Leonard Bernstein commissioned Jacqueline Onassis to compose a mass in honor of her first husband, John F. Kennedy. The piece, a delirium that mixes classical, pop, jazz and avant-garde music with a libretto in Latin, Hebrew and English, a devilishly orchestrated score, a children’s and an adult choir, lyrical singers, dancers and theater actors, passages pre-recorded and a rock band at the foot of the director’s podium served to inaugurate, on September 8, 1971, the monumental Center for the Performing Arts in Washington that bears the name of the President who had been assassinated almost eight years earlier.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma performs September 8 at the opening of the permanent exhibition “Art and Ideals: President John F. Kennedy,” marking the Kennedy Center’s half-century of its dedication. KEVIN LAMARQUE (Portal)
The Kennedy Center, which was actually Eisenhower’s idea, is the US capital’s monumental opera house and auditorium and at the same time a meeting place on the banks of the Potomac River, where viewers of the first episode of the House of Cards series meet, destiny of a young journalist can change forever, power meets music madness, political differences are parked at the door and Washington society dresses in its own way. There they premiered the play by Benstein (1918-1990) again last Thursday, 51 years after the first time. They’ve also opened a new permanent exhibit celebrating Kennedy’s dedication to the arts.
Premiere of Leonard Benstein’s “Mass” on September 8, 1971. In the foreground Alan Titus. Fletcher-Drake
The intent was to arrive in time for the center’s half-century commemoration, but such an endeavor simply was not feasible in late summer of last year as the United States braced for the second winter of the plague while also adding an unexpected new word, omicron vocabulary. Up to 210 artists including musicians, singers, dancers and actors have taken the stage on each of the three nights the show has been restored, this time under the direction of Alison Moritz, choreography by Hope Boykin and participation from the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Gaffigan.
The ambition is still there half a century later, but the efforts to take the sting out of the proposal are appreciated. In the file photos, the performers can be seen walking around with their long hair and elephant leg pants. To underline that this mass in the new version is more than a hippie musical (e.g. Jesus Christ Superstar or Hair), with the choir in the background and the orchestra on the stage (and not in the ditch like back then), the interpreters are dressed as if they’ve come straight from Sunday mass at one of the nearly 800 temples in Washington, a city with a 65% Catholic population who believe in the same religion as its most famous neighbor, Joe Biden, the second president professes this belief in American history, according to… Kennedy.
The new montage of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Messe’.Photo by Scott Suchman-The Kenne
And amber? Bernstein was Jewish. In an interview in Vogue at the time, he explained why he decided to compose a Tridentine Mass: “I’ve wanted to write a religious celebration of some form for years. When I was commissioned, I thought of Kennedy and my head immediately went to Catholicism. The Mass is probably the most theatrical ceremony. Because this is a work for the stage, not a concert piece in the style of Beethoven or Bach.” Mass (MASS) was the first composition by the legendary music director of the New York Philharmonic (1958-1969) in six years, following Chichester Psalms (1965). The two previous works were also related to Kennedy: an inauguration fanfare in 1961 and his Symphony No. 3: Kaddish, which he explained to Peter Rosen in the documentary Reflections that he had half finished when he learned of the assassination in Dallas and decided to dedicate it to the Democratic President.
Leonard Bernstein (right) conducts a rehearsal of “Mass” in 1971, with Alan Titus, the protagonist of this montage, and Joan and Ted Kennedy. Fletcher Drake (from left).
Bernstein only had six months to complete Jackie’s assignment, so, as he had done with Stephen Sondheim on West Side Story, he approached a young Broadway writer, Stephen Schwartz (Godspell), to write the English parts of the text to finish. A certain Paul Simon also helped with some of the verses that help move the plot forward, with an officiant guiding the audience through their crisis of faith (or is it ours?) while celebrating a traditional mass.
With lyrics like “Half of the people are on drugs / And the other half is waiting for the next election” Simon underscored another of Bernstein’s concerns: to also make a political commentary and to use music to help heal “the wounds of a divided America”. ” And that could be another secret of the success of such an unusual piece: every time it is re-released, it seems as if it talks about the United States of the moment, more polarized every day that passes. In 1971 they were already rioting: It was the era of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers and the quadraphonic sound and its composer, a pedigree leftist who amassed an 800-page FBI dossier The agency advised President Richard Nixon not to attend the premiere, in part because of Bernstein’s flirting with the Black Panthers, a flirtation that the supreme pope of New Journalism, Tom Wolfe, reported in New with his fat scalpel York Magazine The exquisite left: this party at Lenny’s house (as his friends called the musician).
Original assembly logo.
The mixture of faith and progressivism initially seemed frightening to the Catholic Church, although it later reconciled itself to it; In 2000, Pope John Paul II requested that the Mass be performed in the Vatican. Matters of faith are not enough to squander liturgies, which gather some 2,400 people each night in Washington, as they do these days: Christianity threatens to lose its status as the majority religion in the United States by 2070, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center.
Critics in 1971 debated whether the piece was the composer’s best work (The Washington Post hailed it as “the greatest music ever written by Bernstein”) or worst (The New York Times called it “the most indigestible brew von Stilen used the recipe in a certain women’s magazine for fried steak in peanut butter with marshmallow sauce”). Spanish conductor Ángel Gil-Ordóñez, who has lived in Washington since the 1990s, considers it one of the composer’s “greatest works” but also “one of the most difficult”. “Only an American can dare to do something like this with such confidence. Although you have to be careful with her that she doesn’t slide down the slope of Jesus Christ Superstar,” he says. Gil-Ordónez knows it well: he directed it in Spain in 2000, directed by the recently deceased Joan Ollé.
Despite some turmoil on stage and among the orchestra’s musicians, the revival in Washington these days has left a good taste in the mouth, not least thanks to its protagonist, Will Liverman, a baritone with gospel roots, in the skin of the officiator, wearing that weight of the assembly. However, the reaction of the audience was not as enthusiastic as at the premiere: the chronicles of the time report 30 minutes of applause. On Saturday, after two intense hours, the theater said goodbye to the evening standing and with standing ovations, but certainly not for so long.
Bradley Cooper, incarnated as Leonard Bernstein in Netflix’s ‘Maestro’.Netflix
When Ollé and Gil-Ordóñez embarked on “this madness,” there was only one recording of the play, directed by Bernstein himself. Since then, certainly as a testament to the growing interest, it has been recorded six more times, with orchestras and casts from both sides of the Atlantic. It was also an important element in the 2018 celebrations of the centenary of one of the most popular composers of the 20th century, a megalomaniac as well as a prodigious popularizer who time seems to agree (even more so). His character is poised for a new revival: Hollywood star Bradley Cooper is directing and starring in a film called Maestro for Netflix. At the moment we only know her from the actor’s characterization, which has received all sorts of comments, even criticism for anti-Semitism. The film tells the musician’s story of his relationship with his wife Felicia Montealegre, with whom he spent 25 years, although she always knew he was gay. It’s early to know if this newly salvaged Washington fair will be part of the conspiracy.
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