FREE SHAKESPEARE

Anne Hathaway as Viola.

Twelfth Night
Shakespeare in the Park
Delacorte Theater
Central Park
Through July 12
Performances every evening at 8 p.m. except Monday
For information (212) 967-7555
To get to the Delacorte from the west side, enter the Park at 81st at CPW.
From the east side, enter the Park at 79th at Fifth Ave.

A remarkable cast will be seeking to catch the conscience of the king, (aka Director Daniel Sullivan) in the Bard’s time-honored romantic comedy of cross-dressing and mistaken identity. Among the players are the outstanding American classical actor, Michael Cumpsty as Malvolio; the versatile Raúl Esparza, late of Speed-the-Plow, as Orsino; Hamish Linklater as Sir Andrew Aguecheek ; four-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald as Olivia; David Pittu as Feste; Jay O. Sanders as Sir Toby Belch and Academy Award Nominee Anne Hathaway as Viola.

While the majority of free tickets for Shakespeare in the Park are distributed via the free line at the Delacorte Theater, a limited number of tickets will be available the day of each performance online by registering for:
THE SENIOR VIRTUAL LINE
To register:
Click here: Public Theater - Tickets & Visitor Information - Account
Or copy and past http://vline.publictheater.org:8080/account/

Then, log on between midnight and 1 p.m. For the day of the performance you would wish to see, if you are 65+ submit a request for up to two tickets via the Senior Virtual Line. You must log-on again between 1 p.m.- 6 p.m.to determine if you have been selected to receive a pair of tickets. People are chosen at random, not in the order requests are received. Tickets will be held at The Delacorte Theater Box Office under the name that you used for registration. Pick-up will begin at 6 P.M.. Tickets not picked up by 1/2 hour prior to curtain will be released to the stand-by line. Specific locations for senior and handicapped accessible seats are not available through the virtual ticket line. Proof-of-age Photo ID must be presented when picking up tickets.

FREE CONCERTS

Maestro Alan Gilbert, the first New York City-born conductor of the New York Philharmonic in its history, is the son of Philharmonic first violinist Yoko Takebe and retired Philharmonic violinist Michael Gilbert.

New Music Director Designate Alan Gilbert
Conducts Free Outdoor & Indoor Concerts With
New York Philharmonic in All Five Boroughs.
All concerts begin at 8 p.m. - and are followed by fireworks.

Central Park , Manhattan July 14
MOZART Symphony No. 41, Jupiter BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7
Entrance to the Great Lawn, Central Park:
	Westside entrances: West 81st or 86th Sts. at Central Park West
	Eastside entrances: East 79th or 85th Sts. at Fifth Avenue
Prospect Park, Brooklyn July 15
(program as above)
Entrance to Prospect Park:
	Enter at Grand Army Plaza, Prospect Park West at 9th St.
	Bartel-Pritchard Circle at the intersection of Prospect Park West, Prospect Park Southwest and 15th St.
Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx July 16
MOZART Symphony No. 41, Jupiter MAHLER Symphony No. 1
Entrance to Van Cortlandt Park
	Enter the park from Broadway, near West 251st St. Concert site is north of the baseball fields.
Central Park , Manhattan July 17
Nathan Gunn, baritone COPLAND Old American Songs (selections) MOZART Selected arias MAHLER Symphony No. 1
INDOOR CONCERTS All concerts at 8 p.m.
Center for the Arts, College of Staten Island/CUNY, Staten Island July 18
MENDELSSOHN Scherzo from Octet for Strings, arr. for orchestra MOZART Symphony No. 41, Jupiter BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7
Colden Auditorium at the Kupferberg Center for the Arts, Queens July 20
Alan Gilbert, conductor MENDELSSOHN Scherzo from Octet for Strings, arr. for orchestra MOZART Symphony No. 41, Jupiter BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7

Mostly Mozart
Lincoln Center
212-721-6500

JAZZ

Jazz In July Festival At The 92nd Street Y
Bill Charlap, Artistic Director
Lexington Avenue & 92nd Street
212-415-5500
July 21-30. All Concerts at 8 P.M.

