Monkey

The Toynbee Convector's recent post on Chinese Pilgrims reminded me of the wonderful comedy action TV series from the late 1970s Monkey, based somewhat loosely on Wu Cheng-En's classic Chinese novel The Journey to the West, which I then read in Arthur Waley's much abbreviated translation. The novel, in turn, was based on legends surrounding a real Chinese monk's pilgrimage to India to obtain Buddhist scriptures.

The TV series was a Japanese production atrociously dubbed into English by the BBC. Youtube has the opening sequence and this extract from one of the episodes to give you the flavour:



I was most put out on my recent visit to London to see that I'd just missed an opera based on the story of Monkey.

Columba and Iona

Saint Columba (521 - 597) came to Iona from Ireland. It's not entirely clear why. Some accounts say that he was sent into exile after his side lost in a feud, others that he was simply called to be a missionary to the Picts. Be that as it may, he took Iona as a convenient base not too far from the lands of the Scots (who were confusingly enough an Irish people) in the south-west of today's Scotland and those of the Picts in the north-east and founded a monastery there. Although he spent most of the rest of his life in Scotland, Columba did make one trip back to Durrow in Ireland, where he founded another monastery.

The Medieval Sourcebook has Adamnan's Life of St. Columba (for Adamnan, see these posts from Heavenfield), while the Catholic Encyclopedia has an early 20th century version of his life. As part of its series on the history of Scotland, the BBC has pages dedicated to St. Columba and Iona (unfortunately the video clips are not available to all).

The monastery on Iona flourished as a centre of learning until the monastery had to be abandoned in 825 due to repeated Viking raids. Iona Abbey was founded in 1200 but was closed in the Scottish Reformation. In 1938 the non-denominational Iona Community was founded and Iona is still a place of Christian pilgrimage today.


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The tab marked 'A' marks Iona in the above map. The Iona Community Council's site has tourist information and panoramas of the island. The band Iona has pictures from the island of Iona on their website.

The youtube video below is part of a series exploring why people come on pilgrimage to Iona.

Diva

Rummaging in one of the DVD shops in Plaza Indonesia, I was happy to see that Diva has been re-issued. I was not so happy when I asked the price. All right, it's an imported DVD but what do they do, give it its own seat on the plane coming over? Definitely something for my trip back home at Christmas.

I saw it twice when it first came out back in 1982 and thought it was wonderfully stylish. I saw it on a rented laser disc back in the early 1990s and it still held up pretty well. As far as I remember, it was the first time I'd really heard an opera singer and it definitely left me wanting more. The Youtube trailer below is the original 1982 one, although something seems to have gone wrong with the subtitling.

Actaeon -- 18th century onwards

Our second look at representations of the story of Diana and Actaeon starts with the 18th century. Thomas Gainsborough's 1786 picture is in the Royal Collection, while the two statue groups from a variety of hands pictured below are in the grounds of the Caserta Reggia palace near Naples and were made in the late 1770s. (photos from wikicommons, licensed under Creative Commons 2.5 licence)




The 19th century brought an 1836 picture by Corot now in New York's Metropolitan Museum, while Delacroix chose Diana and Actaeon to illustrate Summer in this picture below from a series of paintings on the four seasons, dated 1856-1863. The original is now in Brazil's Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP). (public domain picture via wikipedia)



However, the story does still inspire contemporary artists such as Calum Colvin and Harvey Dinnerstein. Those in the right part of the world might be interested in a forthcoming exhibition on the theme of

Diana und Actaeon: Der verbotene Blick auf die Nacktheit at Düsseldorf's Museum Kunst Palast.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Edith Wharton published a collection of poems in 1909, the title poem of which was Artemis to Actaeon. The history of the Diane and Actéon Pas de Deux is complex and with all due trepidation (caveat quaerens) I refer to you to Wikipedia for information. The National Library of Australia has a photo of Rudolf Nureyev as Actaeon, while ballet.co has a series of stills from a performance at London's Coliseum theatre by Carlos Acosta and Tamara Rojo. There are innumerable versions on Youtube, all looking much the same apart from the costumes to this non-balletomane.

Actaeon - 15th to 17th centuries

Book III of the Metamorphoses continues with the story of Actaeon. We start our look at representations of this theme with a majolica dish dating from the 1490s and now in Bath's Holbourne Museum of Art, showing the story of Actaeon in the centre and the story of the Centaurs and the Lapiths around the rim. (photograph by HaSee released into the public domain via wikipedia)



The picture to the left is Louis Cranach the Elder's picture of Diana and Actaeon, from the first third of the 16th century. It is now in Connecticut's Wadsworth Athenaeum, but does not appear to be on their website.





















