Stratford - late in the season

The last planned visit to Stratford this year...perhaps!

Planned around our 15th anniversary of being together...Celebrated at Langdon Hall hotel we had discovered 2 years ago, at this time of the year (see blog August 2009)

Really charming place! Dinner on Friday night, a few hours after seeing "Hosanna" at Stratford (more on this further down). Delicious: greens from the house garden and a wild rice risotto with chanterel mushrooms - especially good - for apetizers; lobster and grilled halibut for main courses; we shared our dessert, a toasted sesame cannelloni full of ginger ice cream! All that paired with une coupe of Pommery, some Vouvray, Pinot Noir from the Niagara peninsula and Chardonnay.

Very large room in the Cloister, across from the Main House; equipped with a wood-burning fireplace, which of course we lit up (the picture below)! Expansive grounds with a vegetable garden, a pool, tennis courts, and miles of walking tracks in the surrounding forests. Went Saturday morning for a run, equipped with a map. Got lost though - for no fault of ours I might add - had gone for 5 km, ended up running for an hour or so, all the way to Blair along the surrounding highways, a good 8 or 9 kms! Followed by a - earthy or hearty, if not healthy - breakfast on the patio at the rear of the Main House (the picture above), with the sun shining - oughly enjoyable!

Back to Stratford, to catch "the Misanthrope", English version. Excellent! I had forgotten how witty Molière could be. Well translated, "en vers". Cast, as usual, superb! Bedford was supposed to direct that play and be in it (Oronte), but had to cancel because of health reasons. Ben Carlson as the main protagonist (Alceste) is as ardent as ever in his rendering. I think he is very much "defining" the Festival these recent years. I have seen him in many varying roles over the last 3 or 4 years: so talented, in drama as well as in comedy. I have seen him in Hamlet (Hamlet) and Julius Ceasar (Brutus), but also in The Importance of Being Earnest, and this year singing in Twelfth Night (Feste). Comes from the Shaw Festival where he had many years. Born in Canada, I believe, but of American parents. Very active in film as well...Great and long career ahead of him, one would think.

Saw Michel Tremblay's "Hosanna" the day before. Thought I had seen it in Montreal some 40 years ago when it came out at Théatre des Quatre Sous in 1973, but I was already abroad then; perhaps it is extracts I have seen since on TV... Anyway, I knew the story very well, as it is a play that has marked its time in Québec. A topic not particularly addressed in theatre in those days: homosexuals and drag queens, and done "en joual", which added such realism to the piece (François Rozet would have not approved!) It is also very "scorching", the couple, Hosanna and the ageing homo biker Cuirette, being so mean to each other! The language is very crude, as it is in the French version. Character was played by Richard Monette when it came out in English in the early seventies, first in Toronto then for a short stint - it was not apparently very successful - on Broadway. Monette was to become longest serving director of the Festival later on - died prematurely a few years ago!
Looking at the crowd that afternoon, primarily people old enough to be retired, I wonder to what extent they appreciated the play...

NYC & SFO in August

NYC – August 13 & 14, 2011

Took advantage of the sun, shortly after we arrived from Toronto, to go for a stroll along one of the latest and very popular attractions in NYC, the High Line Park,

a mile and a half of elevated promenade built on a railway that was used in the yesteryears of New York to transport cargo along the port on the Hudson River. It was disaffected in 1980 and was destined to be demolished when, through the effort of a few local dedicated citizens and politicians, it was saved from destruction, and opened as a park by Bloomberg in the summer of 2009. The second section was inaugurated only earlier this summer. It runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking district to the 30th street further North, between 10th and 11th avenues; there is a final section to be built that will curve towards the river to end at 34th (work has not started on that section which one can see at the very end of section 2; I am not even sure if its construction has been “approved” yet…)

