Rge Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY __ iht'i trr P' 11 nrxr rnrxr " $ ..iaiuruuy, Jaua~ury lt5, I 7Oy music 'U' orchestras rise to occasion i i M t t cinema 'Oedipus': Every one loves mother By JIM PETERS I think there should be inore Midwestern Music conferences, like one during every concert; for the quality of music pre- sented last night at :Hill Aud, has rarely- been so consistently high. Not only did Theo Alcan- tai'a' University Philharmonic perform; but the program also featured Josef Blatt conducting the University Symphony Or- chestra, and Alcantara's Mich- igan Chamber Ernsenble. Basically, the. University was showing off to the assembled high school and grade school music teachers. And they certainly made an excellent. first impression. The. concert began with Respighi's "Pines of Rome," in which sound was created that could never come: through even the. best stereo outfit.-:The first section was dazzling; the or- chestra~ .cr e~a t-e d _their. own twinkling chandeliers to bounce sound off of, bombastic brass and timpani. Aleantara' blazed through' the. openaing. bars, eager to"get e.to .the wonderful fire- works. But the "Pines" contains sim- ple sections as well, ,romantic ov'erflWings- in oboe, violin, and cello solos. -And the famous re- corded nightingale solo. drifted into. the Roman~ triumph of the Appian" Way. The standing ova- tion was deserved; I'm sure ears are still ringing. The 'concert was .unashamed potpourri. One orchestra finish- ed, chairs were moved around, and another took the stage. The Michigan Chamber Ensemble. changed the mood to introspec- tive with Bach and Mozart. Repeating his fantastic per- foirmance of last semester, trum- peter James Underwood starred in the first movement of Bach's Brandenberg Concerto No. 2. His clarino- technique is almost unmatched a m o n g collegiate musicians. The full ensemble then per- formed a small sweetmeat by M o z a r.t, his Twenty-Fourth Symphony. In this work, the group seemed a bit too heavy, especially in the second move- ment, adantino grazioso. But the brilliance was sharp in the fast movements, pointed trills sweeping into melodies that are only Mozart's. Another episode of housekeep- ing brought the University Sym- phony on stage for the finals. I was worried about ending such a concert with so involved and serious a piece as Richard Strauss' "Death and Transfig- uration"; and I feared that maestro Blatt might destroy the buoyancy of the evening with a heavy-handed or too loose in- terpretation. But Josef Blatt has found his thing in Strauss, and he is more than equipped for the task. The concert achieved its pur- pose; the visitors were impress- ed. But for us who follow the season of the University or- chestras the question of "Why not all the time?" still remains. By DAVID LLOYD If you're looking for an aes- thetic experience this weekend and happen to miss Oedipus the King, now showing at the Campus, don't worry; it will soon be on late night television, hopefully in color. Although marred by a few glaring technical faults, "Oedi- pus" is a visually impressive film, tastefully stagey and ar- restingly photographed. But it is a sad day for Sophocles, when "Oedipus" would have made it better as a silent movie. The screenplay, contrived by Philip Saville and director Michael Luke, froma transla- tion by Paul Roche, is incom- prehensibly flawed by purple and plainly un-dramatic lang- uage. We move from the esoteric description of Tiresias (Orson Wells, pathetically miscast). who is "thedidactic master of the fine art of the infinite" to Oedipus' compulsive colloquial- ism - "tell me straight" as he attempts to deduce his questionable origin. We wince to hear the messenger inform us of the hero's tragic blind- ing-" a coupled puncture upon a coupled sin" -- and discover from Oedipus himself the meaning of his experience as he cautions his daughters to "abide in modesty so you may lead the happy life your father did not have." The one liner that takes the evening, however, is quietly ut- tered by Jokasta. She tells Oedipus that all his worry is for naught, for, after all, "many men sleep with their mothers in their dreams." Alas, p o o r, Sophocles, we knew him well. Plummer plays the compas- sionate, sensuous Oedipus as a headstrong adolescent whose anger never quite reaches the point of rage and whose stub- borness is reduced to the game of a priggish child. The one scene in which Plummer dis- plays a glimmer of passion, the chorus interrupts "Forgive us Oedipus, but this this anger. Considering the script, Plum- mer might be excused for dead- panning and whining his way through the role. But for an actor whose reputation is based /on Shakespeare and more re- cently The Sound of Music, his acting is woefully inadequate. At least, in this sense, the direction of the film was hon- est, for the audience is con- stantly looking down on Oedipus. And then there is the chorus, a crew of black. cloaked cor- morants waiting for their prey to fall. The collective whole fol- lows our hero's footsteps, step by step, mouthing all the ap- propriate grunts and, groans, managing profundities at times, but never really commenting significantly on the action, or being integrated into the action itself. Their raison d'etre isn't. 'The film's one evocative con- tribution, implementing vig- nettes of some of the suffering and action within the drama, is done during the choral parts, thus totally subverting t h e i r role as mediator, and allowing whatever they had to say to fly back to Delphos. Further- q more, the chorus' position is also circumvented through the use of flashback, since Oedipus has visual suspicions almost im- mediately. At the same uime, the direc- tor flaunts Greek principle and carries on as if the audience is given to understand nothing. Luke presents not only two con- flicting flashback versions of the murder of Oedipus' father, but also would have us suspect, though in suggestive close-ups, that both Creon and the peo- ple werehinvolved in a plot to do in the old man. Nor is the audience left alone, but constantly jostled between the empty seats of a G r e e k SALE ?