Second day back to Chicago, and it’s a really long day! Escorting before work, work, nail salon, meeting with a friend for a quick bite before the opera, and finally – a Lyric Opera performance: Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci – two operas in one evening. Now that it’s already way past 11 PM, I realized I made a mistake – I should have taken Uber back home. But it’s still warm outside, and I hopped on a bus just after I got out of Lyric, and I thought that I would be home before eleven. But then, I waited for a train at Lake for 15 minutes, and now we are stopped due to the police activity on Howard – do not ask why we are sitting at Thorndale!
OK, we started moving!
Anyway, it was awesome that my friend Elina could come with me, because she does not go to Lyric as often as I, and it is always great to share the joy of music, conversation and an intermission dessert at Florian 🙂
Igor told me about Palatine protests and showed his photos, and it was only later that I saw the news about the incident that prompted the anti-police rally. The news cited “about 20 people,” but since I already saw Igor’s photos, I knew there were way more people.
I am really proud of Palatine’s community, and I feel that our family contributed our small part to Palatine being vocal about any injustices.
Below is Igor’s article from Journal and Topics about the rally, and I think it explains everything perfectly. My Palatine friends, you rock!
Boris is a “lifetime supporter” of FIBO – Finnish Baroque Orchestra, so he receives all their advertisements and often attends their concerts. The concert last Monday was at St. Michael’s Church in Kirkkonummi, where one of my Finnish friends lives. It’s always a little bit of a project to meet with her in person, precisely because she lives at a distance from Helsinki, so when Boris saw this concert announcement, he suggested we could meet up there and attend the concert together.
I am really glad we did. The church looks amazing. The oldest parts of it date back to the 13th century. Unfortunately, all of the inside was destroyed during the Soviet occupation, but the space with its outstanding acoustics is still there.
Of course, I am not a specialist in baroque music, so all six composers were unknown to me (Boris knew at least two), but the most astonishing thing I learned was that there were women composers in the 17th century, and not only nuns, and their music and their authorship actually survived through centuries. I feel so inadequate not knowing about that!
Isabella Leonarda spent all her adult life in a convent, but Antonia Bembo was a singer and a noble person, and I was like: why didn’t I know anything about that?!
It’s still working around the clock, meeting with people and talking with potential sponsors.
A colleague sent me a picture from the first conference day (the Community Events Day), and I really like it:
This morning was a Women’s Breakfast. it was hosted in a different hotel, and the setup was a work of art!
That was an additional opportunity to chat with many of my friends with whom I hadn’t had a chance to exchange a word at that conference yet.
Women’s Breakfast group picture – I am at the very back, standing
It rained all day, so I was glad we had a chance to walk outside on Tuesday. Even though it was raining, we wanted to go for dinner with my UK co-worker, and we found a restaurant with mostly authentic food within walking distance.
I am really happy with how everything is going so far, with all the conversations I had, and my outlook for my upcoming conference is optimistic.
On Thursday, I had a very packed after-work schedule. First, I went to the Art Institute to finally see the Strange Realities exhibit. Usually, I am among the first to see a new exhibit, but this time, I have something going on each Thursday, and I didn’t have time to make a separate trip to the Loop on any weekend.
Upon entering the exhibit, I realized that symbolism as an art movement had completely dropped from my radar many years ago. In high school, we studied symbolism in literature, including Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely. We “obligatory loved” Balmont, Annensky, and other poets of the “Silver Century” of Russian poetry. I just tried to find (unsuccessfully) a blog post where I wrote about how an “intelligent person” in Soviet Russia was supposed to admire certain poets and writers, who were not explicitly banned, but were not praised by the official propaganda; loving symbolists was one of those “requirements.”
Now I realized that for many years, it was not obligatory anymore, and this artistic movement dropped from my sight, and it took me a while to realize: yea, I know what it is all about!
Kupka: The FoolsEnsor: The Entry of Christ into BrusselsHans Thoma: The DreamFelicent Rops: The Greates Love of Don JuanAlfred Kubin: Judith with the Head of HolofernesGrasset: Morthin Addict
I think I will go see this exhibit again; I didn’t have enough time because I also wanted to catch up on the Elizabeth Catlett exhibit (I saw it as a “second one” when we were at the Art Institute with Boris in August, and it was not enough).
Next stop was the CSO. A week before, they advertised the pickup dinners at the Rotunda. I think it was in response to the disappearance of the affordable “before the show” dining options, which I also complained about. So I tried it, and the answer is no :). I would rather stop at Lea!
As for the concert, it was absolutely amazing! It was an all-Berlioz program with Klaus Makela conducting, and now I have finally started to like him. I won’t say I disliked him when I heard him conducting for the first couple of times, but he is so different from Riccardo Muti that it was a difficult switch! This time, I sat with my mouth open throughout the whole concert 🙂
Oh, and the violist Antoine Tamestit was absolutely outstanding!!! Loved every moment of his performance in the Harold in Italy.