Jimmy Heath, Phil Woods, Mulgrew Miller, Nicholas Payton, Kurt Elling, Barbara Carroll, Houston Person, Brian Lynch, Carol Woods

July 21 – Sondheim & Styne.
July 22 - A Helluva Town: New York Jazz
July 23 - Piano Jam: With Respect To Oscar Peterson
July 27- The Gerry Mulligan Songbook
July 28 - It’s Jazz, Charlie Brown: The Music Of Vince Guaraldi
July 30 – Saxophone Summit

READINGS

Symphony Space’s
28th Annual
Bloomsday On Broadway
June 16
Celebration Of James Joyce’s Ulysses Focusing On Culinary Passages,
And Featuring Frank and Malachy McCourt, Marian Seldes,
John Shea, Colum McCann, Frances Sternhagen, KT Sullivan, Fritz Weaver, Barbara Feldon, Stephen Lang, Harris Yulin & Other Joyceans.
Broadway at 95th Street
(212) 864-5400

Bloomsday on Broadway XXVIII celebrated June 16, 1904, the most famous fictional date in modern literature, when Leopold Bloom walked around Dublin in the pages of James Joyce’s Ulysses. This year’s event was devoted to the novel’s culinary-themed passages. Performances included a major section on Stephen Dedalus’ breakfast with Buck Mulligan in the Martello Tower and Mr. Bloom’s famous fried kidney breakfast, as well as the breakfast-in-bed he serves to his wife Molly. Other readings included Bloom’s lunch as the sirens sing, the catalogue of Irish vegetables, meat and poultry found in the Cyclops episode, the snacks that Blazes Boylan brings to his afternoon assignation with Molly, the sobering cup of late-night cocoa that Bloom prepares for Stephen and the wakeful Molly’s erotic seedcake kiss.

MUSEUMS

Katharine Hepburn and Dan Tobin in The Philadelphia Story on Broadway, 1939.  Photo by Vandamm Studio.  Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Katharine Hepburn: In Her Own Files
Features Correspondence, Annotated Scripts,
Journals, Scrapbooks and Photographs
Vincent Astor Gallery
The New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts Exhibition
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
212-870-1630
Free Admission.
Through October 10

The exhibition portrays Hepburn’s stage career in four chronological sections: the early years when she had small roles in productions outside of New York, but missed opportunities on Broadway; her return to Broadway with the Theatre Guild after her success in film; her commitment to Shakespeare and the classics; and the later years when she accepted three major theater roles ­– the musical Coco (1969), A Matter of Gravity (1976), and The West Side Waltz (1981) -  and was even considering projects into the mid-1990’s. The personal theatrical papers of Katharine Hepburn, acquired by The Library for the Performing Arts in 2007, are on view for the first time in a fascinating new exhibition. Her long and rich theater career is documented through typed scripts (some of which, like Coco, is annotated in Hepburn’s hand), hundreds of photographs (publicity shots and formal portraits, as well as informal snapshots and rehearsal candids), scrapbooks, promotional ephemera, and 60 years of correspondence (fan mail, congratulatory notes, and letters from such notable friends and admirers as Judy Garland, Richard Burton, John Ford, Vivien Leigh, Peter O’Toole, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, and Jeremy Irons, among scores of others. She saved telegrams from her friends and from stage crews and even the cards that come with flower bouquets, including many signed “Pot,” Hepburn’s pet name for long-time companion Spencer Tracy. Admission is free. Files shows the evolution of an acting career that began with small parts in the theater. Even after she achieved superstardom in Hollywood, she often returned to the stage where each time she found new risks, new audiences, and, more than once, abject failure. In a stage career that lasted more than a half century  (1928 – 1981), she complemented her brilliant film career with memorable theater roles in everything from drama to comedy to musicals, in plays by Shakespeare and Shaw and by Philip Barry and Alan Jay Lerner, both on Broadway and on national tours .Her acerbic wit is displayed in her descriptions of life on the road, including her arrest in Kansas for speeding as she tried to get to the theater for a performance of As You Like It Notable also are a copy of a curtain speech she delivered in tribute to the fallen students at Kent State and an impassioned plea she composed for Joseph Papp’s Save-the-Theaters campaign. Also included are such unique items, as her pages of handwritten rehearsal notes, and a rare photograph of her from The Big Pond in 1930, a production she appeared in for one night only before being fired.

Katharine Hepburn was the recipient of four Academy Awards, along with numerous other acting honors. Her stage credits include Art and Mrs. Bottle (1930), The Warrior’s Husband (1932), The Philadelphia Story (1939), As You Like It (1950), The Millionairess (1952),The Merchant of Venice (1957), Much Ado About Nothing (1957), Twelfth Night (1960), Antony and Cleopatra (1960), Coco (1969), A Matter of Gravity (1976) and West Side Waltz (1981). She was born May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Conn., and died on June 29, 2003.

Mayer Kirshenblatt, The Gramophone, 1999, acrylic on canvas. Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. © 2009 Mayer Kirshenblatt.

Mayer Kirshenblatt, Boy in the White Pajamas , 1992, acrylic on canvas. Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. © 2009 Mayer Kirshenblatt.

