Latest news with #Caracalla
New York Times
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
He's Bringing Rossini to Philadelphia and ‘West Side Story' to Rome
It was the morning of the dress rehearsal for Leonard Bernstein's 'West Side Story,' at the Baths of Caracalla, the ancient ruins that are the traditional summertime venue for the Rome Opera, and the show's director, Damiano Michieletto, was concerned. 'Some of the Jets have problems with precise pronunciation,' he said. After deciding to do the musical in English rather than in translation, he did not have the funds to hire a full American cast for the Jets, a gang rumbling to take the streets of New York. You could tell, he fretted. (The diction was less of a problem with the Sharks, the rival Puerto Rican gang, he said, 'because Italian, you know, that works.') That might have been his least concern. This year, Michieletto was given free rein to come up with the program for the Rome Opera's summer Caracalla Festival, which runs until Aug. 7, keeping in mind that 2025 is a Jubilee year for the Catholic Church expected to draw millions of pilgrims with varying musical tastes to Rome. In a break from past programming, he decided that the first major new production would be 'West Side Story.' A musical — gasp — was headlining one of Italy's most highbrow cultural stages and was an unusual choice in a country where musicals are considered a minor genre and often dismissed. That did not faze Michieletto, who over the past 20 years has built a reputation as a visionary, nonconformist, at times over-the-top, director whose work is in demand across Europe. In September, he will make his debut at a major American opera house with Rossini's 'Il Viaggio a Reims' at Opera Philadelphia. There he will be presenting a revival of a much-lauded version first staged in Amsterdam in 2015 and reprised several times since. For his new work at the Caracalla Festival — which this year is titled 'Between the Sacred and the Human' because it casts a wide musical net, from a staged production of Handel's oratorio 'The Resurrection' to 'West Side Story' — he opted to focus on the electric energy of a work that was directed and based on an idea by Jerome Robbins, one of the great choreographers of his generation. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The 961
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The 961
Caracalla Just Added More Dates For 'One Thousand and One Nights' & You Def Don't Want To Miss It!
If you missed it the first time, here's your chance. Caracalla Dance Theatre is bringing back its hit show One Thousand and One Nights for a longer run this summer, with 12 extra performances added to the schedule. The show kicks off Friday, July 4 and runs through Friday, August 22 at Theatre Caracalla in Horsh Tabet, Sin El Fil. The production is a reimagining of the classic Arabian Nights tales – but with Caracalla's signature twist. Think dramatic choreography, vivid costumes, and that larger-than-life storytelling they're known for. It's an experience that mixes fantasy with heritage, and it just works. If you've been to a Caracalla show, you know what you're in for. If you haven't, you're in for something special. The performance blends East and West in a way only Caracalla can pull off. It's theatrical, powerful, and rooted in Lebanese and regional culture. The kind of production that leaves a mark. Caracalla Dance Theatre isn't new to this. The company was founded back in 1968 by Abdel Halim Caracalla, and has since become one of the biggest cultural names in the region. Over the years, they've toured some of the world's most iconic stages and brought Lebanese dance theatre to international audiences. Their unique style blends Martha Graham-inspired movement with traditional Eastern dance, creating something that's very much their own. Tickets & Info 📍 Location: Theatre Caracalla, Horsh Tabet – Sin El Fil 📅 Dates: July 4 to August 22, 2025 🎟️ Tickets: Available through Theatre Caracalla Lebanon's cultural scene is alive and thriving, and Caracalla's summer run is one of the highlights.
The Guardian
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Under a Metal Sky by Philip Marsden review
One summer, a couple of millennia ago, the 14-year-old high priest of a meteor-worshiping cult in Syria learned that his cousin, Emperor Caracalla of Rome, had died and that he was to be installed in his place. The teenage priest – later known as Emperor Elagabalus – brought his cult's sacred stone with him to the capital, where he gave it a goddess for a bride, built it an enormous temple on the Palatine Hill, and ordered Romans to worship it above all other deities. His rule was brief. After four wild years, he was beheaded by his own soldiers and his body was dumped in a sewer. As for the stone, its final resting place is unknown. Rocks, minerals, metals – these materials from the depths of the Earth and from distant space – have inspired reverence and horror, wonder and greed. They have power over us, and they give us power. It's likely that the first murderer used a rock. So did the first artist. Our connection with the mineral world is bone deep. In Under a Metal Sky, travel writer Philip Marsden follows the seam of this story from the defunct tin mines around his Cornish home to the untapped gold deposits of Svaneti, high in the Caucasus. How, he asks, have the materials we shape, shaped us? And what lies behind our often impractical desire to dig, chisel, smelt and collect? For Marsden, it all started with gravel. He tells of a boyhood spent on his parents' driveway sifting for shiny nuggets. And later, with hammer and chisel in hand, collecting 'muddy lumps of rock which when broken open revealed sparking geodes … quartz in a dozen shades, tourmaline, jasper, gypsum, agates, gleaming galena … Their presence in my room, where I endlessly inspected them, left me with an enduring sense which only later was I able to articulate – that another world lay hidden inside this one.' For our species, Marsden argues, it began with ochre, a ferrous rock that, if ground and mixed into a paste, can be painted on to almost any surface – art's foundation stone. 'Some cosmic shift took place in that action,' he writes. 'Change had always been external, day and night, weather and seasons, rivers and tides, life and death. Now with the use of its own material, the Earth could be subtly remade and modified and abstractions created. Dirt was made precious, stones did tricks, rock became transcendent.' Travelling east through Europe, Marsden lays bare the Earth's revelations, from silver to radium, aerolite, mercury, copper, gold and lithium, showing how each has had an alchemical effect on us. He is an intrepid guide: abseiling off cliffs and down abandoned mines, kayaking across the Netherlands, rattling through Georgia in a clapped out marshrutka. He rummages through Goethe's mineral collection and licks the white fluff growing from the wall of a Slovenian mercury mine. His enthusiasm for the subject is contagious, and he writes with a rock-collector's eye for glittering details. One senses this is a book he has been longing to write for years. Are the Earth's resources gifts or loans? Are they even ours for the taking at all? In earlier times, there was some evidence of reciprocity: the human sacrifices sunk in peat bogs; the deliberately broken and buried swords and spears of the bronze age. A healthy vein of guilt ran through ancient Iranian, Egyptian and Greek beliefs about metals – that they are the flesh of the gods, and to extract them is to tear the divine body. But such ideas were short-lived, and Under a Metal Sky is littered with the toxic tailings of uninhibited greed. Today's emperors look once more to rocks from space but, as Marsden observes, their gaze is far from reverent. The internet billionaire Naveen Jain has one of the largest collections of meteorites in the world. 'Every single thing we value on Earth,' he has said, 'is in abundance in space.' His company, Moon Express, has acquired lunar exploration rights. Why not dig up the moon? Or hoick an asteroid out of the sky? Right now, there's one floating somewhere between Mars and Jupiter that, if it fell to Earth, would deliver enough precious metals to make everyone on the planet a billionaire. The only problem? We'd all be dead. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Under a Metal Sky: A Journey Through Minerals, Greed and Wonder by Philip Marsden is published by Granta (£20). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
