Midsummer Silvery Memories Just Chillin’ By Ellie Schmidt •
eschmidtty@sbcglobal.net
Santa Rosa, CA. ~ Magical June midnights in Santa Rosa may not bring us into “the land of the midnight sun,” but ev- erything shimmers in a silvery light when the moon rises dur- ing the summer solstice, on June 21. An easy reminder of “Moonstruck,” the wildly fun- ny 1987 film, set in Brooklyn, with a cast including Cher, Nicolas Cage, and Feodor Chaliapin, Jr. (son of the incomparable opera basso Feodor Sr.) in a tailor- made role for him as the grandfather, which he pulled off with aplomb at the age of 82! While herding his bevy of dogs for their neces- sary nightly walk, he bel- lows to his unruly pooches: “Guarda la luna! Guarda la luna!” urging them to join him while staring upwards in tribute to the huge full moon. Proves the moon can captivate mid-winter or summer. Maybe Shakespeare felt such whimsy in the axial tilt of the Earth, when he wrote “A Mid- summer Night’s Dream” for his clever players. In 1937, the biggest film “treat” of my life was enjoying Max Reinhardt’s film version in our neighbor- hood RKO movie house in New York City. Everyone on our small planet recognizes that traditional re- cessional used in weddings: the joyful “Wedding March.” Felix Mendelssohn composed that incidental music for a pro- duction of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” staged in Potsdam, in 1843. One of Europe’s most gifted theatre directors, Max Rein- hardt, staged it thirteen times between 1905 and 1934 in Berlin and Vienna,
initiating
the use of his revolving set design. In 1920, Reinhardt, the composer Richard Strauss, and the playwright, Hugo von Hoffmannsthal established The Salzburg Festival. These three agreed on highly innovative combinations of stage design, language, music and choreog- raphy in all their productions. Oh yes: Happy 150th birthday,
brilliant Richard on June 6. This Strauss com- posed “Thus Spoke
Zara - thustra,” the
mu -
sic Kubrick later on chose to use in his film, 2001. Strauss composed a thrilling trio for three women’s voices for the last act of his buoyant opera, “Der Rosenkavalier” (A young
Count has to present a jeweled, long silver rose as an engage- ment token to a young noble- woman on behalf of an ox of a baron, then promptly falls in love with the young lady himself. –Yes, opera can be as much fun as a cir- cus.) Reinhardt fled Ger- many with a strong reputa- tion for his direction of very successful plays and films. He concentrated on directing landmark films in America. But, not before he directed and designed a spectacular outdoor version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Hollywood Bowl, in Sep- tember, 1934. He had the shell removed and replaced with a real forest which required tons of dirt hauled in for the run of the show. A real trestle had to be built to allow his plan for the wedding procession players to carry torches, cross over, and proceed down the hillside. The irascible Jack Warner promptly signed Reinhardt to a contract
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