Kahlo craze continues with Vanessa Severo's one-woman "Frida" at STC

Vanessa Severo as Frida Kahlo (The Broken Column) in Frida...A Self Portrait. Photo: Michael Brosilow

Frida Kahlo, after living most of her life in the shadow of Diego Rivera, has become a marketing force. Especially since the turn of the century, when Salma Hayek starred in a 2002 movie about the Mexican artist, the arts world has continued to cash in on Kahlo's viral power. Her popularity as a popular icon of feminism even threatens to crowd out the striking originality of her paintings. The latest work to reimagine Kahlo comes in play form, a one-woman show written and acted by Vanessa Severo, playing now at Shakespeare Theatre Company's Klein Theatre, seen last Tuesday.

My favorite Frida Kahlo publicity stunt was the unibrow that museums were selling at gift shops and encouraging people to wear to get a discount at their Kahlo retrospectives. True to the Kahlo craze, women attending the show last Tuesday dressed à la Frida: colorful dresses, flowers in their hair, albeit with no unibrows in sight. I regretted not wearing a dead hummingbird on a thorn branch around my neck.

Appropriately, the genesis of the play lies in Severo's visit to Casa Azul, Kahlo's home in Mexico City. Severo's monologue, which flips back and forth between Kahlo's voice and the author's, is mostly presented as an imagined conversation the artist has, in her final days, with an American architecture critic visiting her at the house. She recounts the basic outline of Kahlo's life: the childhood bout of polio, the devastating bus accident when she was 18, the tumultous marriage to (and divorce from) Rivera. Although the script seems biographical, details are massaged, like Kahlo's financial dependence on the wealthy Rivera (her physical ailments meant she could not earn a living) and her membership in the Mexican Communist Party.

Severo's performance is often self-indulgent and emotive: there is a lot of screaming. The play makes some moving detours into Severo's life, mostly relating to the congenital condition that caused one of her hands to be not fully formed. This part of the play is remarkably moving, more than the take on Kahlo's life. Joanie Schultz's production adds a touching element, with clotheslines of suspended clothing for a set. Often Severo stands within one of these pieces, as if she is lying in her bed. At other times, a large, light-colored suit stands in for Rivera. The most remarkable visual moment in the play involved this suit: Severo stood weeping in front of it, overflowing with grief from her miscarriages with Rivera, while her arm within one of the suit's arms seemed to move independently as if Rivera were caressing her face and comforting her.

Frida...A Self Portrait runs through November 8. shakespearetheatre.org

A Survey of Bruckner Cycles

► An Index of ionarts Discographies

Like the Beethoven Piano Sonata Cycle Survey, the Dvořák Symphony Cycle Survey, the Bach Organ Cycle Survey, and the Sibelius Symphony Cycle Survey, this Bruckner Symphony Cycle Survey started life a mere inventory of what has been recorded and whether it is still available. It has become more ambitious, since, and the February 2023 update (see details below) reflects this, bringing the format up to the type used in the Beethoven- and Bartók String Quartet- Cycle Surveys, for example. Favorites are still denoted with the "ionarts' choice" graphic.

See also: Bruckner: The Divine and the Beautiful

[Even after this latest update, there] are several incomplete, out-of-print, hard-to-get, and just plain obscure (at least in the West) Bruckner Symphony cycles that are probably not listed below, because I've found it impossible to get adequate information on them. This includes all but the third of six (!) complete and partial cycles of the Japanese conductor, founder of the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra, and Furtwängler-inspired Bruckner-nut Takashi Asahina. That also includes the once ultra-inclusive Gennadi Rozhdestvensky cycle on Melodiya, a selection of which can be found digitally as a sketchy MP3 offering on Amazon. While some incomplete and unboxed cycles have been included (Norrington, because I think his traversals are worthwhile), others (Roegner, on Edel) have not. [Ed. It has now.] There is no particular logic to that decision.

Bruckner wrote 11 Symphonies (counting the Study Symphony in F minor, or "00", and the retracted Symphony in d, "0"). Ten of them are complete, and the unfinished "Ninth" exists in various performance versions. The inclusiveness of a set is indicated: 00-9* would mean all 11 Symphonies including a completed 9th; 1-9 would indicate the conventional nine, with only the three finished movements for the Ninth. There are no cycles that include "00" but not "0". Where the Te Deum is included in a set, it is mentioned; "Te Deum (F)" means that the Te Deum directly follows the third movement of the Ninth in the make-shift completion suggested by Bruckner. There are a few different 'performing editions' of the finale, most prominently William Carragan's (in three revisions) and those based on the work of Nicola Samale and Giuseppe Mazzuca (1984). With John A. Phillips and Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs included on their team, they produced the 1992 Samale/Mazzuca/Phillips/Cohrs Completions below abbreviated SMPC, along with the year of the particular revised version. Gerhard Schaller has also produced a finale of his own - although everyone attempting this feat is invariably hampered by the looming lawsuits of those who have attempted this before and who are ready to assume plagiarism on principle. (It is, therefore, impossible to have a best-of-all-versions Finale until the copyrights of the current versions run out.)

For the truly dedicated Brucknerians, I have added the information of which versions the various cycles use in the Alt-Text which you can find if you mouse-over the cover image.

A note on Bernard Haitink: Haitink recorded a Bruckner Symphony cycle with the Concertgebouw for Philips, which is usually out of print. [Ed.: It can be had as part of the catch-all "Haitink Symphony Edition" box set, along with his Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler {[Ed.: ...but that's out of print already, as well, as is the Bruckner-only Blu-ray version that had come out.] It's a tame cycle, as early Haitink was wont to be (though the 1967 analog 7th ought to be sampled!) and maybe not that great a loss. Meanwhile, he was busily recording with his favorite orchestras (BRSO, CSO, Dresden Staatskapelle, LSO, and RCO of course). From those recordings, many in the Super Audio format, one can cobble together an incomplete Bruckner cycle of astounding quality, as Haitink became ever more interesting in old age.