They Called Me Mayer July:
Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood
in Poland Before the Holocaust.
Jewish Museum 1109 5th Ave at 92nd St.
Through October 1
(212) 423-3200

This is a charming and vivid representation of a man’s recollection of his childhood in a town in Opatów, Poland (Apt in Yiddish). While you marvel and kvel over a part of Jewish life that may have been coincident to that of your own parents and grandparents you learn things about the mysticism, rites, idiosyncrasies of a religion that you may never have know. I certainly didn’t. Now a nonagenarian, Mayer Kirshenblatt, glib and droll, was encouraged by his daughter to share his memories of the vibrant Jewish world found in the Poland of his youth, whereupon he taught himself to paint at age 73 and in a style that is reminiscent of Chagall and Grandma Moses, he vividly chronicled life in in the 1920s and early 30s. Kirshenblatt, who left for Canada in 1934, presents over 80 paintings and drawings that exemplify his mission to remeber the world of his childhood in living color, lest future generations know more about how Jews died than how they lived. This unique project is a blend of memoir, oral history, and visual interpretation. Intimate, humorous, and refreshingly candid, the project is a remarkable record -- in both words and images -- of Jewish life in a Polish town, south of Warsaw of Opatow, familiarly known as Apt,before World War II, as seen through the eyes of an inquisitive boy.

Windmill Psalter. Ink on parchment with paint. Late 13th century  East Anglia, England The Morgan Library & Museum.

Matthew Paris Faces of Christ and the Virgin ca. 1240-53 Ink on parchment St. Albans, England Corpus Christi Library, Cambridge

Strasbourg Cathedral, façade elevation Ink on parchment ca. 1260. Musée de l’Oeuvre Notre-Dame, Strasbourg

Book of the Maccabees Ink on parchment, with some paint Battle Scene ca. 850-925 St. Gall, Switzerland, Leiden University Library

Pen & Parchment
Rarely Seen Drawings in the Middle Ages
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
(212) 535-7710
Through August 23
Reviewed by Arts Editor Nancy Treiger.

With strokes of genius, artists in the Middle Ages explored the medium of drawing, creating a rich panoply of works ranging from spontaneous sketches to powerful evocations of spirituality and intriguing images of science and the natural world. This is the first museum exhibition to examine the achievements of the medieval draftsman. Through some 50 examples created in settings as diverse as a ninth-century monastery and the 14th-century French court, the presentation considers the aesthetics, uses, and techniques of medieval drawings, mastered by artists working centuries before the dawn of the Renaissance. Works from MMA’s own collection are displayed alongside important loans from American and European museums, and the great national, university, and monastic libraries of Europe. Many of these manuscripts are so highly prized that they have never before been lent outside of their home countries.

