CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Porgy and Bess is considered the American opera and one of the most singular pieces of theater ever produced in this country. Now, the piece has undergone a transformation of sorts. American Repertory Theater Artistic Director Diane Paulus was handpicked by the Gershwin estate to refashion the opera into a musical.

Starring Audra McDonald as Bess and Norm Lewis as Porgy, it's now running at the A.R.T. before opening on Broadway in December. 

It is a wistful prelude, a young woman's lullaby to her baby. A calm before the storm that will strike Catfish Row, a hardscrabble community in 1930s Charleston, South Carolina.

So begins The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, a musical adaptation of the classic American opera now playing at the American Repertory Theater. It is a tale mightily tossed by storms — a literal hurricane, waves of brutal violence and a romance darkly clouded by human frailty.

"I don't think she has the courage to kill herself so she's just surviving. Then all of a sudden, once she hooks up with Porgy she starts to try one more time to sort of cling to some sense of self-worth just as a last ditch effort," said Audra McDonald who plays Bess.

Bess is deeply wounded and literally scarred. Cast off by her peers, she's plummeted into the abyss of drug addiction and finds herself attached to Crown — a Catfish Row terror who moves from manipulative to murderous. Bess is withered, near broken — a pariah until she finds Porgy, the crippled beggar whose ailments render him a man vastly diminished. "There's a murder and she needs help and I'm the one who gives it to her. So we fall into this spiral whether it be good or bad, we fall into this spiral of this new awakening," said Norm Lewis, who plays Porgy.

It is a tale of love among the ruins, amid the wreckage of poverty and despair. When internal demons and outside ones can be bridled, however briefly. The story of Porgy and Bess first appeared in a 1925 novel by DuBose Heyward. He and his wife Dorothy quickly adapted the material for a play which opened on Broadway two years later. Eyeing his own Broadway adaptation though, was the country's most celebrated composer, George Gershwin.

Performer Michael Feinstein was Ira Gershwin's assistant for six years. "When Porgy and Bess was created, it came at a time that was one of great divide for our country in that when George Gershwin decided he was going to write an African American opera with an all black cast he was met with tremendous resistance from everybody. There was certainly tremendous racism involved," Feinstein said.

Director Diane Paulus says Gershwin shut out his critics, moved south, and turned his life over to crafting a Porgy and Bess opera with the Heywards. After 18 months of writing, with all of Gershwin's other projects on hold, Porgy and Bess was born in Boston. Its out-of-town opening at the Colonial Theatre in September, 1935 was history-making. The first American opera had debuted. "It was like a love letter to African American culture. He loved African American music, he loved jazz," Paulus said.

"Boston of course was the most extraordinary experience because it was the first time anyone in the world had heard the complete show," said Feinstein. "There were some visionaries that recognized from the beginning that what Gershwin had created was something that was unique and extraordinary. There were few people who got it. And I think there were more positive reviews in Boston than there were later."

When the show reached Broadway shortly after, momentum collapsed. Porgy and Bess ran for just 124 performances. That's a long run for opera, but dreadfully short for a Broadway show.

"There were people who wanted to see a Gershwin musical comedy who said what is all this other stuff? There were people who could not accept it in terms of an opera. I have a copy of George Gershwin's financial ledger that shows how the box office on the thing kept getting lower and lower and he was trying his darndest to keep it running but the public would not support it," Feinstein said.

Despite a post-Broadway multi-city tour, the show lost money. The 37-year-old Gershwin would die of a brain tumor in less than two years. And Heyward would be dead of a heart attack in five. The show, of course, survived and is now receiving only its second musical adaptation in its 76-year-history.

"It touches every generation. The fact that you've got Janis Joplin wanting to record and interpret the music. And Nina Simone and Ella and Louie," said Audra McDonald. "How much of your own personal connection do you find to Bess? Struggling with self worth. Most definitely I can, I can identify with that. Especially in a society where we're taught one thing is beautiful."

Resonant as ever, Porgy and Bess is still very much about fending off storms, on stage and off.

Tune in to Greater Boston on Tuesday for more coverage of the A.R.T.'s Porgy and Bess.

