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Washington Post
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Pared-down ‘Vanessa,' in a strip mall, demands a trip to the Berkshires
NORTH ADAMS, MASS. — Deep in the Berkshires, just off the Mohawk Trail, in an abandoned strip mall anchored by an erstwhile Price Chopper, awaits a sleek, smart production of Samuel Barber's 'Vanessa' that's worth well more than the tank of gas it may require to get there. Heartbeat Opera's streamlined vision of Barber's resurgent 1958 nail-biter — a bizarre love quadrangle with sharp psychological corners — arrives as the first opera ever presented as part of Williamstown Theatre Festival. And even among the unpredictable mixed bouquet of this 71st season — helmed by a collective led by playwright Jeremy O. Harris ('Slave Play') and featuring plays, dance, experimental musical theater, readings and an ice show at a local hockey rink — the bright white bloom of this 'Vanessa' still stands out. R.B. Schlather, whose recent productions of 'Giulio Cesare' and 'Rodelinda' have inspired a recurring migration of opera lovers upstream to Hudson, New York — directs this adaptation by Heartbeat artistic director Jacob Ashworth. It's an elegant paring of the opera's four acts (more often presented in three) down to an uninterrupted 100-minute sequence — an urgent plunge into darkness that would have delighted Strauss. Schlather made clever use of 'the Annex,' a flexible performance venue swiftly constructed for the festival in a defunct retail space. (Alas, my suggestion of 'the Rent-A-Center for the Performing Arts' came too late.) Set against a long white screen that, these days, all but assures overuse of eye-popping projections, Schlather's vision cannily opts for stark shadow play, looming silhouettes and a hard-edged monochromaticism, compellingly undone by creeping carpets of mist and washes of uneasy daylight. It's a 'Vanessa' that feels like a memory of a dream of the opera, highly concentrated but twice removed, its nuances rendered in high, haunting contrast that lingers when you close your eyes. A treatment this resolutely minimal could easily have veered into absurdist territory — remember those Calvin Klein fragrance ads from the '90s? Instead, Schlather's alchemy of intense focus and dreamlike freedom honors the cyclic spell of Barber's opera with reverence and verve. At the core of this production's compressed force is a lean new arrangement of Barber's score by Dan Schlosberg — doing double-duty in Williamstown as composer and music director for a revival of Tennessee Williams's 'Camino Real.' Barber's score, which won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize (along with the libretto by partner and collaborator Gian Carlo Menotti), is here meticulously distilled for a seven-piece ensemble of clarinet, trombone, trumpet, piano, harp, cello and violin. Listeners who experienced Gianandrea Noseda lead the National Symphony Orchestra in a concert performance of 'Vanessa' this past January will marvel at Schlosberg's maintenance of Barber's intensity and depth. Meanwhile, the ensemble's nimbleness felt perfectly equipped for the busy weather of the music. Like the production itself, the graceful restraint of the arrangement served only to sharpen its details. Every note felt like a precipice. It also left room for some powerful singing by the ensemble, which Ashworth's adaptation keeps to five singers. Soprano Inna Dukach was an instantly arresting Vanessa — heels in hand, pining erratically for the arrival of her long-delayed lover, Anatol. Tenor Roy Hage, as the son of the same name who shows up instead, imbued his Anatol with humanity enough to make you forget what an opportunistic jerk he is. My favorite singer of the evening was mezzo-soprano Ori Marcu, who effortlessly embodied Vanessa's woebegone niece Erika, the fleeting hopeful flight of her signature aria ('Must the Winter Come So Soon?') a highlight of the evening. Baritone Joshua Jeremiah's compassionate approach to the Doctor opened some show-stealing moments, especially his aria in the second half. And mezzo-soprano Mary Phillips made a memorable Baroness, her silences as weighty as the burnished tones of her voice were light. The balance of Barber's largesse and Ashworth's economy was most beautifully realized in the climactic quintet ('To leave, to break, to find, to keep …') deftly woven by the five singers and entrancingly tangled in thick lines of cello and clarinet. There are worries all around about the future of opera, its viability in a cultural landscape defined by its sudden, seismic shifts. But this 'Vanessa' was, among other things, a master class in resourceful thinking: how to make a lot from a little. How to make something new from something old. And how to give opera a more accessible place in our lives — even if that means a strip mall. 'Vanessa' runs as part of Williamstown Theatre Festival through Aug. 3.
