揽瓜阁俱乐部第三期 Day8 2020.07.27
【人文科学-艺术】 Watching Hamilton Is Like Opening a Time Capsule （1253字 精读 必做篇）
In an ideal world, I'd expect a Disney+ edition of Hamilton to have some real Broadway flavor. Perhaps there'd be a filmed rendering of waiting in line to have your ticket ripped at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, or a re-creation of buying an overpriced drink before taking your seat. But the stage recording of the hit musical, which starts streaming today, offers no such thing. It begins instead with a Skype clip in which the show's writer and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, acknowledges the sad circumstances of Hamilton's online release: The musical wasn't supposed to arrive on Disney+ until October 2021, but it dropped early to help distract audiences from the ongoing pandemic.
Watching the show from my couch in 2020, four years after I saw it on Broadway, was a strange throwback in more ways than one. I was reminded of the cruel reality that Broadway's theaters will remain closed for the rest of the year because of COVID-19, a blow for an industry that relies on packed houses. Revisiting the show during another election year, it was hard not to think about how Hamilton was indelibly shaped by the more hopeful times of Barack Obama's presidency.
The musical is, after all, an earnest work that celebrates patriotism and diversity, one that tries to distill the Founding Fathers' revolutionary vigor into something modern. But in 2020, pride in most American institutions is at an all-time low, and the iconography of figures such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson feels ever more fraught. So when households across the United States watch the streamed version of Hamilton this holiday weekend, the musical might register as a surreal artifact—of a political moment that was defined by optimism, and of a pre-pandemic live experience that people clamored to see.
Hamilton is a definitive cultural work of the Obama era. The show can trace its origins to a 2009 White House poetry jam, where Miranda performed an early version of the opening number, “Alexander Hamilton,” and earned cheerful applause from the president. What started out as a 2013 Vassar College workshop production evolved into a 2015 smash hit at the Public Theater and quickly leaped to Broadway. Miranda had succeeded in making a hip-hop musical about the first secretary of the Treasury feel stunningly dynamic, with talented young actors of color taking on mythic roles such as Hamilton, Washington, and Jefferson. Disney+'s filmed recording of Hamilton captures that vitality—it was shot in June 2016 as the show's original cast prepared to depart, lending it the aura of a swan song.
The show's bubble of optimism burst that November, days after the election of Donald Trump. Vice President-Elect Mike Pence went to see the musical, and after the curtain call, the cast member Brandon Victor Dixon addressed him from the stage: “We truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us,” he said, adding, “We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents.” The statement, crafted by Miranda and the producer Jeffrey Seller, was predictably slammed by Trump on Twitter. The entire episode, a cultural flash point from the beginning of the Trump era, feels like it happened a thousand years ago. Where Obama had greeted the tenor of Miranda's project with enthusiasm, Trump responded with angry tweets.
The Hamilton performance recorded that year still plays powerfully today. The first act of Disney+'s film, which focuses on the Revolutionary War, is as vigorous as ever—full of patriotic fervor as the characters foment rebellion and fight their war of independence. I had worried that the musical's energy might fall flat compared with the Broadway performance I saw, but rewatching “My Shot”—the show's third, tone-setting song—largely assuaged those fears. In that angry and bold number, a young Hamilton (played by Miranda) entreats fellow revolutionaries such as Aaron Burr (Leslie Odom Jr.) and the Marquis de Lafayette (Daveed Diggs) to “rise up” with the American colonies and overthrow British rule. The song is also a marker thrown down by Miranda for the viewing audience. He's a Latinx performer stepping into a role he would've been traditionally barred from playing, just like the Black and Latinx actors alongside him, and he's proudly seizing the opportunity.
Hamilton is a very sincere work, one that filters out some of the more uncomfortable and ugly realities of the American Revolution to present a familiar narrative of freedom and justice overcoming oppression and tyranny. Hamilton himself didn't own enslaved people, but he was involved in purchasing them for family members; in general, the show's references to slavery present Hamilton as an activist for abolition, which historians have criticized as overstated.
Though the show's potted American history is a little too glossy, that's mostly because Miranda's storytelling focuses on characterization, depicting an ambitious immigrant (Hamilton was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis) trying to effect real change in the world. Miranda brings an impressively angry streak to his performance, and is at his best when he highlights the massive chip on the shoulders of Hamilton and his rival Burr. Both characters know they belong at center stage; each resents any person or institution that might hold him back. That sense of determination and pride is even more profound in the context of a show that has a whole ensemble of actors playing historically white figures—something that wouldn't have happened in an earlier Broadway era.