BOSTON — Often seen as a luxury in a lagging economy, prestigious symphony orchestras find that government funding and endowments simply are not there when the concert halls are half-filled and the support is most needed. But the price of rights to famous and popular works are a huge stretch for smaller community and educational orchestras’ already modest funds.
 
This difficulty was compounded when many staples of the 20th century canon, the heart of a small company’s repertoire, began shifting out of the public domain. But Lawrence Golan, music director of the Yakima Symphony Orchestra in Washington state, says there is a specific culprit lurking in U.S. copyright law: the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994. And now, as he stopped by The Callie Crossley Show recently to explain, he’s taking his complaint to the Supreme Court.
 
Copyright law has morphed into a complex and contentious beast over the years. Back in 1909, the original period for an artist to claim royalties for their work was 28 years, after which they had the option to renew. If they failed to do so, the work fell into the public domain. By 1978, the period was extended to the lifetime of the artist plus an additional 70 years.
 
In 1994, Congress passed the URAA, a foreign trade treaty, and set a whole new precedent. The act reclaimed many foreign works in the public domain back into copyright. Works that had been open to public performance by anyone were newly the property of publishers, who would be free to set their price.
 
The U.S. adopted this rule in the hopes that other countries would reciprocate and protect U.S. intellectual property more stringently. But the foreign works now reclaimed into copyright, as Don Gorder, chair of the Music Business and Management Department at Berklee explained, fell out in the first place because no one had renewed their protection after the initial 28 years. The URAA went out of its way to correct a simple failure to comply with a formality.
 
“Any American works in the public domain, they didn’t get that,” Gorder said.
 
So since 1994, because of U.S. efforts to coax foreign cooperation, small orchestras and educational institutions have been effectively barred from performing many beloved pieces.

Golan taught at a relatively small state university earlier in his career. One of his students intended to take a Profokiev concerto to competition, but since the school didn’t have the music in its small library, Golan would have had to rent it for $600. And his total annual budget for renting music came out to only $400.
 
“With the smaller orchestras, and universities, high schools, youth orchestras, in many cases a high rental price simply makes it prohibitive, and they simply cannot perform that piece,” he said.
 
Cynthia Woods, conductor of the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra, said that this hurdle is particularly vexing for small institutions and the new audiences they’re trying to attract. Many of these 20th-century foreign works represent the more avant-garde directions that younger people look for in classical music. And she believes that small, affordable orchestras need to be accessible for large audiences to learn what’s out there in the music world.
 
“We’re doing the grassroots work so that people are willing to spend $200 on a ticket to go see the BSO,” Woods said.
 
Beyond the audiences who aren’t able to see performances of exciting works, or even enduring classics like “Peter and the Wolf,” Woods said that the only beneficiaries of the law are large corporations with big trademarks, often at the expense of contemporary artists. “It actually leaves less money for commissions, less money for living composers right now,” Woods said. “It’s squashing the artistic field as we see it.”
 
All of which leaves us with the issue before the Supreme Court — a case that Golan said he took on in order to stand up for his many peers who have suffered. But he believes the case will hinge on the attitude the Court brings to it.
 
“It all depends on what they decide to judge upon,” Golan said. “It’s a no-brainer that it should go in our favor, but that’s not what the argument is going to be about.” The Court’s primary directive is to comb through technicalities and line items to see if existing law has been violated.
 
The constitutional questions here, music critic and Boston Globe contributor Matthew Guerrieri said, concerns free speech: that is, whether Congress has violated the constitutional imperative that copyrights protect works for a “limited time,” and whether artists who count on free access to works in the public domain have a right to expect them to stay there.
 
“The biggest danger of this precedent is that it takes away the only goalpost in copyright law in this country that’s never been moved, and that’s public domain,” Guerrieri said.
 
Congress has been actively extending copyright terms for decades now, to the point of confusing, Guerrieri said, the reason it exists in the first place: to protect an author’s right to earn a living creatively for his or her lifetime, while allowing the work to become publicly accessible to new artists after those rights no longer need protection.
 
And the world's music is hardly the only art canon affected by the law. The copyright status of potentially millions of works will be determined in this case, including several books and films written by H.G. Wells, and Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film classic, “Metropolis.”
 