I read somewhere (was it in the G&M Saturday?) that it was not cheap to build: $33,000 the linear foot! When I mentioned this to a couple of volunteers for the Park, they pointed out its popularity with people – 5 million visitors since its opening 2 years ago, far more than expected, and we could attest to that this Saturday afternoon! Plus the tremendous economic impact it has in the on-going revival of this once dilapidated area of town – new restaurants, new boutiques, etc… (the NY Times reported when the mayor inaugurated the park in 2009, that the 2 sections had cost $152M, $44M of which would have come from “Friends of the High Line Park”...there is indeed along the park signs of sponsorship at work…) Regardless, it is considered a rather expensive way to go about city greening or reviving. The park is apparently featured in the Toronto design magazine Azure, this month.

P.S. featured as well in the Sunday Styles section of the NYT, August 28, 2011 (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/style/index.html)
Had picked up Dominique in the East Village (on 7th Street, between Avenue C and Avenue D, also known as avenue Crazy and avenue Death as she says, close to the East River) on the way to the High Line Park. Walked back to the hotel on 44th Street – the City Club Hotel – via busy as ever Times Square. Dinner at Bar Boulud (one of several eateries under Boulud’s brand around NYC – another one is right at our hotel, Cuisine Boulud, where we had dinner a few years ago, and known for its foie gras burger!), across from the Lincoln Center, before going to see “Freud’s Last Session” (conversation imagined between C.S. Lewis, the believer, and Freud, the atheist, near the latter's death)at a nearby theater.

Rainy day on Sunday – very rainy! Brunch at Tribeca Grill – everybody knows about this very good eatery (“Robert de Niro is one of the founding owners, and other bla-blas” – he is also credited for starting the Tribeca Film Festival some 10 years ago), and where we learned that TriBeCa means “Triangle Below Canal Street” – once an industrial area, now probably the most expensive and sought after – particularly by “celebrities” – residential area of NYC!

Visit to the New Museum of Contemporary Art, further up and eastward on Bowery (in a neighborhood known as NoLIta – “North of Little Italy”!) The latest home of the Museum, conceived some 40 years ago as an alternative place for contemporary arts. Very modern-looking to say the least: a tall stack of unevenly lined boxes – declining in size as they go up – and shrouded in a shimmering skin – a mesh made of aluminum. Open in late 2007. Went to see the exhibition “Ostalgia”, a play on words, referring to the apparently nostalgia inspired by Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall; recent works by eastern European artists – very “alternative”…

Coffee and cakes nearby – very attractive neighborhood – then off to the airports (LaGuardia for Cynthia, going back to TO; JFK for Dominique and I) with a pit stop at Dominique’s flat in East Village to pick up our luggage.
Then, the long trek to the American West Coast – Dominique to Portland, me to San Francisco…

San Francisco, 15 & 16 of August, 2011

Back in town for the yearly “Bandwidth” music/technology conference – they have been holding it now for a few years in the former local Federal Reserve Bank building in the Financial District – the Bently Reserve Conference Center; holding a dinner as well in nearby Stock Exchange Tower on Sansome – opened in 1930, one of the best examples of Art Deco in SFO: there is a great mural from Rivera in the stairways leading up from the floor (11th?) where the dinner is held.

Lunch at the nearby Prebecco restaurant, on California (sister to Barbecco, nearby).

Staying at the Intercontinental Hotel – the Mark Hopkins, a landmark in SFO, at the top of Nob Hill. Great view from the "Top of the Mark" where you take breakfasts.

Stopped by favorite local bookstore – City Lights Books – corner of Broadway and Columbus, “home” of the beatnik generation – Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Dylan, etc. Picked up a few books: Bob Dylan in America for Cynthia, Décadence Manchoue for me.

Picture below: From the top of Broadway Street, just before the fog starts settling in...

“Redeye” back to TO.

Gaultier & Caravaggio – les expositions se suivent mais ne se ressemblent pas!

2 exhibitions this weekend, very different from one another, to say the least!

