The Halloween Tree - in New York

Calling all New Yorkers! An event happening TOMORROW, based on Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree!

 
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The Living Libretto : The Halloween Tree

October 30, 2015 / 7:00 p.m.
The National Opera Center
330 7th Avenue / New York, NY 10001

From Egypt to Mexico, from prehistory to modern day, the epic journey the boys in Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree undertake in their search for their friend Pipkin manages to combine the light humor of Alice in Wonderland with the adventurous narrative of The Odyssey. Underpinned by a morality reminiscent of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the story travels across space and time, all the while offering valuable wisdom with respect to the cultural and historical traditions that have led to the contemporary celebration of Halloween. "From Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, to Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors and Wuorinen’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, phantasmagorical adventures have sprouted from regular lifestyles, transporting the audience, along with the characters, into the wild world of imagination," write the creators.

“While it sticks to two of the Aristotelian unities for drama (it has one main plot and takes place within twenty-four hours), TheHalloween Tree disposes of the third unity, one physical location, in a daring manner by traveling through space and time,” explains librettist Tony Asaro. Composer Theo Popov continues, “There are moments in Bradbury’s novel that just beg for an operatic setting: the pumpkin chorus on the Halloween Tree, the funeral processions in antiquity, the lamentations of the Druids, the flight of the witches, the communal celebrations of the Mexican Day of the Dead…Most of all, the excited pace of the narrative, which can glimpse hundreds of years of history in mere moments, makes the story ideal for a staged adventure children and parents alike would enjoy." American Lyric Theater has proudly commissioned The Halloween Tree in cooperation with the estate of Ray Bradbury.

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Tickets and more information here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-living-libretto-the-halloween-tree-tickets-18439261327?ref=ebtnebtckt

Bradburyesque... 3

The band in Heaven's album Caught in a Summer Swell, coming soon from Decades Records, shows a clear influence from Ray Bradbury... at least in the titles of the opening and closing tracks on the album.

The opening track is "Dandelion Wine", and the closer is "Farewell Summer". The former, of course, is named after Bradbury's 1957 novel. The latter is named after its 2006 sequel.

"Dandelion Wine" is out now, and has a video to accompany it, although it must be said that the imagery of the video owes more to the "summer of love" and pagan ritual (and maybe even The Wicker Man!) than it does to Bradbury. See for yourself...

Bradbury Events This Weekend

In Chicago, Otherworld Theatre are staging various events in a Ray Bradbury Festival: several performances of Bradbury's own stage play version of Fahrenheit 451, a discussion panel featuring Mort Castle and others, radio drama and more.

Full details are here. Many thanks to Sara Livingston for alerting me to these events.


Meanwhile, in New York on Sunday there is a performance of selected songs from the new musical based on The Martian Chronicles. I have reported on this production previously (when it was being referred to as a sci-fi opera, two terms which have now been dropped as it was felt that they were giving a misleading impression). You can learn more about Sunday's event here, and more about the musical project here. Thanks to Daniel Levy for keeping me informed of developments with this ambitious project.

A Night At The Opera

The question I am most often asked (apart from "What's the title of that story where the summer only lasts a single day?") is: "Do you like everything Bradbury did?"

The answer is quite simple: No.

While it's true that I tend to use this blog to focus on positive stories about Bradbury and his work, there's plenty that I don't like. But I just don't see the point in wasting my energy on things that don't interest me. So you won't very often hear me discuss Bradbury's later short story collections, which contain some very slight stories (or should I say "stories"). And you won't hear much from me about Let's All Kill Constance, the weaker of Ray's three mystery novels.

And you won't hear much about... operas or musicals.

Bradbury had a fascination for these forms of theatre, and devoted quite a bit of time from the 1960s onwards to developing all sorts of things for the musical stage: Dandelion Wine, Fahrenheit 451, Leviathan '99 and more. I haven't seen a single one of these performed, mainly because they were staged only briefly, and on a whole 'nother continent. But even if they were staged just around the corner from me, I would tend to stay away for the simple reason that I can't stand musicals!

The only exceptions I make are: cartoon musicals, and musicals involving puppets. But even these can try my patience.

Imagine my mixed feelings, then, when I learned that Daniel Levy and Elizabeth Margid had developed a new opera based on Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles.

The website for the project includes a substantial amount of the text and music for the show, some of it placed alongside Bradbury's original text, and I actually quite like being able to sample sections of the production in audio and/or video and/or text. I suppose it allows me to take it in small doses, whereas I would never be able to sit through an entire opera.

As a book, The Martian Chronicles does have a lot of musical content. The first time that Earth people "appear" to the Martians is through a song which Ylla hears in her head. Then comes a Martian opera, where the singer loses control and finds herself channeling a strange alien language. And when the Earthmen of the third expedition arrive on a Mars that resembles a small American town, they are greeted by the sound of Beautiful Ohio. There is clearly a lot of potential here for musical interpretation, and I would hope that this is reflected in the new opera.

Levy and Margid should be congratulated for managing to interest this opera skeptic. But I wish they would change the awful "sci-fi" label on the splash page of their website. Bradbury himself fought against labelling The Martian Chronicles as any kind of science fiction, let alone the downmarket kind suggested by the term "sci-fi".

deadmau5

Here is the music video for deadmau5's recent track "The Veldt". Both the song and the animation are influenced by Ray Bradbury's short story of the same name, which was first published in 1950.