As Golan sees it, this contraction of the public domain doesn’t actually serve anyone’s interests. “It’s not a question of heirs getting money versus not getting money, it’s a question of the pieces not being played,” he said.
 
He hopes that the Court will recognize that music derives its value from being heard. “I would venture to guess that every composer would say the most important thing for them is to have their works performed, especially 90 years after they wrote them,” he said.

“Always Like The Son” by Release the Sunbird, from “Come Back To Us”“ — The name of the band, which was recently started by the leader of indie rock band Rogue Wave, refers to a Robert Pollard song. But in any case, as Thompson said: "It sounds like a euphemism for something awesome.”

“Daisy” by Fang Island, from “Fang Island” — Thompson pointed to this one as a "Woooo!" kind of song. “The Go-Gos called, they want their handclaps back,” Almond added.



“It’s Time To Party” by Andrew W.K.from “I Get Wet” “ — "His first full-length record has three different songs containing the word party,” Thompson said. The song is “The kind of wonderfully, kind of overdriven, roll your windows down, blare the music as loud as you can, you can’t go wrong.” And, frankly, most of W.K.'s songs are incitements to party, so you really can't go wrong.

“Rolling In The Deep” by Adele, from “21” — “Just a record that everybody knows, but is a perfect summer song.” It's been a huge hit for many months already: it debuted all the way back in November. “Seems like it’s kind of taken its place as one of the big songs of this summer," Thompson said.

“Strawberry Letter 23” by Shuggie Otis, from “Inspiration Information” — "If you’ve got a group of people coming over for a barbecue, and you want that perfect choice, that perfect album to put on, that’s not too obvious — like for example the Adele pick I just made — and it’s gonna surprise a lot of people but everyone’s gonna love it.” Dating to 1977, Thompson says the song is a lost soul classic that's been recently rediscovered.

"Waterloo Sunset" by The Kinks, from "Something Else by The Kinks" — An old standby, from 1967, that Thompson said is possibly his favorite song of all time.

Steve Almond's Picks
 

“The Sun Always Reminds Me Of You” by Marissa Nadler, from “Marissa Nadler” —  Nadler is an acclaimed singer-songwriter based in Boston, and this is the one of the singles from her latest album, just released this month. “Her voice is a winter, but the arrangements are summer," Thompson said. “Like it’s a beautiful summer day, but you just had a depressing break-up kind of feeling," Almond added. Rooney got to see the song bring out the "sensitive male" in both of them.

 

“Everything Is Everything” by Booker T. Jones, covering Lauryn Hill, from “The Road From Memphis” — The much loved hip-hop and R&B artist gets the instrumental cover treatment. "This is just a party anthem," Almond said. "There’s no words, just interpretive dance. You’re around the pool, maybe there’s some alcoholic beverages. And this is just what you listen to.”
 
“We Almost Lost Detroit” by Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., covering Gil Scot-Heron — Almond felt he had to give a shout-out to his favorite artist, the legendary spoken-word artist and musician Gil Scot-Heron, who passed away last month. “To me, that’s late night summertime, and you’ve had a lot of drinks, and you’ve maybe had more than drinks, Emily, to be honest with you," Almond said.



“Summertime Thing” by Chuck Prophet, from “No Other Love” — “This is the quintessential summertime song," Almond said. "And it’s been my summer anthem for as long as I”ve known about it. It even mentions The Beach Boys, for extra bonus points.”

Almond paraphrased the lyrics to get at the summer vibe of the song: “Money in the bank, I’m not gonna save it, we’re having a party – or maybe not it’s not even organized as a party, I just hope this one chick comes by. That is my summer.”
 
“Youth Of 1000 Summers” by Van Morrison,  from “Enlightenment” — Just one more classic: this 1990 track from the legendary Irish singer-songwriter. “I know Stephen Thompson and I can agree on that," Almond said.
 

Alicia Anstead's Picks 

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein
 I just saw Woody Allen's film Midnight in Paris," Anstead said. "I am now obsessed with Paris in the 1920s and 30s." Anstead thinks of this period, when the highly productive "Lost Generation" of artists and writers convened in Paris — as having shaped American culture in the 20th century more than almost any other time or place.

