by Lidia Paulinska | Apr 29, 2016
April, Fathom events – On Saturday, April 16, 2016, Fathom Events presented Gaetano Donizetti’s del canto* masterpiece Roberto Devereux for a one-night only cinematic presentation in hundreds of theaters throughout the United States. The screening was part of the year-long celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Metropolitan Opera’s Peabody and Emmy award-winning series, “The Met: Live in HD.”
This magnificent program, which has included some of the greatest operas of all time, also features during intermissions, fascinating behind-the-scenes interviews with the Met’s illustrious stars, the supporting cast, crew, and production teams, giving us an “up close and personal” insider’s glimpse at what’s involved in staging these operas.
Roberto Devereux is the climatic opera of a Trilogy which also includes Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarda, all three having been staged by Sir David McVicar, and astonishingly, Soprano Sonar Radvanousky who magnificently portrays Elizabeth I in the third piece of the trilogy, completes a marathon at the Met, having sung all three of Donizetti’s daunting queens in a single season: Anne Boleyn, Mary Stuart, and Elizabeth I (Queen Elizabeth II coincidentally celebrated her 90th birthday April 21, the same week Roberto Devereux was presented.)
The Met has assembled an ideal cast for this outstanding production, featuring the superb tenor Matthew Polenzani who excels with lyrical elegance in the title role and Ms Radvanousky who sings with sharp-edged searing power perfectly portraying an aging, broken Queen tragically in love with Devereux, a manipulating nobleman 34 years her junior. The great Mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca brings her sumptuous voice to the role of Sara who is in love with Deverux, Earl of Essex, and baritone Mariusz Kwiecien in the role of her husband the Duke, singing with both virile power and soaring lyricism.
For an interesting balance, this reviewer highly recommends a 1998 film starring Cate Blanchette titled Elizabeth , and although obviously not an opera, it vividly portrays Elizabeth as she first ascends the throne of England and was nominated for several Academy Awards, winning one for make-up.
* Del Canto (“beautiful song”). According to The Harvard Dictionary of Music, del canto “denotes the Italian vocal technique of the 18th century with its emphasis on beauty of sound and brilliance of performance, rather than dramatic expression or Romantic emotion … it must be considered as a highly artistic technique and as the only proper one for Italian opera and for Mozart.” We might safely add Rossini and Handel to that statement.
Today, the term del canto seems to have fallen out of favor and tends to be viewed as vague and ambiguous and lacking any semblance of relevance in the 21st century.
by Lidia Paulinska and Hugh McMahon
by Lidia Paulinska | Apr 24, 2016
April, Fathom events – Arthur C. Clark, the renowned English physicist and science fiction novelist, once wrote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” (Profiles of the Future, 1961), and this prescient observation is nowhere more apparent than today, 55 years later, with the phenomenal bursting forth of the Digital Age that has swept the globe over the past couple of decades and has impacted almost every aspect of our daily existence. Within this relatively brief period of time, digital technology has profoundly and irreversibly changed our lives … forever! We only have to ask ourselves, has our day-to-day routine been altered significantly by our smart phones, the internet, GPS, Hi-Definition TV & cinema , the inevitability of self-driving cars, or any of the other thousands of data tech innovations that pervade the very essence of our culture? I suspect most of us would unhesitatingly respond with a resounding “Yes, absolutely! “
You may justifiably ask, “What does all this have to do with Don Quixote?”, the venerable Russian ballet which was first performed in 1869 by the Ballet of the Imperial Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow? Well, the current production of the enduring “Don”, viewed live for one night only on April 10, 2016, has been seen by thousands of people in hundreds of theatres throughout the world on giant Hi Definition digital cinema screens (Pathe´ shot for the big screen with 5.1 sound and 10 HD cameras creating up-close and vivid pictures 3-times the definition of 1080p TV!) and is essentially based (with considerable variation) on the same work choreographed 147 years ago in Moscow by the great Marius Petipa (1818-1910).*
What does the Data Revolution have to do with a 147 year old Russian ballet? That question was answered for me the evening of April 10th in my local movie theatre.
Pass the popcorn!