You can read more about the song and the animation on Wikipedia, and in this official press release. Bradbury's story can be found in his books The Illustrated Man, The Vintage Bradbury, and The Stories of Ray Bradbury.

Dandelion Wine Wedding

I've read Dandelion Wine. I've read its disappointing sequel Farewell Summer. I've read Summer Morning, Summer Night, the collection of Dandelion Wine leftovers.

I've read Dandelion Wine, the play; and heard the radio drama version.

I've seen (but didn't understand) the Russian TV miniseries based on Dandelion Wine.

But I've never heard of a Dandelion Wine wedding.

Until now.



And if that wasn't weird enough, here's a video for a song called "Bradbury", performed by an Argentinian band. Look out for Bradbury's face!

Believe it or not

I bring you this item out of a devotion to completeness, and as a public service. If you are easily offended, look away now!

Ray Bradbury has certainly influenced people in a wide range of different art forms. They don't come more different than this: "ManWhoreDickPig" by a... [coughs] music artiste calling himself Ray Bradbury. Not for the fainthearted, either in its unique musical styling nor in its lyricism. Although I defy anyone to make out the lyrics without use of the "lyrics" tab.

Bradbury and Art and...

The artist most associated with Ray Bradbury has to be Joe Mugnaini. His designs have graced the covers of several Bradbury books - The Golden Apples of the Sun and Fahrenheit 451 to name just two. He also created the line-art images that accompany Bradbury's stories in Golden Apples and some editions of The October Country, and created memorable backdrops for many of Bradbury's plays.

But how much of Mugnaini's full body of work do we know? Not much, is my guess.

Fortunately, a new book is in preparation, which will showcase a fuller range of Mugnaini's work. Wilderness of the Mind: the art of Joseph Mugnaini is due for release in early 2010. The official website of the Mugnaini estate provides some tantalising thumbnails indicating what we might expect to find inside the book.

The book is written by Ryan Leasher, with layout and design by Jessica Forsythe and a foreword by Ray Bradbury. Diana Mugnaini-Robinson will be adding a preface. Ryan very kindly answered some questions about the book, which I gather he has been preparing as a sideline to his day job in the movie industry.

"The April Witch" from the portfolio Ten View of the Moon.
Image copyright The Joseph Mugnaini Estate, 2009. Used with permission.

Ryan says, "We've had unrestricted access to the estate's archives and, most importantly, to Joe's journals. What we've found is nothing short of amazing."

"No previous book has come even close to showing the depth of the collaboration between Joe and Ray. We've got stunning concept work, including the very first and never-before published Fahrenheit 451 sketches. They were discovered hidden in a scrapbook in the estate archives, safely tucked away by Joe's wife Ruth some forty-five years ago and not seen since. Well, until now."

The book isn't restricted to Mugnaini's work with Bradbury, but reveals the lesser-known side of his work: "The book will include Joe's views and teachings on art. Although Joe was best known to many as an artist and illustrator, his greatest impact was as a teacher."

For the first time the beautiful Ten Views of the Moon portfolio will be reprinted in its entirety, including both Ray Bradbury's and Norman Corwin's full text. The ten-lithograph portfolio was originally intended to be produced in an edition of a hundred and fifty full sets, but the printing stone for "The April Witch"(pictured above) - arguably the best of the portfolio - broke after only eighty-five portfolios were produced.

At first, Ryan says, the challenge (and the fun) was finding new pieces of artwork: "I even ended up travelling to Japan to meet with two Japanese collectors of Joe's work. Now, though, the challenge is figuring out how to choose which of the thousands of illustrations and paintings will make the final cut for the 400-page book."

The book isn't yet completely finished, partly because of the extensive work required to make sure the reproductions are as close to the original pieces as possible, with an emphasis on colour reproduction.

Ryan's final comment is, "We've already got quite a few surprises in the book and we're working on few more...and one of them is big."

The target release date for the book is currently "early 2010", but anyone wanting to be kept informed of developments is encouraged to use the email link on the Wilderness of the Mind website. When a date and price have been fixed, it should be available to order through the Art of Fiction link on the Wilderness site.

As someone who has searched in vain through library catalogues for works by or on Mugnaini, I will very much welcome this publication. My thanks to Ryan Leasher for providing details of the work in progress.



On Saturday 24 October, it was Ray Bradbury: Painter at a gallery in Santa Monica, where one of his classic paintings went on display. The LA Times gave this preview and interview with Ray.





Finally, If you're looking for strange connections, the Marooned blog has an interesting series of connections between Bradbury and Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx. Even if you have never heard of Sixx, the insights into Bradbury works are quite good - see the first instalment, on Bradbury and fire, for instance.

Sound Thinking

I have always maintained that audio media are best suited to Ray Bradbury's work. Because he works with such strong images, the visual media seem doomed to create nothing but pale imitations of his finest prose. But radio and audiobooks still leave the listener to create images in the mind. Plus, a lot of Bradbury's sentence constructions seem to have a definite rhythm, which makes them seem as if they are written to be read alound.

The above paragraph was really just an excuse to introduce a couple of sound-related weblinks:

• Now and Forever is now available as an unabridged audiobook. There is a review at SFFaudio.com, here.
• News of a performance of music inspired by The Illustrated Man.

I should also mention that today is Ray Bradbury's birthday - he is eighty-eight years old today!