Gertrude Stein was a huge figure in this generation, and she wrote this novel about her lover, editor and confidant, Alice B. Toklas, in the guise of an autobiography. The book is as much chronicle of Stein's life and their time together.

Vintage; 252 pages.

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
The bestselling trilogy of young-adult thrillers, Anstead said, is great for summer entertainment at really any age. These post-apocalyptic novels concern a society in which a pair of children are selected annually to fight to the death in a televised event.

“I think they’re extraordinary fiction for young people,” Anstead said. She felt that Suzanne Collins had successfully transported her to another world.

Scholastic; 384 pages.
 

Callie Crossley's Picks

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable
This new reexamination of the controversial figure's life earned sad notice when the author passed away, two days before its release.

But the book's praise was well and thoroughly earned on its own merits. "He spent 20 years refuting what we think we know about Malcolm X," Crossley said. Marble reveals that the man presented to us in "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" was a misleading, sometimes fictional image. Plus, the book is 600 pages long — perfect for a long summer.

Viking; 608 pages.

The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson
Wilkerson, the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the long African-American migration to the Northern United States.

“A lot of book clubs are off for the summer, and they pick a book that is going to be either thoughtful, or long, and spend some time really revisiting it," Crossley said. “It’s stunning, it reads like a novel.”

Random House; 640 pages.



High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, by Jessica B. Harris
"A combination cookbook and cultural history," as Callie called it, Harris chronicles the cuisine of the African diaspora and its huge social significance. The book is a full-on celebration of the food and social traditions that sustained Africans in the Americas, and the culture that evolved in the wake of slavery.

Bloomsbury; 304 pages.



 

Yu Jin Ko's Picks

Please Look After Mom, by Kyung-Sook Shin
This novel, which has been a huge bestseller in Korea, is the story of a family searching for their mother, after she disappears into the crowds one day at Seoul Station.

But this may not be the right book for those who want something light or fun for the summer. “It’s not an escapist fantasy, but rather sends you on a guilt trip,” Ko said. “It’s a tear-jerker, and it wrings every last tear form your body.”

Knopf; 256 pages.



Babette's Feast, by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)
This classic short story (here collected with several others by Dinesen), which later became a popular film, tells the story of a French cook working in a puritanical Norwegian community who treats her employers to a decadent feast.

Ko recommends it in part because, while he shares the summer fascination with food, this story is likewise less escapist and more a tale of, as he put it, "An intractable desire that never fully yields to satisfaction.”

Penguin; 256 pages.


On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
Despite the title, Ko doesn't think this one is quite right as a beach book. “In many ways it’s the antithesis of the summer reading book," he said.

"Summer reading — a lot of summer reading, I should say — has a particular relationship to desire. Which is that it enacts a fulfillment of desire that leads to a new state — new states of being, new forms of self-actualization, etc. But there’s a category of novel that explores what happens to people when desire is deferred, or unrealized.”

For Ko, McEwan's novel is another story that movingly expresses and relates an unfulfilled desire. Which may be, in the end, a fine thing to contemplate — what is possible, impossible, and what you really want — over the long summer months.

Nan A. Talese; 208 pages.

BOSTON — The Boston Pops' 126th season is now underway, with a special focus on the American Songbook.

That's a phrase we've all heard — but what does it actually mean? The American Songbook encompasses a broad range of music, which some people say extends as far back as the 1800's and can go into somewhat contemporary times.

Singer and anthropologist Michael Feinstein says much of the American Songbook explores love and romance in clever, witty words and playful tunes.

"Most songs are songs of romance and love and the songs from the Golden Age, the '20s, '30s and 40s, were a panoply of extraordinary brilliant, clever expressions of romance. These songwriters were always trying to find different ways of expressing that oft-expressed emotion. And the wit and the humor still tickles people," Feinstein said.

And that's what conductor Keith Lockhart says he's really looking for — music that still tickles, that still resonates. Classics. 

"To, me the definition of classic is something that reaches somebody for whom it was not originally intended. Shakespeare’s plays for example are an incontrovertible example of that. But also the songs of Gershwin, the songs of Porter," Lockhart said. "Things that people now, who were not alive when either of those people died still sing, still understand, still love." 