Thanks to transformational digital technology which has forever changed our lives with smart phones, the internet, emails, Facebook, etc., more people viewed the Bolshoi’s Don Quixote the one evening of April 10th than had ever seen it in the past 147 years of it’s existence! And if that’s not revolutionary, I don’t know what is! In 1776 when the Bolshoi was founded, for example, it could take six weeks to send a letter by square rigger across the Atlantic from London to New York. Now we communicate with people on the other side of the planet or even circling the earth in space stations in milliseconds, one thousandth of a second, which is almost “indistinguishable from magic.”
Today’s Don Quixote by the Bolshoi resembles Cervantes’ novel in name only, with the character of the Don only occasionally making rather awkward non-dancing appearances on stage, with the “heavy lifting” of the evening left almost exclusively to the very able chorus which is indicative of Alexander Gorsky’s** reworking of the Petipa original. Both Petipa and Gorsky continue to be credited with the choreography in the program notes, and Leon Minkus’ original score continues to thrill, but the ballet has once again been “updated” to suite the changing expectations and tastes of a modern audience by Alexei Fadeyechev, (Bolshoi artistic director,1998 – 2000), yet still retains all the grandeur, perfection of style and precision execution the Bolshoi has been known for in its celebrated 240 year history.
In 1917, Sergei Diaghilev, founder of the famed Ballets Russes, who transformed the world of ballet, ushering it into the modern age, issued a challenge to Jean Cocteau who had asked him what were his ideas regarding a ballet they were producing. Diaghilev famously replied, Etonne-moi!! … “Astonish me!!” and the result was the immortal Parade, produced by impresario Diaghilev, designed by Pablo Picasso, composed by Erik Satie, and set to a story by Cocteau.
It has been said that our digital world can only become more incredible over time, joining art and technology, in ways now unimaginable. “Magic?” Perhaps … “Astonishing?” Unquestionably!
Etonne-moi!!
* Marius Petipa’s Don Quixote was subsequently modified over the years by rival Bolshoi choreographer Alexander Gorsky who completely transformed the ballet in 1900, creating a version radically different from Petipa’s original which infuriated him, and Gorsky’s version continues to be a permanent part of the Bolshoi repertoire to this day. Petipa, who was born in Marseilles, France, is universally considered to be the single most influential ballet master and choreographer in ballet history.
** Alexander Gorsky (1871-1924) was a renowned Russian choreographer and a contemporary of Petipas’, both serving at the same time at the Bolshoi. However it was never an easy relationship. A quick check with Wikipedia reveals, “The largest change that Gorsky made to Petipa’s (Don Quixote) choreography was the action of the corps de ballet. Instead of being a moving background as the corps often was, they became an important part of the drama.” (Wikipedia … 2016 Apr 8, 02:33 UTC….)
Rather than being nothing more than a moving part of the scenery, with Gorsky’s restaging, they bustle around the stage, “…breaking the symmetry and lines typical of Patina.” Gorsky added an element of playful lightheartedness to the new-found dynamism and significance of the chorus, characteristic the Bolshoi’s productions of “the Don” to this day. Alexander Gorsky is known today for his restating of Petipa’s ballets which include Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and of course, Don Quixote.
by Lidia Paulinska and Hugh McMahon
by Tom P Kolodziejak | Apr 11, 2016
Game Developers Conference, San Francisco – Mark Rosewater, Head Designer for the “Magic: The Gathering” shared his experiences that he gained over the past 20 years on designing, improving, and advancing the same game. Since 1995, he has been working for Wizards of the Coast which created Magic: The Gathering. He mentioned not many games survived that long time and it is no wonder that the game went though many changes. In the period of 20 years they made: 86 randomized booster products, 69 non-randomized products, online licensed and other miscellaneous products, and produced over 14,000 unique cards.
There were also many lessons learned that the game designers can adopt in the process of building their games. Rosewater named 20 lessons. One for each year of his work.
Lesson 1: Fighting against human nature is a losing battle.
Knowing your audience is a key. Since your audience are humans, you know that they can be a little stubborn and have their own habits, so don’t try to change the players to match the game. Change your game to match the players.
Lesson 2: Aesthetics matter. Don’t fight human perception.
Aesthetics is also known as the Philosophy of Art or Science of Beauty. The idea of aesthetics is to study how humans perceive the world. There are differences between individuals, as well as common things that are aesthetically pleasing. In games, players expect the components of their game to have a certain “feel”. That is not only means visual aesthetics, but also things like balance, symmetry, and pattern completion. If any of these components are missing, it makes players feel ill at ease, distracts them from focusing on the game, and makes them pay attention to what your game isn’t instead of what it is.