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Yahoo
Pittsfield police seek help finding missing 14-year-old
PITTSFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – The Pittsfield Police Department is seeking the public's help in locating a 14-year-old girl. Suspect wanted in connection with armed robbery arrested following Springfield police chase The department shared in a social media post on Friday evening that 14-year-old Alaina St. Pierre may be in the area of Pittsfield or North Adams. She is white with brown hair and brown eyes, and is approximately 5'6″ tall and 90 pounds. Police say that if you say Alaina or have any information regarding her whereabouts, you are urged to contact the Pittsfield Police Department by calling 413-448-9700. WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Yahoo
Western Mass. man pleads guilty to slamming 6-year-old into wall
A North Adams man pleaded guilty to assaulting a 6-year-old child in 2022 in Berkshire County Superior Court on Thursday, the Berkshire County District Attorney's Office announced Friday. Jesriel Morales, 37, pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated assault and battery on a child with a deadly weapon and two counts of assault and battery, the district attorney's office said in a press release. During the incident, Morales slammed the child into a window and wall, hit them with a belt, slapped them and then forced them to kneel on dried rice, the district attorney's office said. A judge sentenced Morales to two and a half years in prison, two years probation and ordered that Morales have no contact with the victim, the district attorney's office said. 'Jesriel Morales preyed on one of the most innocent members of society. Today my thoughts are with the very young victim. I hope this conclusion provides them some peace and feeling of safety and security,' Berkshire County District Attorney Timothy Shugrue said in the release. Three Boston minors charged after threat sends Billerica High School into lockdown Man arrested in connection with threatening to shoot people at large party in Boston Mass. man who supplied gang with 'particularly dangerous' drugs began drinking, smoking at 13 How pink heart shaped fentanyl led to Mass. father's 18-year prison sentence Springfield man sentenced to life in prison for grisly homicide, carjacking Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Yahoo
North Adams man charged with grand larceny in New York
HILLSDALE, N.Y. (WWLP) – A North Adams man was arrested on Friday in New York in connection with a larceny investigation. Caller impersonates Hampden County Deputy in latest phone scheme The New York State Police stated in a press release that 46-year-old Christopher J. Read of North Adams, Mass., had been appointed as a legal guardian for an individual living in Hillsdale. Following an in-depth investigation, officers found that Read did not use guardianship funds he received for the care and wellbeing of the child in his care. Read allegedly used these funds for personal gain and, in total, misappropriated $38,302.05. The New York State Police Livingston Bureau of Criminal Investigation arrested Read on Friday and charged him with Grand Larceny in the Third Degree and Endangering the Welfare of an Incompetent or Physically Disabled Person in the First Degree. Read was released on personal recognizance and is scheduled to appear in the Town of Claverack Court on June 25. WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A ‘Chicano Hieronymus Bosch' Has an Unflinching Vision of America
It's easy to see why so many people describe Vincent Valdez's work as prophetic. Take 'Requiem,' an installation he made in collaboration with his partner, the artist Adriana Corral, centered on a bronze sculpture of a dying bald eagle lying pitiably on its back. When it was first shown at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) in 2019, it seemed to precisely capture the mood of many Americans who were fearful for the future of the country under the first Trump administration. But it was actually created two years before the 2016 election. Likewise, 'The City,' Valdez's 30-foot-long oil painting depicting a modern-day gathering of men, women and even a baby dressed in Ku Klux Klan hoods. Shown in 2018, it could have been a direct response to the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. Except it, too, was made before the rally took place. 'I don't have a crystal ball in my studio,' Valdez, 47, said in a recent telephone conversation from his studio in Houston. (He splits his time between Texas and Los Angeles.) 