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The Chevalier: The Life & Music of Joseph Bologne brings collectively two ideas which are scorching at the moment: music theater (or, theater with music), and recognition of figures in classical music aside from white European males (Bologne is 2 out of three, in the event you depend his fatherland).
The topic is Joseph Bologne, additionally recognized by his title Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a Black bon vivant who was born in 1745 on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Formally educated in France, his abilities for violin enjoying and composition shone (together with fencing and dancing) and he was additionally a navy colonel and an abolitionist. As a composer, the man was no hack: he wrote no less than 100 works from string quartets to operas.
What was his life as a Black man in courtly 18th century Europe like? We might by no means know for positive. Invoice Barclay’s play dramatizes episodes of his life, with reside performances of his music woven into the story. Barclay, by the way in which, can be the inventive director of Music Earlier than 1800, the New York early music establishment. MB1800 co-presents the efficiency, together with Live performance Theatre Works (of which Barclay can be inventive director, and which provided the actors for this manufacturing), and the Harlem Chamber Gamers (whose instrumental abilities will probably be in full show on stage, together with solo violinist Brendon Elliott).
If you’re even the slightest bit piqued by this description, the venue ought to put you excessive. The United Palace (4140 Broadway within the Washington Heights neighborhood of higher Manhattan) is a must-see all by itself. The brilliantly beautiful and excessively ornate decor of this 1920’s one-time movie show will take your breath away. It’s one in every of New York Metropolis’s largest theaters, with 3400 seats.
The efficiency is on January 21, 2024, at 4 pm (get there early so you possibly can gawk on the “eclectic Orientalia with Moorish-Rococo affect” of the corridor). Tickets at unitedpalace.org. The efficiency will probably be captured on video, and will probably be accessible for on-demand streaming in February (tickets through mb1800.org).
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