Lesson 3: Resonance is important.
The audience already has preexisting emotional responses that the game designer can build upon. For example Magic did not invent zombies. Players come to the game with a pre-built emotional relationship with zombies that were created from years of watching pop culture. As a game designer, that’s a tool you should make use of.
Lesson 4: Make use of piggybacking.
Piggybacking is a use of preexisting knowledge to front-load game information to make learning easier. You don’t have to teach players things they already know, like killing a black cat is a bad luck.
Lesson 5: Don’t confuse “interesting” with “fun”.
There is 2 types of stimulation. There is intellectual stimulation (“interesting”) and emotional stimulation (“fun”). Looking at the cards is intellectual stimulation. Playing with the cards is emotional stimulation. We think about ourselves as intellectual creatures but we tend to make most of our decisions based less on facts and more on emotions. So, your game can speak to your audience on intellectual level or you can speak to them on emotional level. Both are valuable, but when you speak to the player on an emotional level, you are more likely to create player satisfaction.
Lesson 6: Understand what emotion your game is trying to evoke.
To be successful with a game you need to know what you want your audience to experience. What emotional response are you trying to create? You must continually ask yourself “What impact will this game choice have on the player experience”? And if it doesn’t contribute to the overall experience then it has to go.
Lesson 7: Allow the player the ability to make the game personal.
It is important for your players to have personal connection with your game. The more the players feel the game is about them, the better they will think of it. How do you do it? Provide a lot of choices, give them different resources, different paths, different expressions. Give the player the ability to choose (and not choose) things, allowing them to feel that what they choose is “theirs”. In Magic: The Gathering, the players can choose: colors, creatures, characters, factions, illustrations and the frames. There are many options available.
Lesson 8: The details are where your player falls in love with your game.
The players want to find a piece of game to call their own. The details matter because the individual will bond with the game through them. What might seem insignificant is anything but that. A small detail might only matter to a tiny percentage but to that percentage it could mean everything.
Lesson 9: Allow your players to have a sense of ownership.
You need to give the players an ability to build things that are uniquely theirs. The players don’t just create a deck of cards, they create THEIR deck: something what personally represents them. So when their deck wins, they win, because the deck is no longer just part of the game. It is an extension of themselves.
Lesson 10: Leave room for your player to explore.
Don’t always show the players the things you want to see. Let your players to find them. Let them discover things. Because if they find them, they will be more invested.
Lesson 11: If everyone likes your game but no one loves it, it will fail.
Players don’t need to love everything in your game, but they need to love something. Something they feel strongly about. Don’t worry that the players will hate something. Worry that no one will love anything, because things that evoke strong responses will most often evoke strong responses in many directions. This means that is almost impossible to make some players love something without making others players hate it. In fact some players enjoy hating what other players love. So stop worrying about evoking a negative response and instead develop something that evokes a strong response.
Lesson 12: Don’t design to prove you can do something.
Creative people tend to have larger egos, because it takes ego to will something into existence. Having an ego is fine but you can’t let your ego drive your motivations. You goal is to deliver an optimal experience for your target audience. Your decisions have to serve your game and not you. So, ask yourself: Is this decision helping me achieve the optimal experience for my target audience or is it being done to fulfill an inwardly facing need for self-satisfaction? If the answer is the latter, you are doing it for the wrong reason.
Lesson 13: Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win.
It is not the players’ job to find the fun, it is your job as a designer to put the fun where they can’t help but find it. Because when the players sit down to play the game there is an implied promise from the game designer that they will have fun. Remember – you have to make sure that what it takes to succeed at your game is the very thing that makes it fun. Fun can’t be tangential. It has to be the core component of your game experience.
Lesson 14: Don’t be afraid to be blunt.
Artists tend to prefer subtlety. They think show, don’t tell. But sometimes subtlety doesn’t work. People can just miss the obvious. For example in Magic we use the keywords to make sure players can focus on the mechanics.
Lesson 15: Design the components for the audience it’s intended for.
When you aim to please everyone, you often please no one. All your players don’t want the same thing out of your game. It is important to understand what different kinds of things your players want and to understand different kind of players you have.
Lesson 16: Be more afraid of boring your players than challenging them.