'I'm just keeping my eyes open, especially at a moment when more and more people find it easier to just turn away from the world.' Now museum audiences are having a chance to assess the full sweep of Valdez's vision of America — a record of 'love, struggle and survival in 21st-century America,' he calls it. His midcareer retrospective, 'Just a Dream …,' opens at Mass MoCA, in North Adams, Mass., on May 25; it is the second stop for the exhibition, which debuted at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) last November. Visitors to Mass MoCA will find meticulously rendered drawings, paintings, bronze sculptures, etchings, videos and even a painted truck that home in on some of the most indelible and poignant images of Chicano (or Mexican American) and Latino experience. Valdez calls his devotion to a realist style and traditional art-making techniques a form of 'high-definition vision.' His subjects include exhausted, defeated boxers; the funeral of his best friend John R. Holt Jr., an Iraq War veteran who took his life in 2009 because of PTSD; televised scenes of American politics and pop culture (Oliver North's trial, Michael Jordan's slam dunk contest); victims of racist violence against Mexican Americans; and inspirational figures from the Latino community. Valdez's socially engaged art finds its focus in the often overlooked presence of Chicanos, a vision planted when he was only 9 years old, and already working alongside the artist Alex Rubio on murals around San Antonio, his hometown. His commitment to painting — as well as to the historical research demanded by these compositions — was so passionate that his high school teachers let him cut class to create murals in the school cafeteria, figuring it was the best way to keep him engaged in school. He had taught himself to draw the human form via television, asking his mother to pause the VCR so he could trace the figures on paper. He arrived at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2000, where his penchant for anatomically precise drawings called to mind art from the Renaissance, or the 20th-century social realism of George Bellows and Paul Cadmus — decidedly out of sync with the abstract vibe. When Valdez began working on 'Kill the Pachuco Bastard!' (2001), some of his teachers balked at its frank depiction of racist and xenophobic violence, he said. The painting portrays the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles, in which American servicemen attacked hundreds of predominantly Mexican American men. 'I remember an instructor saying, 'You're never going to have a successful career if you continue to work with controversial and confrontational subject matter like this,'' he recalled. That instructor was wrong. The painting soon caught the eye of Cheech Marin, the actor, comedian, art collector and founder of the Cheech, a center for Chicano art and culture at the Riverside Art Museum in California. On a tip from an art adviser, he traveled to San Antonio to see it. Valdez, who had moved back into his parents' home after college, pulled it out from under his mother's bed, Marin said in an interview. 'I took one look at it and said, 'This is great, I'll buy it' — it was as simple as that.' The painting also captivated the musician Ry Cooder, who at the time was working on 'Chavez Ravine,' a 2005 Grammy-nominated concept album inspired by the story of a longstanding Mexican American neighborhood in Los Angeles demolished in the 1950s. Real estate developers promised public housing; residents, forcibly removed from their homes, got Dodger Stadium instead. Cooder had the idea of creating a painted vehicle — a homage to Chicano lowrider car culture — that would narrate the history of the event. He found Valdez's phone number and began leaving messages, to no avail, he said in a recent interview. ('I never bothered calling back because I assumed it was a friend pulling a stunt,' Valdez said with a laugh.) When Cooder did finally get through, he convinced Valdez to move to California. Over two years there, the painter transformed a 1953 Good Humor ice cream truck into a complex historical account of a crucial moment in Los Angeles history. 'He's kind of a Chicano Hieronymus Bosch, or Albrecht Dürer,' Cooder said. 'He has the technique, but he also brings tremendous imagination, beautiful colors and a sense of action and movement.' Portraiture plays a central role in Valdez's practice. 'People of the Sun / El Gente de la Sol (the Santanas),' from 2018, depicting his grandparents in front of a clothesline, took three years. 'It's one of the very, very few paintings that I am content with,' Valdez said. 