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Posts Tagged ‘video’

Watch Met Opera’s “The Hours” at home, thanks to PBS

Posted in events, Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours, theater, tagged , , , , on Thursday 16 March 2023| Leave a Comment »

If you missed the Metropolitan Opera’s live performances of “The Hours” and didn’t catch it when it was shown live or recorded at your local theater, you still have a chance to watch it — right in the comfort of your own living room.

The much-lauded new opera will be the premiere episode of the 17th season of Great Performances at the Met on PBS. The first airing will be Friday, March 17, at 9 p.m. ET. In my area, it will also air Sunday, March 19, at 5 p.m. and Tuesday, March 21, at 8 p.m. All times are Eastern Standard.

Viewers in the U.S.A. can check local listings for the broadcast schedule of their PBS affiliate in their area.

The sold-out opera event of the year

“The Hours” played to sold-out audiences during its run at New York’s Lincoln Center from Nov. 22 through Dec. 15, 2022.

PBS Newshour called it, “The opera event of the year.” A Variety review claimed, “it’s Woolf who’ll make you swoon.”

Composer Kevin Puts adapted the opera from Michael Cunningham’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel and the 2002 Academy Award-winning film by librettist Greg Pierce.

Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925), it stars Renée Fleming alongside Tony winner Kelli O’Hara and opera star Joyce DiDonato. Phelim McDermott directs the production with Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting. Christine Baranski hosts.

Get ready with reviews, synopsis, program

The opera uses Woolf’s and Cunningham’s prose as a departure point from which to explore the novels’ ambiguities and fluidities that are heightened further by musical expression, according to the PBS website.

You can read more rave reviews from critics, prepare for the performance by reading a synopsis, and download a program.

 

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Travel to Sissinghurst Castle Gardens

Posted in gardens, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, tagged , , , on Monday 9 August 2021| Leave a Comment »

If you are in the UK, you can travel to the world-renowned Sissinghurst Castle Garden via episode 20 of BBC Two’s “Gardeners’ World.”

Rooftop view of Sissinghurst Gardens

On Aug. 6, British garden designer Adam Frost traveled to Sissinghurst Castle Garden, designed by Vita Sackville-West. He was there to view a new area of the garden inspired by a visit to the Greek island of Delos. You can watch the broadcast online.

But if you are not in the UK, you can still get a look at Sissinghurst through this National Trust video posted on YouTube.

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Glimpses of St. Ives in the time of Virginia Woolf

Posted in films, St. Ives, You Tube, tagged , , , on Wednesday 30 June 2021| Leave a Comment »

For anyone who reads and loves Virginia Woolf, St. Ives is a magical place. Take a trip back in time by viewing old footage of that Cornish town.
  • From the BBC iPlayer comes “Cornwall: This Fishing Life,” with series 2, episode 4, focusing on St. Ives. It includes old black and white film footage of the place where Woolf and the Stephen family spent their summers until she was 12.
  • Nineteen seconds of color film footage of St. Ives from Claude Friese-Greene’s The Open Road (1926) a fascinating social record of inter-war Britain. The St. Ives snippet below is available on the British Film Industry‘s YouTube Channel.
  • And just for fun, check out the video below of a model railroad version of St. Ives, circa the 1950s, created by a former St. Ives resident. In this eight-minute video, he adds his own memories, along with details about constructing the layout. Stuart Clarke of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain shared this video and notes that we “may” be able to see Talland House at the 4-minute, 32-second mark.

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Seeing St. Ives and London in Woolf’s time

Posted in films, St. Ives, tagged , , on Sunday 20 March 2011| 5 Comments »

I’m not sure though that the beauty of the country isn’t its granite hills, and walls, and houses, and not its sea. – Letters II, 462

Imagine this: color film footage of the harbor and streets of St. Ives, Cornwall, and of the streets of London from 1924 to 1926, during Woolf’s time. Imagine something even better: actually viewing this footage online.

The film footage is from Claude Friese-Greene’s The Open Road (1926) a fascinating social record of inter-war Britain.

The St. Ives snippet below is available on the British Film Industry‘s YouTube Channel. Don’t blink though. The video is just 19 seconds long.

First, the back story

In 1924, Friese-Greene borrowed a flash convertible and took a road trip from Land’s End to John O’Groats and back to London, filming along the way using a unique experimental color process developed by him and his father.

The result was three hours of unedited footage — and some of Britain’s first color film footage — that Friese-Green expected to edit into 26 short travelogues that would be shown weekly at the cinema. His film was first shown at trade fairs in 1925.

What happened next

Here’s what happened to Friese-Green’s film:

  • Luckily, the film was preserved. The original negatives were given to the BFI in the late 1950s.
  • The BBC used the footage to produce a three-part documentary co-produced with the BFI and titled The Lost World of Friese-Greene.
  • The BFI National Archive restored a special 65-minute compilation of highlights from the journey, using digital intermediate technology to remove the defects of the original film.

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