The Boston Pops are especially well-equipped to explore this canon. The Pops is older than the songbook itself, and for decades it has literally given voice to the genre with performers like Rosemary Clooney.

Click the player above to hear WGBH's Bob Seay's full interview with Greater Boston's Jared Bowen on the Boston Pops' 126th season.

Vote for your favorite Short Waves Video thru May 22. 

In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, WGBH in collaboration with the Boston Asian American Film Festival (BAAFF) held an Open Call for short videos through the WGBH Lab.
 
Asian Pacific Americans have long been making waves in all aspects of American life, but their stories have often been lost in general U.S. discourse. “Short Waves: Stories Shaping Our Community,” hopes to bring light to these stories through locally made, short films about the Asian American experience and community.

The top four submissions can be viewed below, and were selected by a distinguished panel of judges:

• Tak Toyoshima, Creator/Secret Asian Man, Creative Director/Weekly Dig
• Donald Young, Director of Programs, Center for Asian American Media
• Judith Vecchione, Executive Producer, WGBH 

Please help determine the finalist and vote for your favorite.

The finalist will have the honor of automatic acceptance in the 2011 Boston Asian American Film Festival this November and possible broadcast on WGBH WORLD.

Watch The Short Films

Wear I Fit by Pratna Kem

N as in Name: Danh Nguyen by Pimthida Tiemchaiyapum

Depression, Suicide (Asian American Media Literacy Digital Story) by Frances Kai Ying Chow

Ballroom by Jennifer Carpenter

Vote On Your Favorite

Please help determine the finalist and vote for your favorite film. 

The finalist will have the honor of automatic acceptance in the 2011 Boston Asian American Film Festival this November and possible broadcast on WGBH WORLD.

The finalist will be announced on May 25^th at a public screening of all the Short Wave submissions at the Josiah Quincy School in Chinatown from 6:30-8pm. Filmmakers will be present for a brief Q&A session following. 

To RSVP for the May 25th event or for more information on BAAFF visit: baaff.org.

March 24, 2011

CAMBRIDGE -- Diane Paulus is the visionary artistic director of Cambridge’s American Repertory Theater who bounded in from New York two years ago with a strikingly definitive perspective of what theatre could and should be.  At no other moment has the spectrum of Paulus’ ambition been more evident or more available than in March, when she has opened three of her directorial efforts simultaneously.
 
Paulus arrived to take over the A.R.T. just as she was also shepherding a dynamic and once again relevant revival of Hairto Broadway.
 

Now the touring production of Hair, which Paulus also directs, reaches Boston with a three week run at The Colonial Theatre beginning March 22. On Broadway, the show received eight Tony Nominations, and won one for Best Revival. Set during the Vietnam War, it follows a group of counter-culture hippies as they make the passage from free spirits to the socially devastated.
 
Although set firmly in a distinct time and place—New York in the 1960s—the show has managed to transcend generations divides over the years.
 
“What the show does now,” says Paulus, “is people are moved by it across generations. You have people who have lived through the 60s who are coming back, and in many cases for the first time looking back at their youth.
 
“A lot of people get very moved and kind of sad by it, like ‘oh my god that’s who we were, what happened to out country?’ But they are bringing their kids who are 17, 18 or 15 who don’t really know about that time period, even though it is really recent American history, and saying ‘mom and dad, you were like that. You were an activist?  Wait a minute, young people cared enough about their county and loved their country enough to stand up for the values they believed in? Peace and freedom?” 
 
“What I love about it is it’s speaking to the past, but young people see it today, and think it was written yesterday for them. They put the flowers in their hair and start dancing. They wear the hippie clothes. They don’t look at it as a revival.”
 
The history of Hairincludes five distinct versions that different productions have drawn from over the years. Paulus says she went back to the original 1967 New York Public Theater version to begin crafting her production.
 
“I was reading it from a paperback pocketbook edition that was found in a second hand store,” recalls Paulus.  “I found lines that felt to me so relevant. Much more relevant than maybe the funnier lines that went on Broadway the following spring.” 
 