When you try something grandiose and it fails the players will forgive you, because they recognize you were trying to do something awesome. They respect the attempt and they even stick around to see what you will do next. But when you bore them, there is no such forgiveness, because making the same mistake is not the same as making a new one. When you bore the players, they resent you. Sometimes they stop playing.
Lesson 17: You don’t have to change much to change everything.
The game designers think there is never enough so they keep sticking more elements in. That creates complexity for your players and muddies the message of your game. You waste resources you could use later. Instead of asking how much I need to add? Ask – How little do I need to add?
Lesson 18: Restrictions breed creativity.
There is a myth about creativity that the more options available, the more creative people can be. But this contradicts what we know about how most brains work. The brain is amazing organ, it is very smart. When asked to solve a problem, most brains check their data banks and ask– Have I solved this problem before? If yes, it solves it the same way. Most of the time this is efficient. It lets you avoid relearning tasks each time you do them but it causes a problem with creative thought. If you use the same neural pathways you get to the same answers and with creativity that is not your goal. Here is the trick Mark shared with the audience. If you want to get your brain to get to new places, start from somewhere you have never started before. It forces you to think different in ways and create new problems to solve which results in new ideas and new solutions. What this means is that restrictions aren’t an obstacle but valuable tool.
Lesson 19: Your audience is good in recognizing problems but bad at solving them.
Your players have a better understanding of how they feel about your game than you do. You create the emotional response but they know what that is. They can easily tell when something is wrong. They are excellent in identifying problems. But they are not equipped to solve those problems. They don’t know your tools, your limitations. Use your audience as a resource, as a parameter to discover what’s wrong but take it with a grain of salt when they offer the solutions.
Lesson 20: All of the lessons connect.
by Lidia Paulinska | Apr 11, 2016
Fathom events – Hailed by The New York Times as “A gorgeous cinematic spectacle,” and in continuation of their invaluable cultural service by offering stunning live filmed performances, Fathom Events presented Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly for a one night only screening on April 6, 2016 in over 700 movie theaters worldwide. It was truly an incomparable operatic and cinematographic event not to be missed!
Anthony Minghella’s* breathtaking production has delighted and thrilled audiences at the Met ever since it premiered in 2006. Soprano Kristine Opolais reprises her unanimously acclaimed performance in the title role opposite the extraordinary Roberto Alagna who masterfully portrays the American naval officer Pinkerton who abandons his delicate Japanese Butterfly and breaks her heart. Ms Opals was recently seen at the Met one month earlier in the title role of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut with Roberto Alagna in the role of her indomitably suitor des Grieux. That performance was also offered to movie-goers throughout the world compliments of Fathom Events.
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly had its world premiere in 1904 at Teatro alla Scala, Milan. It was initially received poorly, but after numerous revisions it became a much-lauded success and today it is one of the most celebrated operas in the world. Puccini was inspired to create his opera after seeing a one-act play in London in the summer of 1900 titled Madame Butterfly, produced by the American theatrical impresario David Belasco. Belasco in turn had based his play on a short story by an American writer of little note by the name of John Luther Long.
The opera premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1907 with the composer in attendance and featured world-renowned tenor Enrico Caruso as Pinkerton. From that point onward, its popularity has never waned.
In addition to first-rate performances delivered by Ms Opals, Mr Alagna and the supporting cast and chorus, the simplicity of the production not only allows us to focus our attention on the performers without distraction, but also offers a milieu reminiscent of the austere minimalism of a Japanese Kabuki stage. Set Designer Michael Levine has created an unencumbered performance space, utilizing unadorned sliding framed fabric screens to indicate scene changes while upstage a broad staircase, extending the width of the massive Met stage, functions to herald significant entrances and exits.
Costumes by designer Han Feng, are traditional Kabuki in style, being grand and colorful when appropriate to character, and stand in bold contrast to an essentially bare stage. As in the Kabuki theatre, so too in this masterful production, our focus is drawn exclusively to the performers with appropriately minimalist production values in a subordinate yet supportive role.
The story is simple but the emotions run deep.