The two pictures of Actaeon above are both by Titian, the one on the left, called Diana Surprised by Actaeon, being earlier (1556-1559 -- now in The National Galleries of Scotland) and the one on the right, called The Death of Actaeon, being later (1565-1576 -- now in London's National Gallery). Lonely London Lad's song was inspired by the Diana Surprised by Actaeon, and the two paintings form the video accompaniment to this performance of the aria "Oft she visits this lov'd mountain" from Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas".















Moving on to the late 1580s and and early 1590s, the above left picture is by Bassano, (now in the Art Institute of Chicago) while a drawing by Spranger is now in New York's Metropolitan Museum. The above right picture is by Cesari (1603), and is now in Budapest's Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, but does not appear to be on their website.

A decade or so later, Joachim Anthoniesz Wtewael of the Netherlands produced Actaeon Watching Diana and Her Nymphs Bathing, now in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Dresden's Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (ninth picture down -- can't link any more closely) dates Albani's painting of Diana and Actaeon to before 1630. In 1634, Rembrandt combined the stories of Diana and Callisto and Diana and Actaeon in a single picture now in Anholt Castle in North Rhine-Westphalia (a tip of the hat to Judith Weingarten, who brought this to my attention in a comment on my second post about Callisto).

St. Petersburg's The Hermitage has Maratti's Landscape With Diana and Actaeon from the late 1660s, while Liechtenstein Castle takes us up to the 1690s with Franceschini's Diana and Acteon .

Backtracking slightly to 1684, the French composer Charpentier wrote a pastorale called Actéon, an extract from which can be viewed below.

Songs Sacred and Profane

I've been meaning to look this up for some time and finally got round to it this morning. A couple of weeks ago, we sang "When I Survey The Wondrous Cross" in church (this Youtube video has the lyrics in subtitles plus a very informative description of the history of the words and music -- click where it says 'more info').




For some reason, this hymn always reminds me of I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls. I'd heard of this song long before Enya recorded it, but I think her version was the first time I'd actually heard it performed. I'd always thought of it as a music-hall song, but it turns out it comes from an 1844 opera composed by Michael Balfe with the libretto by an early Victorian impresario called Alfred Burn. The Youtube version I've chosen is illustrated by paintings from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Alma-Tadema (one of my favourite artists), plus some other paintings I don't think I've seen before.






Looking at the lyrics side by side and listening to the music of one immediately after the other, I can't think why these two pieces are linked in my mind, but they definitely are.

Callisto -- Introduction

To summarise the story of Callisto: Callisto was a companion of the virgin huntress, Diana. Jupiter saw her, and disguising himself as Diana, approached her. When he attempted to seduce her, she refused, and he raped her. She got pregnant but managed to conceal her pregnancy from Diana until the goddess decided to go swimming with her companions. Diana sent her away, and after Callisto had the baby, the jealous Juno turned her into a bear. Fifteen years later the child, a son called Arcas, was hunting when he came across a bear. Not realising it was his mother, he was about to stab the bear with her javelin when Jupiter prevented this matricide by turning them both into constellations, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Still jealous, Juno asked her foster parents Oceanus and Tethys to refuse Callisto and Arcas permission to go down into the sea, and so the constellations always remain above the horizon. (photo of bear by Malene Thyssen used under GNU Free Documentation Licence)

Ovid's telling of the story in A. S. Kline's translation.

Artists seem to have focussed on two particular moments in the story of Callisto: Jupiter's attempted seduction in the form of Diana and the exposure of Callisto's pregnancy, and I'll be showing you some of those in future posts. But for now, here is Nicolaes Berchem's 1656 painting, Jupiter Notices Callisto (now in a private collection). (public domain image from Museum Syndicate)

The story inspired a 1651 opera "La Calisto" by Francesco Cavalli. The DVD shown is reviewed by Opera Today. YouTube has extracts, of course, and the one I've chosen shows Callisto's transformation into a bear.




Those in the right location might be interested to know that The Royal Opera House in London and The Portland Opera in Oregon will be performing this opera in their 2008/2009 seasons.

The British Film Archive

The Toynbee Convector draws our attention to a YouTube video of London in 1903. It turns out that it's part of the British Film Institute's collection which they've put on YouTube. Well worth exploring. I particularly enjoyed this one recording trains and the railways from the harsh winter of 1963 (this is me trying out video embedding):