Utah Opera's Carmen

I have seen the opera Carmen, Bizet's classic tale of love and betrayal, several times and let me tell you that Utah Opera's current production is magnificent!  I had a chance to see it Monday night and I loved it!  As soldiers guard a factory in Seville, a peasant girl named Micaela (Sarah Tucker) comes looking for her childhood sweetheart, a new recruit named Don Jose (Dominick Chenes), with a letter from his mother begging him to come home.  After reminiscing about their home, she leaves.  The women who work in the factory come out for a break and one of them, a gypsy named Carmen (Elise Quagliata), flirts with the soldiers.  Jose ignores her but he secretly keeps the flower she tosses to him.  Carmen and another worker get in a fight and she is eventually sent to prison.  Jose is ordered to escort her there but she convinces him to let her escape with the promise of her love.  Jose is sent to jail for letting her go.  Meanwhile, the bullfighter Escamillo (Christian Bowers) comes to town and declares his love to Carmen but she refuses him because she loves Jose.  When Jose is released from prison, Carmen dances for him but he tells her he must return to the barracks when he hears the bugle sound.  Carmen is furious and Jose eventually deserts the army to be with her.  After a while, Carmen grows weary of Jose and, when Micaela comes to tell him that his mother is dying, she urges him to go to her.  Escamillo invites Carmen to watch him in a bullfight and she joins him in Seville.  Jose, still desperately in love with Carmen, follows her and, when she declares her love for Escamillo, he kills her.  It is so dramatic and the music is absolutely incredible, with some of the most recognizable melodies in the classical canon: the "Habanera" and the "Toreador Song."  Quagliata is an absolutely beguiling Carmen and she sings the role beautifully but I was also very impressed with her dancing.  Chenes is also excellent as Don Jose and I had goosebumps as he sang of his love for Carmen in Act 2 and Bowers is a lot of fun in the "Toreador Song."  I loved the vibrant costumes and the set design actually reminded me of the arena where I saw a bull fight in Spain!  I highly recommend this thrilling production!  It runs through Oct. 16 and tickets may be purchased here.

The Birth of a Nation

Nate Parker's The Birth of a Nation was the talk of the Sundance Film Festival last year and it was one of the most coveted tickets.  I tried to get one, to no avail, but I knew that the Salt Lake Film Society would eventually screen it and, sure enough, it is now showing at the Broadway Theatre.  I had the chance to see it Sunday afternoon and all of the hype surrounding the film at Sundance (it garnered the biggest deal for worldwide distribution in festival history and won both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize) was definitely warranted!  The subject of this film is controversial and it is sometimes very difficult to watch but it is powerful, brilliant, and strangely beautiful.  I don't think I will be able to stop thinking about it for days.  It tells the true story of Nat Turner (Nate Parker), who as a child is taught to read but is only allowed to read the Bible.  He becomes a preacher to his fellow slaves on the plantation owned by Samuel Turner (Armie Hammer), who is near bankruptcy.  Many plantations are suffering economic difficulties and owners fear slave uprisings.  Nat is taken to these neighboring plantations to preach to the slaves about submitting to their masters in order to quell the rebellions (and make money for Samuel).  Nat begins to see, by incremental degrees, the evils of slavery, particularly the brutal beating of his wife and the rape of a slave by a guest on the plantation.  As he searches the Bible for justification for slavery, Nat finds more justification for rising up against the chains that bind him.  He eventually foments a dramatic rebellion against his master and those of neighboring plantations (in some incredibly greusome scenes) before being suppressed by the Virginia militia.  Nat is eventually captured and hanged but the film ends with a close-up of a face of a young slave watching the hanging and that same man as a soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War showing Turner's legacy.  Parker gives an absolutely riveting performance as Turner and the scenes where he preaches gave me goosebumps.  The beautiful widescreen shots of antebellum Virginia are juxtaposed with nightmarish close-up shots of brutality (some I had to look away from) very effectively and the stirring soundtrack by Henry Jackman adds to the tension.  I walked out of the theater in tears, as did many others in my screening, but I think this is a film that everyone should see.

