2011-2012 Season
Portraits
ERC’s 2011-2012 season, Portraits, presents three theatrical concerts that focus on different facets of the creative process from the perspective of several artists. Supremely creative minds are always in a state of white heat, and the lives depicted in ERC’s Portraits reveal the all-consuming intensity that characterize these artists’ works. Each concert celebrates a unique aspect of the creative process, which in some instances can have the power to destroy the creator. Always fascinating, often revelatory, and never indifferent, great artists are the consummate prophets of their times, looking far beyond the dimly lit landscape of ordinary existence.
ERC invites you to discover the life-transforming experiences that gave rise to the musical and literary works presented in Portraits.
Eat, Drink & Think Like…Beethoven
November 13, 2011
Proud and touchy from the start, Beethoven grew increasingly prickly as deafness forced him into internal exile. Yet he also had a boisterous sense of humor and an eye for women, and he spent many afternoons at his favorite Viennese coffeehouses, eating, drinking and chatting with acquaintances. ERC’s mini-concert, Love Elegies: Beethoven Kaffekonzert is part of 92YTribeca’s Eat, Drink & Think Like…Beethoven.
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Cruel Beauty: Rimbaud, Verlaine, Debussy
February 10, 2012
Two self-destructive poetic geniuses, their dangerous love affair, and the magic of Debussy’s music. Arthur Rimbaud, the enfant terrible of French poetry, was an outrageously precocious and genial adolescent when he met his mentor, Paul Verlaine. The two embarked on a destructive love affair of dangerous intensity, which transformed their lives forever. Rimbaud was only 20 years old when he finished his brief poetic career, but he produced works that irrevocably altered the course of modern poetry. Verlaine, a poet whose verses breathed an exquisite musicality, was seared by the flame of Rimbaud’s genius.
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The Heart is Not Made of Stone: Akhmatova, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin
May 12, 2012
The drama of Russian music woven into a tale of passion, love, political repression, and redemption. A legend in her own time, loved by the brilliance of her poetry and admired by her unwavering resistance to political oppression, Anna Akhmatova became one of the lighting rods of Russian poetry and culture in the 20th century. Persecuted by the Soviet regime because of her “eroticism, mysticism, and political indifference” to the ideals of the regime, she became one of the leaders of a poetic and artistic movement predicated on artistic clarity and the primacy of aesthetic beauty.
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