La planète mode de Jean Paul Gaultier. De la rue aux étoiles, au Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. C’est la première exposition internationale consacrée à Gaultier, « l'enfant terrible de la mode » comme on l’appelle! Le MBAM le présente comme « incontestablement l'un des créateurs les plus importants de ces dernières décennies. Sa mode avant-gardiste a saisi très tôt les préoccupations et les enjeux d'une société multiculturelle, bousculant avec humour les codes sociologiques et esthétiques établis. » Exceptionnel! Plus de 140 ensembles exposés; c’est le caractère « multimédia » qui frappe, avec les mannequins animés – projection sur visages produit de la compagnie québécoise UBU. « Jean-Paul Gaultier » lui-même vous introduit à son exposition, ses œuvres et sa conception de la mode – très bavard! Et puis on se demande comment arrive-t-il à financer ces extravagances, ces débordements vestimentaires (et ceci vaut pour tous les autres couturiers du genre), car on a beau dire, ce n’est pas exactement du « prêt-à-porter »! C’est sans doute poser la question de toute la rentabilité financière de l’industrie de la mode!...

Ce qui frappe également, c’est la contribution de Gaultier au cinéma; une partie de l’exposition lui est consacrée; des extraits de film où les costumes lui sont redevables – «The Cook The Thief His Wife And Her Lover » (de Greenaway en 1989, avec entre autres une très sexy Helen Mirren); « La Cité des Enfants Perdus » (un film fantasmagorique tourné en 1995); « The Fifth Element » (de Bresson en 1997); « Nearest to Heaven » en 2002, - la robe de Catherine Deneuve, qui fait les cent pas dans le lobby de l’Empire State Building à New-York, à attendre, en vain semble-t-il, William Hurt!; et « La Mala Educacion » d’Almodovar en 2004. Il a même joué dans l’un d’entre eux (le créateur de mode, dans une farce à l’anglaise « Absolument Fabuleux » en 2001! Extraits également du tout petit dernier d’Almodovar, « La Piel Que Habito », 2011 avec Antonio Banderas, que je n’ai pas encore vu!

Les couturiers sont "à la mode" dans les musées ces temps-ci, alors que la retrospective de l'oeuvre d' Alexander McQueen se termine au Met de New-York, avec des records d'assistance...


And then, « for something completely different », Caravaggio and his followers in Rome, at the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa. Some of Caravaggio’s “private” works, to illustrate him as the inspiration of several of his contemporaries – Caravaggio has been the theme of so many exhibitions, that it seems that we are running out of reasons to organise one! Although I should not be so dismissive, for this is an excellent exhibition, organized with the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. It will tour after Ottawa. Not to be missed is the 2006 BBC film on Caravaggio and his turbulent life, part of Simon Schama’s Power of Art excellent series (which includes 7 other painters, from Bernini to Rothko), at the end of the exhibition.

For us Caravaggio will always bring back memories of his “Beheading of Saint John the Baptist” that he painted in Malta, for the Knights’ Cathedral (it is there to be seen, in all its cruel splendour, in the Oratory). Probably his greatest work, the only one apparently that he signed (just below the blood spat, in the same red color!) He was on the island only for a year and a half, coming in as a fugitive from Rome, where he killed someone in a brawl, and leaving again as a fugitive, having seriously wounded a knight in yet another brawl! He died a couple of years later, in 1610 at 37 years old, back on the main land, trying to gain a pardon from the Pope in Rome, in vain.

Source/Photographer The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.


We loved the building that houses the National Gallery – a modern cathedral, all glass and cement, the work of Moshe Sadfie, built in the dying years of the Trudeau era (although inaugurated under Mulroney). With one of the “Maman” giant spiders from Louise Bourgeois ornamenting the Gallery’s outside plaza, which you can also find elsewhere in the world, among others at Bilbao’s Guggenheim museum (see previous blog).

Ottawa, August 1, 2011