Arranged both thematically and chronologically, the exhibition opens with a selection of early drawings from the ninth and early 10th centuries. These works demonstrate the keen intellect and creativity of the artists, whose mastery of the pen can be seen in the diversity of the illustrations’ style and subject matter. The earliest manuscript in the exhibition—the Corbie Psalter (circa 800; Bibliothèque d’Amiens Métropole, Amiens)—features inventive initials decorated with drawings of men and animals and was executed by an anonymous master, who was perhaps the first great medieval draftsman. Artists at the Abbey of Saint Gall in Switzerland illustrated a wide array of texts with vibrant sketches, including the Epistles of Saint Paul (late ninth century; Stiftsbibliothek, Saint Gall) and a compilation of texts devoted to warfare (ca. 850 – 925; University Library, Leiden). In the 10th and 11th centuries, artists in England embraced the medium of drawing as never before. The 150 psalms attributed to the biblical King David were favored texts that inspired artistic interpretations rich in poetic imagery. The best-known of these, the Harley Psalter (ca. 1010-30; The British Library, London)—a work that pulses with energy—is a masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon line drawing. Another artist’s literal interpretations of psalm texts in the Bury St. Edmunds Psalter (ca. 1025 – 50; Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)resulted in inventive drawings of great charm. Manuscripts from 11th- and 12th-century France are characterized by the creative use of drawings in combination with painting. A stunning example is the monumental Bible of Stephen Harding (1109 – 11; Bibliothèque municipale, Dijon), intended to be the most authoritative edition of the holy text in its day. Created in consultation with rabbis and Christian scholars at the Cistercian abbey of Cîteaux in Burgundy, where Harding was abbot, the manuscript features tinted drawings, the delicate lines of which cleverly play off painted elements on the page to dramatic effect. An impressive selection of secular works offers a surprising counterpoint to medieval religious texts. Medieval libraries preserved the heritage of the classical world, as witnessed in an exceptional manuscript of the Aratea, an ancient astronomical Greek poem translated into Latin by the Roman orator Cicero (ca. 1000; British Library, London). This manuscript, featuring drawn figurations of the constellations, is one of the finest of its kind. It was drawn by one of the great artists of the Anglo-Saxon period, whose name remains unknown, but whose distinctive hand yielded a small group of masterpieces. Royal Spanish legal documents sometimes included drawings. A charter issued by Alfonso VII, King of Castile and Leon (ca. 1150; The Hispanic Society of America), is illustrated with a lively drawing of the parties involved in the legal proceedings the text records. Long before the Renaissance, medieval artists turned to drawing to illustrate scientific texts. An anthology of the natural sciences from the English monastery of Thorney (around 1110; St. John’s College, Oxford) includes dozens of instructive diagrams, maps, and charts. One of the earliest English world maps, the Sawley Imago mundi (ca. 1180 – 90; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge) appears as the frontispiece for a compendium designed for readers without access to large libraries. It brings together in a single image a wealth of accumulated geographical knowledge from the Bible, Greek legends, and ancient cosmographic texts. Of particular interest is a consanguinity diagram from an early encyclopedia produced near Regensburg, Germany (ca. 1150; Bayerische Staatsbibiothek, Munich). The illustration elucidates family relationships to the sixth degree, identifying individuals whom one may not marry, as well as those from whom one is entitled to inherit goods or property. Sketchbooks, model books, and unfinished manuscripts betray the working methods of medieval artists. An ornate A, B, C, or D from a Tuscan book of decorated initials (ca. 1175; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) served as a model for artists embellishing the texts of other manuscripts. The underlying drawings of the Prato Haggadah (ca. 1300; The Jewish Theological Seminary) were intended to guide later painted decoration that would use a variety of pigments and gold. A rare early drawing of the façade of Strasbourg Cathedral (ca. 1260; Musée de l’Oeuvre Notre Dame, Strasbourg) bears witness to the increasing importance of architects and architectural plans in the age of the great cathedrals of Europe. Several medieval draftsmen known for the individuality of their work are also featured. Matthew Paris, the designated historian and a prolific artist at Saint Albans Abbey, was an astute observer of the world around him. He is represented by one volume of the Chronica Majora , or Great Chronicle (ca. 1240 – 53; Corpus Christi Library, Cambridge), his most ambitious work, which contains year-by-year entries of significant historical events accompanied by an extensive and unprecedented set of marginal pictures. Bound up with this book is a magnificent tinted drawing that Matthew probably kept originally in a portfolio of his own drawings. The eccentric drawings of the Italian Opicinus de Canistris, a cleric at the papal court in Avignon, depict the artist’s mystical revelations and convey an obsessive fascination with the ways his biography fits into the order of the universe (1335 – 56; Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). Drawings of the passages of the stars and abstract cartographic designs replete with recognizable faces and figures form part of the almost hallucinatory visions of his fertile imagination. The exhibition concludes with two celebrated Gothic manuscripts that attest to the creative power of drawing as a medium in later periods. Painted figures float over a gossamer web of delicate penwork in an ornate initial in the Windmill Psalter produced in East Anglia (late 13th century; The Morgan Library & Museum). The quiet sophistication of the prayer book created for Jeanne d’ E vreux, queen of France (about 1324 – 38; The Metropolitan Museum of Art), makes it a masterpiece of grisaille. The artist Jean Pucelle combines keen observation of daily life in the streets of Paris, humorous and fanciful caricatures, and tender religious imagery.

RECORDINGS

Audra McDonald

Nathan Gunn

Laura Benanti

Patrick Wilson

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s
First Complete 2-Disc Recording
Of Allegro

For 100 exquisite minutes of musical bliss, I commend to you this magnificent interpretation of a musical which was uniformly panned by the critics in 1947 because Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had the temerity to employ a “Greek Chorus,” comprised of townspeople in a 1905 Midwest town with nothing more grandiose than 35 years in the life of country doctor, Joseph Taylor. Rodgers was quoted as saying “Of all the musicals I ever worked on, Allegro is the one I think most worthy of a second chance.” And a second chance is what Ted Chapin of the R & H Organization, together with Masterworks Broadway, a unit of Sony Music Entertainment give it. The show has four memorable musical pieces, A Fellow Needs a Girl, The Gentlemen is a Dope, So Far, and perhaps my favorite of all R & H songs, You Are Never Away.

And what an unprecedented studio cast: Nathan Gunn, Audra McDonald, Laura Benanti, Patrick Wilson, Judy Kuhn, Liz Callaway, Norbert Leo Butz, Marni Nixon, Danny Burstein and Maureen Brennan.