Captain Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, an American sea captain who, while visiting Japan, marries Cio-Cio-San, a beautiful Geisha nicknamed “Madama Butterfly.” He departs for America (and here Puccini interpolates a couple of bars from “The Star-Spangled Banner” as he does in every Pinkerton scene) and doesn’t return until three years later. By this time Butterfly has given birth to their son and Pinkerton has remarried, this time to an American with whom he returns to Japan. In despair, Butterfly, who has been faithfully awaiting his return, hopefully watching every ship that arrives in Nagasaki Harbor, takes her own life and Pinkerton, in realizing his folly, collapses in abject grief.
An additional indigenous Japanese theatre form Minghella was inspired by was the ancient Bunraku, the puppet or “doll” theatre of Japan. In this production, the puppets are manipulated by traditional three puppeteers, all veiled in black, from San Francisco’s Blind Summit Theatre, appearing initially in Act I representing Cio-Cio-San’s servants. In the Second Act her young son is represented by a puppet of remarkable life-like quality, and in the final act, puppets dramatize the conflict between Butterfly and Pinkerton in a dream-like play-within-a-play sequence.
This wonderful Metropolitan Opera production by Minghella is now celebrating it’s tenth anniversary and one can easily understand why it’s one of the Met’s more popular offerings and why Puccini’s masterpiece continues to be an enduring staple of the operatic repertoire around the world.
*Anthony Minghella (1954-2008) was a renowned British film director, producer, playwright, and screenwriter. His much-celebrated The English Patient won 9 Academy Awards in 1996, followed by The Talented Mr Ripley which garnered an additional 5 Oscars. In 2003 he won another Oscar for Cold Mountain. Minghella was married to Carolyn Choa who masterfully directed and choreographed this current production of his magnificent “ Butterfly” . He died of cancer in 2008 at the age of 54.
By Lidia Paulinska and Hugh McMahon
by Lidia Paulinska | Apr 6, 2016
The author of the proverbial statement – Necessity is a mother of invention – is unknown. It is sometimes ascribed to Plato, the Greek philosopher who lived in Athens in the time 300 years BC. But even the quote is very old, the meaning is current. Difficult situations inspire ingenious solutions.
This is what happened to Steve McGough, founder of product named Hi that helps women and couple experience new way to relax and enjoy life. Since 2009 their unique technology has been refined and tested on over 2000 women. Today their method and technology has been patented in the US and Australia with patents pending in the EU and Canada. At the 2016 HardwareCon in San Leandro, California, Steve presented a lunch time keynote session and presented his soon to be on the market product to the crowd.
Heading back to his story of invention.
Steve discovered the technology behind “hi” when trying to help his wife Wendy find a way to relieve pain from a surgical adhesion. In 2007 he rushed his wife to a hospital for emergency C-section following 5 years of trying to have a child. Steve and his wife Wendy, then had their life take a dramatic turn. In the last few months of pregnancy, Wendy was exposed to an antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Their son lived for only one day. Wendy left with not only mental scars but also physical scars that were not healing quickly. Steve researched everything he could think of that might help with the physical issues, and finally he came up with an abdominal massage technique that helped reduced her pain. The method required continuous vigorous massage for 5-10 minutes. This wasn’t easy to maintain manually and he started to look for automated massage devices. He was unable to find anything that fit his needs, so as an engineer he designed it by himself. It took him about a year to design & build a unit that worked well.
But there came a surprise.
The side effect of massaging the abdominal was an orgasm. After Wendy noticed it some of women who volunteered to test the device, over their clothing, reported the same effect. Steve who previously worked in neuroscience research was looking for an answer. Talking in the role of an “IT guy”, as he describes himself, about something that is still taboo, especially in the southern portion of the US, wasn’t easy. He contacted investors and friends who repeatedly warned him to abandon the project “before it destroyed his reputation”. Instead he ended up going on journey across US, the Caribbean and Asia. After 7 years of research and refinement (testing on over 2000 women) he proved the effect and outcome to be true. Along the way, Steve became a professor of clinical sexology in San Francisco to better discuss the issue with an interested community.
To bring the product to market, he had to start the manufacturing process. Manufacturing for the large device is very expensive, typically $800K – $1M. He received the offers from adult entertainment & products related investment groups, but he knew that this new technology helps women relax in many ways far beyond sexual areas. Fortunately he met Greg Fisher, the CEO of Berkeley Sourcing Group, LLC who realized full potential of the product. His turn-key product development company finalized the designs and set up manufacture in Asia. Together with Greg, and his team of mostly female designers and engineers in China they created this version of hi that will be released in 2016.
