The wonderful librarians at Hornsey Library in Crouch End have invited me to present a new edition of extracts from the film of the Amsterdam production of The Kingdom, on Thursday 23rd October at 7pm (free entry).
The production was directed by the theatre director and choreographer Rufus Collins, when he was based at the Engelenbak Theatre in Amsterdam.
Rufus Collins
A member of the Living Theatre and much involved in the Sixties counterculture, Rufus Collins appeared in several of Andy Warhol’s films, Screen Tests (1964-66), Couch (1964), and Kiss (1963), in the latter film with the artist and filmmaker Naomi Levine.
Alejo Carpentier
I based the libretto for the opera on the novel about the Haitian independence movement, The Kingdom of This World, by the Cuban writer and musicologist Alejo Carpentier, who lived at various periods in Havana, in Paris, and in Caracas, Venezuela.
Carpentier was a friend of Surrealist poet Robert Desnos, who helped him to escape Cuba, after he’d been imprisoned during the dictator Gerardo Machado’s regime. In Paris, Carpentier met many artists, other writers, poets and musicians, including Pablo Neruda, Asturias, Picasso, and Amadeo Roldán, with whom he organised Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. Carpentier’s book Music in Cuba, placed him at the heart of the Afrocubanismo movement. He also wrote an essay on Edgard Varèse, a composer also influenced by Latin-American music, who remains for me a strong influence.
C.L.R. James
I found an important source of historical information about the Haitian Revolution in C.L.R. James’ famous book The Black Jacobins, from a Caribbean bookshop in Brixton.
James was born in Trinidad, where he wrote stories drawn from ‘barrackyard’ life, in which he found a combination of the everyday and the mysterious which fascinated him, a combination which also fascinated Carpentier, an early example of what came to be known as ‘magic realism’.
As a young man, James left for England, where he worked with Learie Constantine on the famous cricketer’s autobiography, and he also became cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. He met various English writers, including the poet Edith Sitwell. Leonard and Virginia Woolf, at their Hogarth Press, published his pamphlet about West Indian independence.
James wrote a play about Toussaint l’Ouverture, which was performed in the West End with Paul Robeson in the lead role. James left England to live in the US, working in left-wing politics. On a visit to Coyoacan in Mexico, he met Trotsky, and the painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. After travels in the West Indies, and in newly independent Ghana, he lectured and taught at various American universities, followed by an active retirement in Brixton, London.
More information
http://ocatilloaudiovisual.weebly.com/the-kingdom.html
for information about The Kingdom, including reviews of performances.
My presentation of the new edition of extracts from the film of the opera will be at Hornsey Library, at 7pm, on the 23rd October.
Tel. 0208 489 1118. Free entry.
The production was directed by the theatre director and choreographer Rufus Collins, when he was based at the Engelenbak Theatre in Amsterdam.
Rufus Collins
A member of the Living Theatre and much involved in the Sixties counterculture, Rufus Collins appeared in several of Andy Warhol’s films, Screen Tests (1964-66), Couch (1964), and Kiss (1963), in the latter film with the artist and filmmaker Naomi Levine.
Alejo Carpentier
I based the libretto for the opera on the novel about the Haitian independence movement, The Kingdom of This World, by the Cuban writer and musicologist Alejo Carpentier, who lived at various periods in Havana, in Paris, and in Caracas, Venezuela.
Carpentier was a friend of Surrealist poet Robert Desnos, who helped him to escape Cuba, after he’d been imprisoned during the dictator Gerardo Machado’s regime. In Paris, Carpentier met many artists, other writers, poets and musicians, including Pablo Neruda, Asturias, Picasso, and Amadeo Roldán, with whom he organised Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. Carpentier’s book Music in Cuba, placed him at the heart of the Afrocubanismo movement. He also wrote an essay on Edgard Varèse, a composer also influenced by Latin-American music, who remains for me a strong influence.
C.L.R. James
I found an important source of historical information about the Haitian Revolution in C.L.R. James’ famous book The Black Jacobins, from a Caribbean bookshop in Brixton.
James was born in Trinidad, where he wrote stories drawn from ‘barrackyard’ life, in which he found a combination of the everyday and the mysterious which fascinated him, a combination which also fascinated Carpentier, an early example of what came to be known as ‘magic realism’.
As a young man, James left for England, where he worked with Learie Constantine on the famous cricketer’s autobiography, and he also became cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. He met various English writers, including the poet Edith Sitwell. Leonard and Virginia Woolf, at their Hogarth Press, published his pamphlet about West Indian independence.
James wrote a play about Toussaint l’Ouverture, which was performed in the West End with Paul Robeson in the lead role. James left England to live in the US, working in left-wing politics. On a visit to Coyoacan in Mexico, he met Trotsky, and the painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. After travels in the West Indies, and in newly independent Ghana, he lectured and taught at various American universities, followed by an active retirement in Brixton, London.
More information
http://ocatilloaudiovisual.weebly.com/the-kingdom.html
for information about The Kingdom, including reviews of performances.
My presentation of the new edition of extracts from the film of the opera will be at Hornsey Library, at 7pm, on the 23rd October.
Tel. 0208 489 1118. Free entry.