[Oct. 26] Expanded the Haitink-section to include his Vienna and his late live recordings. You will see plenty entries still with placeholder text ("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..."). These will be removed, one by one (I started by giving Skrowaczewski his due), as I find time and inspiration.
[Ed. Feb. 23 through Oct. 26] This is the update you've been waiting for. The format has been brought into line with the most recent discographic surveys, allowing for commentary and alternate editions to be displayed. And I have scoured enough information to bring all seven (!) Asahina-cycles into the fold! I have kept the alphabetical ordering by conductor out of convenience and because it is quite interesting to see which conductors have recorded Bruckner multiple times. I have become more accepting of partial cycles (Klemperer, Celi III, van Beinum, Norrington and I have included all the most recent cycles (Ballot, Gergiev, Jansons, P.Järvi, Nelsons, Poschner, Schaller, Thielemann), orchestra-centric cycles (Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra), and numerous re-issues of extant cycles.
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[Ed.08/03/18] I've now added Ivor Bolton's cycle - the third to appear on Oehms! Somebody loves Bruckner overe there!

[Ed.03/03/18] Yannick Nézet-Séguin's cycle has just been released and added below. The mostly-Kurt Eichhorn-cycle of the Bruckner Orchester Linz has also been added, at last.

[Ed.10/09/17] A massive, much overdue update: SWR Classic has at last issued Hans Rosbaud's near-complete cycle (2-9) in never before achieved sound quality. Kurt Masur's Bruckner has been re-issued. Daniel Barenboim has recorded a third cycle, now, for the first time with "his" orchestra, the Berliner Staatskapelle. I have reviewed the 7th on Forbes: "Classical CD of the Week: Bruckner for DG" and the 4th here on ionarts: "Dip Your Ears, No. 163 (Visual Bruckner)". Jaap van Zweden had his excellent Bruckner cycle issued on Challenge Records on SACDs. The Korean Symphony Orchestra has recorded a cycle for Korean Decca under Hun-Joung Lim. The Riccardo Chailly cycle has been re-issued cheaply on Decca/Eloquence. Mario Venzago finished his controversial cycle on CPO. Brilliant Classic has put all of Heinz Rögner's Bruckner with the RSO Berlin together and made a complete cycle out of it by adding contemporary East German performances of Vaclav Neumann, Kurt Sanderling, and Franz Konwitschny to it. The Bruckner Orchestra Linz' cycle with Dennis-Russell Davies will be re-issued by Sony in December of this year. And Simone Young completed her very complete set ("00" + "0"), which has been released on Oehms. Global Amazon links have been added in all the lines I had to edit. The incomplete cycles of Dohnanyi & Harnoncourt will be added in the next round of edits...

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'Here’s a change indeed in the Commonwealth!': Segregation-era 'Measure for Measure' at Folger

Nathan Darrow (The Duke), Renea S. Brown (Isabella, center), and Holly Twyford (Escalus) in Measure for Measure, Folger Theatre. Photo: Erika Nizborski

Folger Theatre has opened its season with an intriguing production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Director Psalmayene 24, who won a Helen Hayes Award for his Africa-centered production of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses in 2024, has shifted the action from the court of Vienna to the American South under Jim Crow segregation law: the town of “Vye-enna” in what is clearly the Commonwealth of Virginia.

To underscore the point about the causes of injustice in that world, the play’s wronged parties are all played by black actors, while those in power are white. Nathan Darrow’s high-minded Duke becomes the mayor of the town, presiding with a genteel drawl in a courthouse building with two racially separated drinking fountains and a large sign pointing to a “Colored Waiting Room.” He appoints Lee Osorio’s uptight Angelo, a judge known for the rigorous enforcement of old laws, to rule the town in his absence.

The “fornication” laws that the Duke hopes Angelo will enforce, after some years of laxity, are read in the production as southern laws against racial intermarriage, recalling the legal struggles that led to the case of Loving v. Virginia. Dance once again features prominently in this production, in an opening all-cast number that depicts, among other things, the courtship of JaBen Early’s earnest Claudio with Maryanne Henderson’s beautiful Juliet. This adds poignant overtones to the idea that the couple, a black man and a white woman, were married in their own eyes but without the cover of the law.

Renea S. Brown, who acted in the director’s earlier Metamorphoses, played Claudio’s sister, Isabella, with both wide-eyed innocence and caustic moral indignation. She rebuffs the clumsy sexual advances of Angelo, given an extra air of menace by the different legal statuses implied by their racial identities. When Darrow’s Duke, disguised as a Franciscan friar, makes his own more honorable proposal, Isabella’s curious silence plays out with new resonance. The production leaves the conclusion open to interpretation, but Isabella seems ready to make her own way, neither in the convent she was planning to enter nor as a wife.

The supporting cast was equally talented, especially the wise-guy Lucio of Jonathan Feuer, who believes in his own infallible slickness even as he is insulting both the Duke and the Friar, actually the same person, to one another. Ryan Sellers hammed up Elbow, the hapless constable, as a country-bumpkin sheriff, to hilarious effect, and Holly Twyford’s cross-cast Escalus, costumed as a sort of executive secretary, bristled with authority.

The conceit of the production becomes overbearing to the original plot only at the end. As part of his declaration of love, the Duke tears down the signs of segregation on the set. While the element of racial discrimination may be offered as an explanation of why the Duke takes so long to reveal the truth to Isabella, this contrived idea seems like virtue-signaling, which may be why Isabella does not seem so impressed.

Measure for Measure runs through November 1. folger.edu