Good evening, Kibitzers! This is a red-letter day for the arts in Western culture, as it is said to be the birthday of William Shakespeare. Some sources give the date as April 26 — as with most information about Shakespeare, it’s murky, but for purposes of this diary, let’s just go with today. He won’t mind.
Accordingly, below the fold, we’ll visit performances marking that birthday and various other arts anniversaries that occurred on this date.
Feel free to share in the thread any music or theater or film you care to recommend to us, whether or not they have any connection to April 23!
- In honor of the main event in 1564, a young Sir Ian McKellen offers some observations about the Bard, and the Scottish play in particular, in this 30-minute excerpt from a longer 1982 one-man performance, Acting Shakespeare.
- 1939 brought the first performance of Béla Bartok's 2nd Concerto for violin. This performance by Tobias Feldmann, in the finals of the 2015 Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition in Brussels, won him 4th place. With the National Orchestra of Belgium, conducted by Marin Alsop.
- In 1953, the classic George Stevens western Shane was released, starring Alan Ladd as the mysterious gunfighter. Here’s the iconic final scene, in which Shane is fruitlessly begged to stay by little Brandon deWilde.
- 1964 marked the opening of James Baldwin’s play Blues for Mr. Charley on Broadway, at what is now the August Wilson Theater (then the ANTA Playhouse). The play was inspired by the murder of Emmett Till, and is dedicated to the memory of Medgar Evers, his widow and children, and to the memory of the dead children of Birmingham. This is a powerful short monologue from the play, I assume by the poster, Raymond Karago, although no one is explicitly credited.
- Billboard’s 1965 Song of the Year was I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch) by the Four Tops, released on this date in that year.
- In 1983, Corinne Hermes of Luxembourg won the 28th Eurovision Song Contest in Munich, singing Si la vie est cadeau. The Eurovision Song Contest has been held annually since 1956, and is seen by audiences of up to 600 million throughout the world.
- In 1993, Pete Townshend’s musical, Tommy, based on The Who’s 1969 rock-opera album, opened on Broadway. This scene is from the London production.
- And in 2016, Beyoncé released her dense-with-meaning 6th album, Lemonade. Go read the extensive account at that Lemonade link if you need details, or just watch this to get a feel for it.
Yet a third hurricane season starts June 1, and Puerto Rico is still struggling to recover.
It is Day 580 since Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico.
PLEASE FOLLOW Denise Oliver Velez and the SOS Puerto Rico group for the latest news about developments in Puerto Rico and the USVI (new diary here). Denise generally collects resonant tweets at the top of her comment threads, as well, and in the APR’s thread most mornings, to make it easy to retweet. If you tweet or FB, please share something about Puerto Rico and USVI regularly.
PUERTO RICO and USVI DISASTER RELIEF DONATION LINKS
The Daily Kos community has its own project: Puerto Rico resident Bobby Neary (newpioneer) leads a small team dedicated to helping a specific rural elder who was left by the storms without power, water, a roof, or any belongings but a moldy mattress. If you like to see concrete results, this is the project for you. See newpioneer’s diaries for ways to help. See this one in particular, and this comment with photos. See also his lovely and heartbreaking poem.
(🌅 = most recently recommended by Denise)
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