One of the best shows I have ever attended at the Lyric Opera!
It often happens that when you listen to an opera, you don’t get engaged with the plot and mainly focus on the voices, but that wasn’t the case this time. The show was really dramatic, and it felt almost inappropriate to applaud between musical numbers because a tragedy had been unfolding on stage.
Also, I loved this gigantic mirror on stage, which allowed to see everything what was going on from another angle:
The video and the rest of the photos are from the Lyric Opera website.
It was my first time listening to Sondra Radvanovsky live, and I so-so loved her! Most times, I am not super-excited about sopranos, but she is so versatile, and so artistic; definitely my favorite soprano from now on:).
Oh, and one more thing: the guards were wearing ICE masks! And I am sure it was not a part of the original design!
TIt was the first time I attended this event at Chicago Botanic Garden. I thought I should take more advantage of my membership, and also I thought that’s something my mom would enjoy (and she did). There are only fifteen nights when the Jack-o’-Lanterns walk is open; each time from 6:30 to 10:30 PM.
Honestly it was hard to believe that each of the pumkins was actually carved; that they were not some plastic models! But the artists were at work, so you could actually see the artworks in making!
I am not sure whether there were indeed 1000 of pumpkins, but there were a lot, so I collapsed some of them into collages. Enjoy!
I learned about Guarneri Hall, one of Chicago’s “hidden gems”, earlier this year from one of the WBEZ shows, and when I went there for the first time, I was blown away by the uniqueness of this experience. When they announced the program for the new season, I reserved several single tickets, even though I was unsure whether I would be able to attend.
It so happened that a good friend of mine visited Chicago this week (to run a Chicago marathon), and she happened to have that very evening free. I got one more ticket to the concert, and we went together.
I was happy to share this experience with someone else (for the record, so far, there have been no concerts on any of the days when Boris was here).
Yesterday’s program was called “Sun/Moon,” and was dedicated to Hydrogen Day (yes, I also didn’t know such a day existed). The concert opening remarks were delivered by Dr. Andrew Johnston, Vice President of Museum Experience & Collections at the Adler Planetarium. He talked about the origin of the Universe, the role of hydrogen in it, and what the “music of the spheres” really means. The program featured absolutely extraordinary performers, soprano Kristina Bachrach and pianist Winston Choi.
Nothing can compare with this special feeling of presence just a few feet away from where the music is made, hearing the clearest possible sound, and following the artist’s facial expressions :). And after the concert, there was a Q&A with the performers, and a small reception (my friend and I used this time to catch up on life).
I it probably does not sound right when I post fancy dinner pictures immediately after the posts about arrests, but that’s my reality.
We had a team dinner yesterday at one of the Near North steak houses, and pretty much everything was “the first time ever” for me.
First, the waiters brought gigantic “seafood towers.” Everything was eadable, but I guess some people on our team were suspisious, and nobody ate the lobster from the to of one of the towers.
The Seafood tower
Then, everyone ordered steaks. I abslutely didn’t feel like eating 16 oz of meet, but there were some super-fancy super-small steaks with super-high price tags, and I go one of them.
For dessert, I chose a soft espresso isecream with rum. It ended up even better than I antisipated, with chocolate espresso beans on top. Much better than gigantic pieces of carrot cake!
I just exited the Siskel Center after watching “RIFENSTAHL.” I missed the first screening (with director-in-person) last week, because I hosted the Prairie Postgres User Group at the same time. Today was my only chance to see it, because I am leaving tomorrow and the last screening will be on September 26, before I return. Well, there will be more screenings later, but I will be travelling again, and also – I didn’t want to wait!
I just saw the movie. For the past several months, I was reading my friend’s blog about Riefenstahl’s memoirs, and I wanted to know more, so I queued a couple of books about her in my future reading list. But let me tell you that: it’s one thing to read what she says about herself, and a different thing to hear it, in her own words, with her facial expressions, with her intonations. To see the immense pleasure on her face when she watched the “Triumph of the Will,” conducting the screen music.
Starting with her cynical phrase: The movie was commissioned by Hitler. If Roosevelt were to commission a movie, I would also try my best. If Stalin were to ask me to make a movie for him, I would do my best as well. And all her screams: no, it’s a lie! What people disappear?! There were no such people around me! We didn’t know! No, I didn’t see! And: I would never make a movie about cripples! And isn’t it in all cultures that we admire beautiful bodies?
Oh, and there is footage of how she was making these pictures of Nuba! How she treated them like animals. I will never buy her albums.
Hettie's Reflections 