-- theatre to the stage; we were treated to close ups and dis- tance shots from each setting: a disturbing, if cinematic, way of distorting Sophoclean unity. Lilli Palmer plays an appro- priately loving wife, so loving in fact, that there is an irrele- vant bed scene, which demon- strates, I suppose, that any- thing can happen. Her stilted (or is it stylistic) acting, how- ever, is only to be outdone by Plummer himself, including a crucifiction pose, and his best compassionate stance, as he says "Go, rise up, children," to his ~people. They wave t h e ir hands, and raise their voices with a superior kind of artifi- ciality which inevitably a n d quickly- changes tragedy to the worst melodrama. The filfn in general displays a kind of schizophrenia in trying to reconcl~e the classical Greek conventions and modern t e c h- nique and interpretation. The inability to successfully cope with this problem, combined with a cocktail-party transla- tion and inexcusable acting, re- sults, simply, in a very p o o r film. But the important notion is that the failure was not in- 01 -, Saturday and Sunday THE ECLIPSE Directed by Michelango Antonioni (BLOW-UP, RED DESERT, LA NOTTE, L'AVVENTURA), 1961. The third essay in Antonioni's trilogy about the na- ture and possibility of love in our time. "There's no need to know each other to love. Perhaps there's no need to love?"-.Monica Vitti (heroine of Eclipse). 7:00 & 9:05 ARCH ITECTURE 662-8871 7 C AUDITORIUM 4 e - ; Mr. Watson at Canterbury Doc Watson brought his slat-picking guitar to Canterbury House last night. He will continue his country and western act tonight and tomorrow night. Deutsche GRAMMOPHON Gesel lschaft I i After 21 good years, exit Philip Duey By BARBARA WEISS Club's task during, his tenure has I.consider singing to be the beern "to carry on the tradition of most universal means of self-ex- Michigan songs." pression by human beings," says Over half of the music the Glee Prof. Philip Duey of..the music Club currently sings is Duey-ar- sehooL ;"After- 22 years 'of: leading , ranged ("Varsity," "The Victors," the Michigan Men's Glee Club in "The Yellow and Blue") but the this self-expression, Duey is re- "tradition" his group has forward- tiring after this semester at the ed goes back to before the turn of age of :69. '.the century. Some songs date back .Accordirg to Duey,.whose career to the 1894's; others are products in music goes back over 45 years of scores. written and produced to. a master's degree in voice at for MUSKET's predecessor, the Indiana" University, the Glee Michigan Men's Opera. But, with Duey as director, the Duey resumed his graduate stu- Glee Club has not confined itself dies at Columbia, where he ob- merely to native Michigan songs. tained an M.A. in musicology, fol- Their performances in concert all lowed by a Ph.D. In 1946, he re- over the world, often as official turned to his home state and emissaries of the U.S. government, served for a year as head of the have included representative se- music department at Butler Uni- lections from the entire musical versity in Indianapolis before ar- spectrum. riving in Ann Arbor. Actually, the variety is fitting, for Duey's career in music has During his retirement, he hopesM encompassed as many forms of to write a history of singing. musical production as possible. "Such a book deserves to be Following his master's from In- written," he says, "and my past diana (where he also earned a , 4i B.A.-Phi Beta Kappa), Duey moved to New York, where he3 spent three, years studying music at the Julliard Conservatory. The glitter of Broadway provedI experience in study and teaching as well as singing, which any author on this subject needs, puts me in a good position to write authentically." to be a strong attraction for Duey, He has done a great deal of re- who in 1927 sang in the choruses search in the field, primarily from of two musical comedies. He then 1955-57 while in Italy on a Ful- turned to radio, and was hired as bright scholarship. a member of the singing staff of; But his most remembered con NBC. Most of his early broadcast! Bthsms eebrdcn singing was in conjunction with tribution will, nevertheless, most the "Men About Town,'' an en- likely be his leadership of the semble which performed in such Glee Club. As one of his students vehicles as Wonder Bread com- said when asked to appraise Duey's mercials. relationship to the group, "Philip Duey's career blossomed along Duey is the Men's Glee Club." ARCHIV HAIRCUT Michigan Union Barbershop 35% OFF MUSIC SHOP 717 N. University *i with the rise in popularity of the radio industry during the Depres- sion. He continued to sing pri- marily in commercials, and dur- ing this time also spent two years with "The Revelers," a male quar-I tet still in existence today Duey remembers as a unique moment in his musical career the evening when he was on all of the three major radio networks sim- ultaneously, singing the praises of Wonder Bread as well as per- forming light opera, operetta, and true opera. In 1939, he placed highest among that year's final- ists in auditions for positions with the Metropolitan Opera. At 38, following his failure to actually win a place with the Met, Duey cut short his commercial career of Town Hall recitals and radio work to return to the college campus. "I always had in mind the idea of returning to the campus," he remembers, "because it is much better to grow old there than in the profession of singing." SNACKS 1 MARK'S COFFEE HOUSE 605 E. 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