Maroon 5 at the Vivint Arena

Many years ago I became obsessed, as I am wont to do, with a new song called "Harder to Breathe."  I didn't know who sang it but I turned the radio up every time it came on.  I would sing it at the top of my lungs and I got to be pretty good at spitting out the lyrics.  I remember talking about this song to all of my friends (and students) but no one really knew anything about it or the band Maroon 5.  Then the song, and band, exploded and I got to be the one to say, "I told you so!"  I actually went to a Matchbox Twenty concert just to see Maroon 5 open for them and I thought Adam Levine was a great showman.  He still is!  Saturday night I got to see the band for the first time as a headliner and the concert was so much fun.  Adam Levine is so handsome and he strutted across the runway through the crowd liked he owned the Vivint Arena!  They played "Harder to Breathe" early on in the evening, to my delight, and then just kept playing the hits one after the other:  "Moves Like Jagger," "This Love," "One More Night," "Misery," "Love Somebody," "Animals," "Lucky Strike," "Sunday Morning," "Makes Me Wonder," "Payphone," and a fabulous rendition of "Daylight" to end their set.  I really like it when a band plays all of their biggest singles.  They definitely had the crowd singing along with every word.  For the encore, the band set up on the "V" at the end of their runway for an acoustic performance of "She Will Be Loved" which was amazing!  Levine asked everyone to put their phones away so that we could all have a moment together which I thought was fabulous!  A girl in our section kept hers out to record and we all shamed her into putting it away!  Then they played a rousing rendition of "Sugar" and ended the evening with a great cover of "Let's Go Crazy" complete with purple lights!  It was a fabulous evening!

Note:  The guy sitting next to me mentioned that this was only the second concert he had ever been to so I told him that this was the second concert I had been to this week!

Saturday Ritual

It has quickly become a tradition with my family to watch Sean play football and then go to breakfast every Saturday morning.  I really love this little ritual and, I think I've mentioned this once or twice, I look forward to it all week!  I think my whole family enjoys watching Sean play and I think Sean loves having all of us there!  Yesterday the Braves played the Granger Lancers and, once again, Sean had an excellent showing on both offense and defense!

Sean's coach congratulating him on an awesome play!

The coach pulled him out for just a few seconds to get a drink and then put him right back in!

He has made some really good friends on the team.

A few pictures of Sean and the team in action!

This is the "You are embarrassing me" look!  I get it a lot!

The Girl on the Train

Last year my book club read the best selling juggernaut The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.  I thought it was an intense psychological thriller so I have been looking forward to the movie adaptation for quite a while.  I had the chance to see it last night and, rather unusually, I think it is better than the book!  Emily Blunt gives an incredible performance as Rachel Watson, an alcoholic whose husband has left her and has been fired from her job.  Every day she takes the same commuter train into the city and every day she sees the same couple out on their deck.  Because her life is in such a shambles, she idealizes them as the perfect couple.  One morning, she sees the woman with a man who is not her husband and feels betrayed by her infidelity.  After a night of drinking she gets off the train to confront the woman and wakes up the next morning bloody, bruised, and disheveled with no memory of what happened.  Rachel learns that the woman has gone missing and decides to inform her husband of what she has seen, but as she inserts herself into the investigation, she becomes a suspect herself.  As Rachel searches for the truth, she comes to realize that her perfect couple wasn't so perfect after all and that she is not as damaged as she was led to believe.  Blunt does the impossible by making Rachel seem sympathetic in a highly nuanced portrayal of a complex character with questionable judgement.  There is a particular scene where she confronts everyone who has betrayed her in a mirror that is absolutely brilliant.  Even though she does some despicable things, you understand what has driven her to this point:  Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), married to her ex-husband, has the life that she once had and Megan (Haley Bennett), the perfect woman seen from the train, has the life she wants but is throwing it away.  For me, this movie is less about the murder mystery and more about the journey Rachel takes (maybe because I've read the book and knew the outcome?) and I enjoyed the psychological tension.  There are differences from the book, most notably that it is set in New York City instead of London and there is an addition of a new character (Lisa Kudrow) to advance the plot, but I found the movie to be much more cohesive than the book.  I highly recommend it.