For those who have loved and lost. For those for whom great art can assuage life’s forays into the forlorn. For those who love wine, a great meal, live chamber music and dance in a singularly splendid setting: the Luminario Ballet Viennese Winter Gala is the thing. Good cheer, live art and companionship go far, as the lucky people attending this event will surely find out.
The talented Luminario artistic director Judith FLEX Helle has fashioned movement to the melancholy song cycle dear Franz Schubert completed just prior to his death, “Winterreise” or, “Winter’s Journey,” 24 art songs composed for piano and baritone.
The songs represent the voice of the poet as the lover, and form a distinct narrative and dramatic sequence. In the course of the cycle the poet, whose beloved now fancies someone else, leaves his beloved’s house secretly at night, quits the town and follows the river and the steep ways to a village. Having longed for death, he is at last reconciled to his loneliness. The cold, darkness, and barren winter landscape mirror the feelings in his heart, and he encounters people and things along the way which form the subject of the successive songs during his lonely journey. It is in fact an allegorical journey of the heart. source: wiki
Singer David Castillo and pianist Francois Chouchan of Le Salon de Musiques will perform the live music. Guest artists from the Suzanne Farrell Ballet in Washington DC, Allynne Noelle and Thomas Garrett Brown, will dance.
The antique winter-holiday surroundings of the California Club and the sumptuous wines and meal will take the guests back to 1824 when chamber ballet and music were performed in the great homes of aristocratic families of Vienna. The evening’s offerings include cocktails, hors d’ouevres, three-course Viennese meal, wine, and the best perk of all, even Schubert would appreciate it, valet parking at the Cal Club.
Luminario Ballet Viennese Winter Gala | California Club | Friday Dec 15 | tickets on web or call 818-235-6588