As a High Scho
ol boy in Pavilion, New York, I acted in and did the sets for many of our plays. One of our efforts (an act from ‘Charley’s Aunt,’ where I recall I played the lead) competed in a tri-county event, and somehow at age seventeen I was awarded the prize “Best Actor.” The award was an impressive set of bookends, which I still possess. They were high quality “Museum replicas” from the British Museum, set on marble pediments (the bookends are pictured below in comments), and this occasion, remarkably, was the first time Greg ever heard of the mythological figure Dionysus. At that age, I had barely heard of Greek salad… But tonight, for me, is a Bacchanal.
For tonight in Paris, 50 years later, I’m comforted again to be in the midst of the Théàtre des Champs-Elysées, the great early Art Deco architectural masterpiece by Perret, the birthplace of Stravinsky’s pagan ‘Rite of Spring,’ surrounded by the magnificent and inspiring murals of Maurice Denis, truly a favorite painter of mine. As many times as one is drawn to admire these large ceiling-paintings, their vision brings to this “Temple of Dance and Music” a renewed celebration of beauty, harmonious perfection, and theatrical ritual.
It comes to mind that my own first performance in this theater dates from 1985, and I’ve luckily been involved in a very large number of new productions and concerts over 40 years in this theater, from that first time as the King in the stunningly baroque ‘Ariodante’ staged by Pier Luigi Pizzi, through various versions of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and Passions by Bach, one time even fully-staged, or in ‘The Rake’s Progress’ of Stravinsky in a wonderful stylized vision of splendor and decadence by André Engel, leading up to my very last time here as the aged Arkel in ‘Pelléas et Mélisande,’ warmly and sensually conducted by Bernard Haitink.
Tonight’s concert is of the purest Elysian variety, offering the Schumann Concerto for Piano and Beethoven’s 4th Symphony. A brilliant Lars Vogt played and conducted from the piano. His solo encore, Chopin’s ‘Nocturne in C-sharp minor’ (posthumous) – “Lento con gran espressione” – was a reverie where time ceased its movement, a dreamy occasion for me to gaze up to the inscriptions above the stage in the famous circular ceiling: “Aux rhythmes dionysiaques unissant la parole d’Orphée, Apollon ordonne les jeux des graces et des muses.” * That demi-god, as much as Apollo, has undoubtedly inspired me at every turn, from youth to this point where I seem to have unwittingly become Silenus, Dionysus’ old, balding tutor.
This can’t just be me. Surely we all feel the attraction of Dionysus when we laugh out loud, sensing the absurdity of a situation, or when we lustfully prepare and celebrate being together (I quickly admit to my love of good company and good food and plentiful good wine!), or of course when we enjoy the formalized rituals of good music, either playing or attentively listening to a live performance – especially when we revel in musical ornamentation, trills, variations and high notes! And thus as we celebrate old customs: Christmas trees, high Masses with incense and organ music, or even blaring songs, but especially when we savor the joy of true passion for all the wonderful and various forms of Art which help us to escape from the cares and dangers of the present world.
I’m grateful for that encouragement when I was a teenager, and am mindful of the benefits that that very surprising and enlightened gift – which has travelled with me until now – has brought forth.
* That’s really hard to translate. Something like: “To Dionysian rhythms uniting with the poems of Orpheus, Apollo orders the graces and the muses to play.” Other suggestions?