Books - Prospero's Books

Last week I was talking to my two friends Ricardo and Bruno about one of my all time favourite films - Peter Greenway's Prospero's Books (with the great John Gielgud)- an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest, with a musical score by Michael Nyman. If you've never seen a Greenway film, this should be it - so rich in colour, text, texture, sound, smell - a delight.And as I thought of the film, I remembered so many things - my past - almost 16 years ago - a masterclass with Nyman on his composing process and then a premier performance of the Prospero's Books score - just very special - music you can sink into. Then about 10 years ago I presented bits of the film to my advanced students - what a laugh it was - I think Ildiko will remember! In fact, we both took a masterclass with Greenway here in Rio - what a wonderful day that was. And I rounded it off with a performance of his 100 Objects to represent the world - a prop opera based on the absurdity of the idea of 1 single culture (USA / nasa) selecting 117 objects to represent mankind in outerspace - the opera was an answer to this one sided view of culture. This was also simply devine and a great shared moment with my brother - we sat afterwards talking about it as people left and started dismantling the stage.
PS - A word of warning for those faint of heart - there's a lot of nudity in the video clip!