“So to see and hear things about red China. To hear about the military industrial complex, especially while we were doing Hair [the 2007 Broadway production] during one of the last years of the Bush administration.  I went to Jim Rado, the original writer, and I asked ‘can we put these lines back in?’ And he was delighted. He feels Hair should continue to evolve, and my partnership with him has been crafting to a version that speaks to our audience today.”
 
Through the storied history of the production, one scene continues to get a strong reaction. That would be the famous on-stage nude scene.
 
“The important thing to know about the nudity is… it has always been completely voluntary. So when you are in Hair, you choose as an actor ‘do I want to do that or not?’ It’s not like staging that you are required to do.”
 
“The purity of the audience’s gaze. That’s what that moment’s about. It’s not about looking or being voyeuristic; it’s about a kind of freedom. When you think about the fact when they did this in 1968 in Broadway, I mean certain cities this show was banned, because of the nudity. And the idea that was more threatening and more dangerous than someone with a gun killing someone. I think that was the juxtaposition that was so powerful in the late 1960’s for what that moment stood for.”
 
Back on her home stage in Cambridge, Paulus recently opened the riveting and searing rock musical Prometheus Bound.
 
This is a contemporary take on the Greek classic, with a tyrannical Zeus who exacts revenge on Prometheus for sharing fire with humans. It’s especially poignant in this age of unrest and uprising in Egypt and Libya.
 

Gavin Creel stars as Prometheus in the ART’s rock musical production of Prometheus Bound, continuing through April 2 at Oberon. (Source:Marcus Stern)

As for connections between between her own work, Paulus says, “Prometheus Boundand Hairare both pieces that deal with issues of what it means to be alive, what it means to be a citizen, and what it means to be connected to the politics of our time.”
 
“They both yearn to break the fourth wall, and create a happening. In Hair, it’s the 1960’s being happening. In Prometheus Bound, it is a partnership with Amnesty International, and we are kind of shedding a light on prisoners of conscience… and taking an ancient Greek play, and saying this play speaks to our time, and speaks to the issues we are living in our world today.”
 
Much like Paulus’s still running Donkey Show, Prometheusis emersion theatre. The story unfolds all around. gathering us in the bliss of heaven and heaving us into the depths of hell.
 
Paul explains, “I believe in theatre being live, and pushing the aspect of the live event as far into the forefront as possible.  I just think sometimes we think theater equals ‘I sit in a chair, it’s bolted to the floor, my behavior is to be quiet’.”
 
“Theater can be ritual; theatre can be visceral as well as intellectual, and emotional. So I am trying with the A.R.T. to stay true to the mission, which is to expand the boundaries of theatre.”
 
“Theater can look like a happening. Theater can look like a rock concert. Guess what you can stand in a theatre show and put your fist in the air, and sing along. That’s theater as well.”
 
 Prometheus Boundis completing its run at the A.R.T. on Saturday, April 2.
The third act in Paulus’ theatre trifecta is the opera Death in the Powers,which just closed at the Cutler Majestic Theatre.  This is the story of a wealthy inventor, who finding himself at the end of his life, is able to download himself into his environment; into books, furniture, and walls.
 
A collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, this highly inventive piece garnered world wide acclaim after its premiere in Monte Carlo last year. Much of the action involves robotics controlled by people off stage, including nine robots, giant chandeliers that move, and walls with electronic data that are being fed off one of the singer’s body.

“The thing about Death in The Powers,” says Paulus. “It’s all-interactive with the stage action. It’s not press go and everything happens.  The robots are moving on stage with the performers.”
 
“So the attempt in Death in the Powers, how do we make technology a living partner on stage. Not something that is canned and running on it’s own track, but something that is as we know in our lives today, is becoming part of our life, becoming a part of how we live and breathe and act. That is what the opera really does with the technology.”
 
After this year’s momentous season, the A.R.T. is already preparing to go big in the future. The Gershwin Estate is allowing the company to mount the first major revival of Porgie and Bess since it’s beginning 40 years ago. Paulus is currently planning the premiere for this summer.
 

March 24, 2011

BOSTON -- F. Murray Abraham is a familar face to two generations of audiences, most prominently as Amadeus Mozart's jealous nemisis Antonio Salieri in the 1984 film Amadeus. Since winning an Academy Award for that role, Abraham has performed for both movie and theater-goers.

