Maia's Into The Moonlight

SUMMER FESTIVALS

Summer is not just beaches, sun tanning and red toenails. Summer is also a time to entertain the mind with new sights and sounds and images.

Last week we went to the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon, along with other pale skinned visitors moving through the taut air of the museum. We went to see again Hieronymus Bosch’s XV Century masterpiece, “The Temptation of St. Anthony”. Bosch’s visionary images cover three panels depicting a hostile world full of mysticism. Bosch holds a mirror to the world with his bizarre irony and magical symbolism, sparing no one: the hypocrisy of the clergy, the extravagance of the nobility and the immorality of the people. His images are hallucinatory and fascinating. I can spend hours looking at each one and always discover new things.

Another evening found us in a fairy tale scenario of the square in front of the São Carlos opera theater for the summer festival of opera, ballet, and theatre. The beach crowds mingled with the pale skinned museum-viewers. The buildings around glowed in the indigo evening of summer. Every 20 minutes the tram went by, but we were hardly aware of it. In that magical atmosphere we were neither old nor young, we were outside time.

The first dance was a Cantata with Bach’s concerto for harpsichord, played at the corner of the stage. The one female and three male dancers were dressed in black suits and white shirts. She was fantastic, her youth not mortal yet, her bones as fine as a cat’s. She danced with her three companions in pursuit, dominating, in control, the stage her kingdom.

The second dance was a splash of color and music based on southern Italian folk music, again played live by a quartet of women with their tambourines, drums and accordion, a moonlit choreographed spectacle. The girls flounced their skirts in joy, passion and exuberance. The men pranced and gestured. It was brilliant.

Last night we went to see “Miss Julia”, Strindberg’s play written 120 years ago. The story is of a wild young woman of nobility who sets her sights on her father’s valet. The valet was engaged to the cook, but that does not stop Miss Julia. She enjoys seducing the young man, who is apparently educated but turns out to be an insensitive brute. Strindberg obviously did not believe or approve of feminism. Strindberg’s heroine’s life is ruined once she lowers herself to the servants’ level, by having sex with her father’s employee. Strindberg gives her two choices, either to steal money and leave behind everything she knows for a new life elsewhere, or to kill herself. Strindberg has her choose death. Fortunately we do not have such moral absolutes in the 21st century.

There is still a lot to look forward until the end of August, from José Carreras, to Leonard Cohen, to Marisa Monte, to Gilberto Gil and other great Brazilian singers in the various stages around the bay, and jazz in the dramatic stage of the XV century fort in Cascais. Meanwhile, there are always the fireworks over the bay at midnight.