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A Collaboration: Artist Shawki Youssef and Poet Joseph Issaoui in “It is just a Poem”
Joyce El-Khoury at Exhilarating Opening of the Al Bustan Festival
Al Bustan International Festival for Music and the Performing Art Universalism versus Entropy
Poignant Return of the Al Bustan International Festival of Music and the Performing Arts after an 18-Month Pause following the Pandemic and the Beirut Blast of the 4th of August 2020
Nélida Nassar 02.16.2022
For 28 years the Al Bustan International Festival of Music and the Performing Arts has held a special place in Lebanon’s cultural firmament, widely recognized as not only one of the city’s few major arts institutions, but also a destination for music lovers and the country’s only Spring festival.
The pandemic caused the Festival, like many others around the world, to cancel its entire 2020-2021 season. The gap was the longest since the festival began in 1994. Its enlightened founder, Mrs. Myrna Boustany, has passed the mantle to her daughter, Mrs. Laura Lahoud, who is carrying on her legacy with loyalty, charm, wit and poise.
For the first time in 550 days, an audience will be inside the auditorium in Beit Merri on Wednesday night, attending a performance of Puccini and Verdi’s opera arias by soprano Joyce El Khoury, noted for her sparkling, clear voice and stylistic sensitivity. She will be accompanied by pianist, conductor, and the festival’s artistic, director Gianluca Marcianó. The night will most likely also commemorate the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic along with the disaster of the 4th of August 2020, which left the country with 218 deaths, 7,000 injuries, and US$15 billion in property damage, as well as an estimated 300,000 people homeless.
The festival is an occasion to reconnect with culture and art. Some in the audience will undoubtedly congratulate long unseen friends and acquaintances for making it through the 18 months. There may be a discreet speech from the stage. Thirteen live performances are planned for the season, which runs 4 weeks, from 16 February until 13 March 2022.
This 27th edition is entitled “Reconnect” and includes national and international performers, some of whom will give several consecutive performances, among them: The Royal Academy of London Quintet (Miles Ames, violin, Maria Reinon, violin, Luca Wadham, viola, Gloria Kim, cello, and James Trowbridge, bass); pianist Boris Berezovsky, an especially fine interpreter of Beethoven; and a pianist of extremes Khatia Buniatishvili, known for her charismatic stage presence, warm, glowing tone and strongly expressed ideas. Violinist Renaud Capuçon, pianist Guillaume Bellom, and cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière will perform a selection of 22 of the works they developed and played during the pandemic.
Local music groups will include the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton
of Glass Marcano, performing Rossini’s William Tell Overture and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony
No. 4 at Saint-Joseph Jesuit Church, Monot. Rasayel group with singer Oumeima el Khalil, pianist Hani Siblini and the Lebanese Oriental Orchestra, conducted by André Hajj, will feature choreographer Pierre Geagea and his group of deaf dancers. Several lectures will take place at the Sursock Museum Auditorium in Beirut, as well a few fund-raising events on behalf of non-profit organizations.
The overused words describing the Lebanese as resilient and resistant and the country as being like a Phoenix rising from the ashes are by now clichés. I would instead speak about persistence as a fundamental Lebanese trait and virtue: “We bend, we don’t break. We sway!” And in the context of the Festival, it is Music’s power which is essential in helping us remember who we are and how we belong during difficult and traumatic times. It allows us to create an emotional narrative between the past and present when we struggle to articulate such a narrative in words. Its familiarity comforts us when the future seems unclear.
Music will return to the Al Bustan International Festival of Music and the Performing Arts’ proscenium tonight and, as always, in style. Opening night there is a marker of the start of Lebanon’s Spring social season. I cannot wait to bask in the rapturous applause of an audience starved for live music.
Mireille Kassar: Ephemeral Materiality
Astounding Mezzo-Soprano Ann Hallenberg with the Venice Baroque Orchestra
Ms. Hallenberg convincingly brings out the tragic dimensions of the operas, her facial expressions marking the changing moods of the score, even in moments when she is silent. Supported by a supple orchestra whose members seem to breathe along with each of her notes and who provide a lush background for her pure soprano tone, she reminds anyone who still doubts it that the opera seria is above all theater, as she deftly paints the painful and vindictive figure of the dazzling eunuch Vagaus, or the anguished Tamiri. Her most admirable quality, perhaps, is the eloquence with which she voices the text – of which we perceive every word. Governed by such mast
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