What most stuck out to me about the show in retrospect was how Miranda wove his own ambition into the character he played. Divorcing Hamilton from the ecstatic praise that quickly surrounded it can be difficult, but the filmed presentation helps underline how risky a proposition the musical was. Miranda's passion for the subject is clear, but this is still a show in which people in tricornered hats twirl around the stage as politicians have rap battles about fiscal policy; it could've very easily come across as too nerdy to find any mainstream success.
The Hamilton film's moving cameras and quick editing can't convey the experience of seeing the story unfold all at once onstage, of course, but there are some advantages. The director Thomas Kail swoops in dramatically close to the actors' faces, capturing raw emotional moments that would've been impossible to see if you were seated in a mezzanine. This intimacy particularly benefits Miranda, Phillipa Soo (as Hamilton's wife, Eliza), and Renée Elise Goldsberry (as her sister Angelica), a trio whose quieter, melancholic moments in the second act get more of a showcase on camera. Kail does his best to take in the total spectacle too, but there's no way to absorb the full power of a Broadway show without being, well, in the room where it happens.
The time-capsule quality of Hamilton can serve as a bracing throwback, both for new viewers and returning fans. Yes, there was once a time, not too long ago, when a Tony-winning composer could debut snippets of his new American-history-themed musical at a White House poetry event. Pop culture has continued to move at warp speed since then, and Hamilton's brassy tale of the founding of America's governmental institutions plays in a different light in 2020. But the show is not irrelevant. Hamilton existed to both celebrate and reframe the past; it now functions as a reminder that the country's history and future alike are still being written and rewritten.
Source: The Atlantic
【人文科学-艺术】 How Yo-Yo Ma’s ‘Songs of Comfort’ are inspiring musical collaboration （358字 3分46秒 精听 必做篇）
先做精听再核对原文哦~
Finally tonight, our occasional look at the Songs of Comfort project that world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma launched on social media.
Jeffrey Brown looks at the growing collaboration in these mini-performances, as tough times bring people together through music and technology.
It's part of our ongoing arts and culture series, Canvas.
In a time of isolation, a desire to connect through music.
As the psychology of pandemic changes through the weeks, you can see that play out in the #SongsofComfort project through more and more collaborations.
That includes the man who started it all, Yo-Yo Ma, who recorded a distanced duet with celebrated West African singer Angelique Kidjo, and another with Syrian-born clarinetist Kinan Azmeh.
The urge to merge is often a family affair, as with this young mother and father in their Berlin, Germany, living room, their new baby adding a little percussion.
In Arizona, six women family members put the '70s song "I'd Like to Teach the World" to sing to multistringed accompaniment, joined by the whistling of the person capturing it all on camera.
And a violinist with the Washington, D.C.-area National Philharmonic sat down with her guitar-playing son for a piece by Astor Piazzolla.
There are also more elaborate cross-genre collaborations, a delightful Bach to the Barre breakfast scene created by musicians from the Toronto Symphony and dancers with the Canadian National Ballet, plus two children, who performed their roles to perfection.
Much older children at Potomac, Maryland's St. Andrews Episcopal School sang, "Oh happy Day," joined by alumni and faculty. And 24 student cellists from around the world managed to get together for a performance of Saint-Saens' "The Swan."
In Houston, members of the symphony, used to playing together on stage, created a virtual quartet. And while it can be a lonely time for many, technology allows another kind of quartet, all the parts performed by one individual.
Songs played alone, songs played together. And, as we saw in that Berlin living room, some things don't change, the desire to share and maybe inspire the next generation.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jeffrey Brown.
Songs of Comfort, that has to continue after this pandemic.
Source: PBS
【笔记格式要求】
精读笔记格式要求： 1.总结文章中心大意 2.总结分论点或每段段落大意 3.摘抄印象深刻或者觉得优美的句子 4.总结文章中的生词 5.记录阅读时间、总结时间、总时间
精听笔记格式要求： 1.逐句听写整篇文章 2.对照原文修改听写稿，标记出错原因 3.总结文章中心大意 4.总结精听过程中的生词 5.记录听写时间、总结时间、总时间
这里也给大家两点学习小建议哦~ 精读：如遇到读不懂的复杂句，建议找出句子主干，分析句子成分，也可以尝试翻译句子来帮助理解~ 精听：建议每句不要反复纠结听，如果听 5 遍都没听出来，那就跳过，等完成后再回听总结原因，时间宝贵，不要过于执着哦~
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发表于 2020-7-26 22:18:15
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