[sustran] !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Robert Moses Vs. Jane Jacobs Opera Is Almost Here !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Sujit Patwardhan]

This should be of interest to us all.

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Sujit




*The Robert Moses Vs. Jane Jacobs Opera Is Almost Here *
http://www.citylab.com/politics/2015/10/the-robert-moses-vs-jane-jacobs-opera-is-almost-here/411256/?utm_source=nl__link3_101915


*The video of the trailer*
https://vimeo.com/142466205



It was a true clash of titans, a battle of enormous intellects and wills on
a world-class stage, a title fight for the ages.

On one side: Robert Moses, builder of highways and bridges, destroyer of
slums, visionary creator of parks. The Power Broker. On the other: Jane
Jacobs, observer of the “ballet of the good city sidewalk,” champion of the
human scale, preserver of neighborhoods. The Eyes on the Street.

When the two grappled over the future of New York’s Washington Square in
the 1950s, the resulting conflict was epic in scale, with a city’s future
hanging in the balance.

Maybe only an opera
<http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/04/robert-moses-vs-jane-jacobs-opera/8942/>
could
do justice to the scope of the forces at work, and pretty soon we’ll have
one. It’s called *A Marvelous Order <http://mosesjacobsopera.com/>*—the
phrase is drawn from Jacobs’s masterpiece, *The* *Death and Life of Great
American Cities*—and its creators are presenting scenes from the
work-in-progress at a gala fundraising performance on November 2
<http://www.newampresents.org/newworksbenefit>. The event will be staged at
National Sawdust, a just-minted music venue in a former sawdust factory in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A “pre-premiere” is slated for next spring at
Williams College.

The work is a collaboration by several different artists: music by composer
Judd Greenstein, choreography by Will Rawls, and words from Pulitzer
Prize-winning librettist Tracy K. Smith. Director Joshua Frankel, one of
originators of the project, says the team has been working hard to distill
the narrative essence of the Moses-Jacobs conflict, which the opera frames
as a love triangle—with both Jacobs and Moses “vying for the love of the
city.”

“The biggest challenge is we don’t want to make this, Moses is Darth Vader
and Jacobs is a perfect angel from heaven,” says Frankel. “It’s more
interesting artistically to see them both as human beings with strengths
and weaknesses. We are figuring out how to do it with Moses more easily.
Jacobs is more difficult. She is just so darn right, so much.”

Frankel, a native New Yorker like composer Greenstein, says the opera draws
the passion for the city that so many of its residents feel. “As New
Yorkers, we have enormous emotional attachment to our city,” he says. “I
think people all over the world have that kind of emotional relationship to
place.”

Moses and Jacobs, he says, embody that passion, but on a level that is far
above the reach of the average citizen. “They’re larger-than-life figures
that are better than us,” he says. “They’re almost mythological in their
capabilities, in terms of observation and thought, in their ability to
lead.” Worthy subjects indeed of the grand operatic treatment.


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*Parisar*
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Sujit Patwardhan
patwardhan.sujit at gmail.com
sujit at parisar.org <sujitjp at gmail.com>
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Yamuna, ICS Colony, Ganeshkhind Road, Pune 411 007, India
Tel: +91 20 25537955
Cell: +91 98220 26627
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Behance Page: https://www.behance.net/mudraweb
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