne Faithfull, Reviews of the film "I'm Still Here" and the novel "Darkenbloom", and what can we really know about Leonardo da Vinci?
From The Editor's Desk:
Last week, I congratulated White Snake Projects for its commitment to present a “climate change-themed series of performances, conversations, initiatives, and its first community opera”. The Boston Lyric Opera should also be saluted for the world premiere (March 12 through 16) of The Seasons, an opera in which Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons will serve as connective tissue in a libretto written by Sarah Ruhl that “imagines a world whose weather is turned upside down and the impact on artists and affairs of the heart.” The production is part of an ambitious BLO season program called the Rising Waters / Rising Voices initiative, which will include, in this case, “post-show talks about climate change featuring regional experts in related fields.”
This BLO production is one way a venerable work can be re-imagined to address the climate crisis. Another strategy is to re-examine a classic through a contemporary perspective. A recent Boston Globe interview with actor and dramatist Kate Hamill suggests her revised version of Homer’s Odyssey, to be staged soon by the American Repertory Theater, will have a venerable feminist slant: “I have never believed that Penelope just sat on her hands for 20 years.” A solid idea for reenvisioning the story on stage, but “asking how we can embrace healing and forgiveness in order to end cycles of violence and revenge,” as ART publicity puts it, goes back to Aeschylus.
What would be fresher? Over the past couple of decades the Iliad and the Odyssey have been read by critics and scholars for their overlooked insights into the evolution of environmental destruction. Edith Hall’s Epic of the Earth: Reading Homer’s Iliad in the Fight for a Dying World (Yale University Press) argues that “the urgency of the global ecological crisis must impel us to reassess the Homeric warriors yet again, in terms of their rapacity toward their natural environment.” The Odyssey has also been explored for how it speaks to modern ecological concerns, for how Homer’s epic links together “the abuse of nature as well as cavalier attitudes to battlefield casualties and the rape and enslavement of women.” It is time that dramatists looked back at the past through greener lenses.
—Bill Marx, Editor-in-Chief
Archive: From the Editor's Desk
Coming Attractions through February 17 — What Will Light Your Fire
Compiled by Arts Fuse Editor
Our expert critics supply a guide to film, visual art, theater, author readings, and music. More offerings will be added as they come in.
February Short Fuses — Materia Critica
Compiled by Arts Fuse Editor
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Arts Remembrance: Marianne Faithfull — A Singular Talent Who Pursued an Oft-Perilous Life
By Paul Robicheau
The resolute British singer/actress survived addiction, homelessness, cancer and Covid, which left her in a coma before she completed work on her final album in 2021.
Book Review: “Leonardo da Vinci — An Untraceable Life”
By Trevor Fairbrother
This book is an anti-biography that argues Leonardo had little interest in autobiographical self-promotion and claims that the many gaps in the historical record prevent him from cohering as a biographical subject
Film Review: “I’m Still Here” — They’re Still Here
By Peter Keough
Fascism is faced down in Walter Salles’ Oscar-nominated masterpiece.
Book Review: “Darkenbloom” — The Past is Prologue?
By Kai Maristed
Darkenbloom is a hefty novel, in which a blood-stained, depraved swath of history is laid bare by in-depth examination of a narrow geographical sample (think One Hundred Years of Solitude, or, for that matter, Gone With the Wind).
Help Keep The Arts Fuse Lit!
Precious few independent online arts publications make it to double digits. Please give us the resources the magazine needs to persevere at an essential cultural task.
Keep the Fuse lit and support our 70+ writers by making a donation.
The Arts Fuse also needs underwriting for the magazine to continue to grow.
And…tell your friends about the in-depth arts coverage you can’t get anywhere else.
Questions, comments, concerns?
Editor-in-Chief
Bill Marx
wmarx103@gmail.com
