If you have been missing musicals, opera and dance, now you can catch over a dozen great shows and performances at the Art on Screen Festival at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which runs from August 10-14.
The event features great arts performances from around the world performed by some of the world’s greatest companies, which were filmed live and which will be shown on the big screen. All the musicals and most of the other programs are in English or feature English subtitles and all the programs have Hebrew titles. There are also a number of arts-related films that are included in this festival.
Among the shows in the festival is the legendary Broadway musical, 42nd Street, about a plucky chorus girl who gets a shot at her dreams of stardom when the leading lady of the show she is in gets injured, which was filmed at the Theatre Royal in London.
It features Bonnie Langford, Tom Lister, Clare Halse and Philip Bertioli in the main roles. A great many classic tunes are part of the score, including “42nd Street,” “We’re In The Money,” “Lullaby Of Broadway,” “Shuffle Off To Buffalo,” “Dames” and “I Only Have Eyes For You.”
Kinky Boots, the musical by Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Mitchell with music by Cyndi Lauper, was filmed at the Adelphi Theatre in London. This version of the show received rave reviews. It tells the story of a factory owner struggling to save his family’s very conventional shoe business and a drag queen he meets who opens his eyes to many possibilities.
A new production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The King and I, that was filmed at the London Palladium will be included in the festival. It features Kelli O’Hara and Ken Watanabe in the lead roles and includes the hits “Getting to Know You,” “Shall We Dance” and “Whistle a Happy Tune.”
Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes is a ballet adaptation of the famous film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger that tells the story of a talented young ballerina’s doomed romance. It features music by Bernard Herrmann, a classic composer of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and it was filmed live at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London in January 2020. It was performed by Bourne’s ballet company, New Adventures.
The Mariinsky Ballet’s production of the crowd-pleasing Le Corsaire, which features a famous pas de deux that is often performed alone, was filmed at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 2019.
The festival includes a performance of Swan Lake by the Paris Opera Ballet, in a version updated by Rudolf Nureyev from the classic by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. Nureyev’s reworking of Swan Lake has a Freudian subtext and the prince’s role is more important than in the traditional version. Amandine Albisson and Mathieu Ganio are the principal dancers.
Among the musical performances is a production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni by the Opera de Lyon, featuring Julien Behr, Antoinette Dennefeld, Eleonora Buratto, Kyle Ketelsen, Piotr Micinski and Yuka Yanagihara.
There will also be a number of movies about the arts. Several of these are in English or have English titles. Klimt and Schiele: Eros and Psyche by Michele Maly is a look at these two artists and the culture of Vienna’s Golden Age. Gaugin points the spotlight at that artist’s life. It is narrated by Dominic West, and features footage from Tahiti, France, the Marquesas Islands and the UK, as well as a filmed exhibition of Gauguin’s Portraits on the big screen, shot just after it opened at the National Gallery in London in October 2019.
Frida, Viva La Vida is a film by Giovanni Troilo that looks at the life and artistic legacy of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, with Asia Argento portraying her in some dramatized scenes.
The festival was first created by Caroline Boneh – the CEO of Eden Cinema – who initiated this special festival that brings to the screen musicals, great ballet performances, opera and documentaries about art and artists. Eden Cinema is collaborating on the festival with the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
For the full program and to order tickets, go to edencinema.com