'It speaks about the labor and the toil and the determination of creating that better life and situation in America, so that your offspring have a better way forward.' If paintings like 'The City' offer up a troubling vision of America, Valdez's continuing series 'The New Americans' points to what it could be. ('The City,' 'The New Americans' and a 2018 series titled 'Dream Baby Dream,' showing mourners at Muhammad Ali's funeral, are part of a trilogy, 'The Beginning Is Near.') 'I want to paint Americans in the 21st century who, in my eyes, are still fighting the good fight, not for power, not for profit, not for fame, but because it's still simply the right thing to do,' he said. Subjects include Sennett Devermont, a legal rights activist known as Mr. Checkpoint and founder of the AFTP ('Always Film the Police') Foundation; his partner and sometime collaborator Adriana Corral; and the jazz musician and music education advocate Wynton Marsalis. The artist Teresita Fernández, another subject, has been a longtime admirer. 'There is a particular, very sharp sensitivity to the way Vince brings power to the act of looking,' she said in an email. 'He's very tenderly seeing layers of personhood, revealing a second, deeper layer of portraiture that's much more subtle and intimate, beyond broad ideas of identity.' His approach — showing both the lows and the highs of American experience — seems to resonate with museumgoers. Patricia Restrepo, a curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and an organizer of the exhibition, said that attendance there included a huge number of first-time visitors and multigenerational families, many Latino. 'Parents would bring in their young children and really engage in uncomfortable and critical conversation about the ways in which white supremacy continues to operate and continues to harm them,' she said. 'I think Vincent really is able to usher in difficult conversations through the strategy of beauty and technical mastery,' she added. Not everyone is so comfortable when confronted with the art. When 'Kill the Pachuco Bastard!' was shown at the Smithsonian almost 20 years ago, Valdez recalled that curators insisted on installing it behind a curtain. And when the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin bought 'The City,' the museum kept it in storage for two years while curators considered how to display it. When they put it on view, it was hung behind a wall with content warnings for visitors who might have been troubled to see such a frank depiction of the K.K.K. Though the museum was criticized by some for its handling of the presentation, no significant protest materialized. That painting developed out of Valdez's study of Texas history, during which he learned that between 1848 and 1928, 547 Mexican Americans were lynched in Texas and California. The piece was also informed by his interest in the artist Philip Guston, who depicted Klan figures in his work during the 1960s and '70s, and by his own unsettling encounter with a K.K.K. rally as a teenager. 'I didn't make the painting to be controversial or have a shock value,' Valdez said. 'My goal was to create a 30-foot mirror of America, to recreate the kinds of tensions I felt in the air outside my studio.' He had tackled the subject with an earlier series, 'Strangest Fruit,' depicting Chicano men — modeled by family and friends — in poses suggestive of victims, hanging against blank backgrounds like the martyred saints of the Renaissance. 'No one was bothered by those paintings,' he noted. 'People are more comfortable seeing the victims of violence than the perpetrators.' Both CAMH and Mass MoCA made the decision to present 'The City' straightforwardly; at Mass MoCA, it is one of the first things visitors see. 'Vincent is unflinching,' said Denise Markonish, who co-curated 'Just a Dream …' 'We, as a museum, should be too.' The payoff of close looking is apparent in works like 'So Long, Mary Ann,' Valdez's searing 2019 portrait, whose name alludes to a Leonard Cohen song about heartbreak. It shows a young man — shirtless, with a shaved head, tattoos covering his body. But push past the surface, past the current discourse around tattooed Latino gang members, and his expression is mournful, tender and vulnerable. Look closer still, and you will see a tiny cross reflected in the young man's eye. It's this attention that makes Valdez a singular artist, Markonish said. 'He paints a picture of his grandparents with as much care as he paints the Klan,' she said. 'In taking the time to render these things, he's confronting them in a really intimate way. He's doing himself what he is asking us to do, which is not look away.'