Abraham comes to Boston as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, opening Tuesday, March 29 at Arts Emerson’s Cutler Majestic Theatre as part of ArtsEmerson’s season.The Oscar-winner talks with WGBH contributor Kara Miller about staying in shape, listening to Stravinsky, and eating lobster in Boston.

Q: This is an interesting time to be in a play about making loans and charging interest. Do you see The Merchant of Venicehaving particular resonance now?

A: Yes, I really do–on a couple of levels. I think that it examines the idea of justice, and it particularly speaks to our time, as there doesn't appear to be any regard for the other–which doesn't ever seem to change.

I feel very strongly about what has been happening–and helpless too. The political system feels geared towards the wealthy. In the play, Shylock represents something bigger than Jews in the world. He represents anyone who has been oppressed: blacks, Irish, Chinese, Palestinians, many groups.

Q: What is the challenge in engaging with art that is more than 400 years old?

A: That's what makes our production [from New York’s Theatre for a New Audience] so exciting. It's perfectly clear. I'm hoping people will drop down and see it because I think they'll be blown away. It was a big success in New York City and [England’s] Stratford-upon-Avon. Sold out in both venues. I can't wait to get to rehearsal– we're really rediscovering the piece.

When people see the show, I would like them to drop us a note or a line. The play might be life-changing. I really mean it.

Q: Do directors approach Shakespeare differently than they did when you first started acting?

A: I think so. The conceptual director has become very prominent. In some ways, that's unfortunate. They have sacrificed communication through the actor for a concept. Our director [Darko Tresnjak] is different. But I do think that some directors now think of actors as something to be moved around–I don't work with them again.

Q: When you're not acting, what kind of art do you indulge in? And what do you look forward to doing in Boston?

A: I really love art. My closest friend is a painter, and we visit museums at least once a week. Stravinsky is my favorite composer–I can't imagine a world without music. I'm also very defensive about Salieri and his music, and Mozart, who I listen to a lot, is a constant surprise. [Abraham won the Best Actor Oscar for portraying Salieri in the 1984 movie Amadeus.]

In Boston, I intend to take a look at some of the best places to get lobster. Also, I have friends in Cambridge. I did King Lear there one time, and it was the first place I encountered three 24-hour bookstores. I was really impressed. I will probably also teach a master class or two.

Q: How tough is it to do eight performances a week in a theatre production?

A: It's what I've been doing all my life. My work is to stay in shape–I am my instrument. I'm 71, and I don't think I've been in better shape. I thought I'd be dead at 60. I once did a show where I performed 16 times a week, but I don't think anyone in history has ever loved acting as much as I do. Maybe as much, but not more.

Watch a preview of The Merchant of Venice

James Levine announced Wednesday his resignation as Music Director for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. (Courtesy)

Mar. 3, 2011

BOSTON — A search for a new music director at the Boston Symphony Orchestra is underway.

The process began immediately after Maestro James Levine announced his resignation from the post Wednesday, after a seven-year tenure dogged by ongoing health problems.

Mark Volpe, managing director of the The Boston Symphony Orchestra, says that conversations about Levine's future with the orchestra began last November. 

Volpe said Levine, who has long been plagued by back problems and complications from a viral infection, was self-medicating, and the drugs had begun to take a toll on his facilities. "Physically it was clear he didn’t have control. Motor skills were not there. We all know how articulate Jim is so when he's not articulate, when it's not entirely coherent, something's up," said BSO Managing Director Mark Volpe in an interview with WGBH's Brian Bell.

Levine had missed number of performances in the 2010 season because of those health issues. "Both of us sort of understood if there was another big block that got impacted by cancellations that we had to quickly — in terms of credibility, frankly — announce to the public that we were moving forward with a search, which is sort of the direction we were headed but this is a little more abrupt," said Volpe. 

But Levine won't be completely gone. He and Volpe are working to design an artistic role he'll continue at the orchestra. "He and I still have to sort out what his ongoing role will be — and we hope very much there is one — but he's got to figure out what is physically possible," Volpe said.

67-year-old Levine took the helm at the BSO in 2004, becoming the BSO's 14th music director. His announcement on Tuesday followed months of speculation about Levine's ability to continue as music director.

“Given the challenges regarding my health and the ensuing absences they have forced me to take from my work with the BSO, I believe it is best for everyone, but especially the orchestra and our wonderful audiences, for me to step down as music director,” said Levine in a statement. 

“We look forward to continuing our conversation with Jim about defining a new role where he can focus solely on the music and defining artistically stimulating projects that would be meaningful to him and the orchestra, building upon his BSO legacy thus far," Volpe said in an interview shortly after Tuesday's announcement.

Levine will officially step down from his position on Sept. 1, ending his seven years in the job. He also serves as the music director for the Metropolitan Opera in New York — a role which he'll continue.

The BSO has been incredibly fortunate to have had one of the greatest conductors of our time at its helm," Volpe said. "It is imperative that we take this time to express  our deepest gratitude to Jim for the extraordinary performances that have inspired his loyal listeners in Boston and around the world.” 

For the immediate future, BSO Assistant Conductor Marcelo Lehninger will conduct concerts on March 3, 4, 5, & 8 at Symphony Hall as well as March 15 at Carnegie Hall in New York, a program that includes a BSO commission by composer Harrison Birtwhistle with violinist Christian Tetzlaff.

Conductor Roberto Abbado will step in to lead concerts on March 10-12 at Symphony Hall and on March 18-19 at the New Jersey Center for the Performing Arts and Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., respectively, with pianist Peter Serkin as soloist in Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3.  For the March 16 program at Carnegie Hall, violinist Joshua Bell will be the soloist in Bruch's Violin Concerto in G minor.  Serkin and Bell have been engaged in the absence of pianist Maurizio Pollini, who cancelled due to illness.

Latvian conductor Andris Nilsons will make his BSO debut Mahler's Symphony No. 9 on March 17 at Carnegie Hall.

BOSTON — The Museum of Fine Arts isn’t the only Boston museum with a major expansion. Just across the park from the MFA, a vast, $114 million extension is rising behind the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, designed by famed architect Renzo Piano.
 
Anne Hawley, the director of the Gardner Museum, said the expansion was tailored to fit with the existing museum. “One of the things that Renzo Piano -- who so understands this building -- wanted to do was to make sure that the buildings, that the new building respected this building. He said it had to be like a nephew to a great grand-aunt.”

Site Plan of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (Renzo Piano Building Workshop 2010)

And the great grand aunt, by the way, is getting a facelift. The new building allows for Mrs. Gardner’s palace to be restored back to the way she left it—including the grand tapestry room, which has doubled as a formal concert hall for the past 40 years.
 
“For over 100 years, this building has been loved to death but there’s just too much going on in it,” Hawley said. Everything from fixtures to tiles to the 16th-century Flemish tapestries will be restored.
 
But the bulk of the work is happening behind the museum, with the new 70,000 square foot building. It’s larger than Mrs. Gardner’s Palace.
 
Originally, Hawley and her colleagues told Piano they wanted the extension to “float poetically” behind the museum. “And to have a great feeling for people when they walked into it. And to have that intimacy of scale that the Palace has,” Hawley said.
 
So visitors will now enter the museum on a floor entirely enclosed by glass, giving the sense that building does float. It also gives patrons a clear view of the palace and surrounding gardens.
 
Hawley says it’s a definitive contrast from the original structure. “That is such a closed building. No one really knows when they look at it what’s going on inside. So the idea was that this would be very transparent and it would be open to the park and public,” Hawley said.
 
In addition to a new café, gift shop and offices, there will be a 2,000 square-ft. special exhibitions gallery here as well. It’s three times the space of the old one.
 
“It’ll be for contemporary artists but it will also be for historic projects and we’ll alternate between them. And it has, it goes 36 feet up,” Hawley said.
 
And what’s quickly shaping up to be the most iconic space in the museum is a soaring new performance hall. Previously housed in the Tapestry Room, here it will be a very singular cube with only two rows on each side of the ground level and just single rows on the three balcony levels.
 
“It is going to be intimate and lively and I think people are just going to love it,” Hawley said. She says there’s no other space like it.
 
We’ll be able to hear and see for ourselves when the new building opens in just 11 months.