A Spanish gypsy comes to Sangamon Auditorium
Teatro Lirico D'Europa to present "Carmen" with full orchestra

By Gabrielle Wiegand - Feature Writer

One of the most poplar operas of all time, “Carmen,” is coming to Sangamon Auditorium Feb. 25. “Carmen” has been recreated countless times on the stage and in film. It is an opera that captures the essence and spirit of Spain.
George Bizet wrote “Carmen” in the 19th Century. It was first performed at the Opera Comique in Paris in 1875. At that time, the tradition was to set operas in Spain and “Carmen” is no exception. It will, however, be performed in French. It tells the story of a Spanish gypsy who captures the attention of Don Jose, a soldier.
The passion he feels for Carmen causes Don Jose to become extremely possessive. Unfortunately this possessiveness runs into direct conflict with Carmen’s free spirit and independence.
Teatro Lirico D’Europa will present the performance of “Carmen” with full orchestra and chorus as well as a real flamenco dance ensemble. The Teatro Lirico D’Europa is an opera touring company that was created in 1986, traveling throughout the United States and Europe. They have completed over 3,000 performances worldwide.
According to their website, Teatro Lirico D’Europa is the only opera company that travels with a full orchestra of over 45 members and a chorus of 40 singers. They also tour with “outstanding professional vocal soloists from the major opera houses of Europe and the U.S.A.” Their production of “Carmen” is part of their seventh major U.S. tour.
The Heartland Arts Fund is making this production of “Carmen” possible. It is sponsored by the Spanish American Cultural Center.
“Carmen” will be at Sangamon Auditorium Feb. 25 at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $35 to $45. For more information or to purchase tickets, contact the Sangamon Auditorium Box Office at 217.206.6160 or www.sangamonauditorium.org.

Illinois Symphony Orchestra gives failed Valentine's another chance at Valentine's Pops concert

By Gabrielle Wiegand - Feature Writer

The Illinois Symphony Orchestra’s pops concert was a chance to celebrate a variety of types of romantic music, from Puccini to Bernstein and a variety of musical performances from operatic duets, to a choral performance, to the pure unadulterated music of the symphony itself.
The Valentine Pops concert was Saturday, Feb. 19. “We know Valentine’s Day was a week ago, but if any of you messed up you have tonight to make it up to your special someone,” said Karen Lynne Deal, who is in her fifth season as music director and conductor of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra. Because of Maestra Deal’s ability to make the audience feel engaged and part of the fun throughout the evening, the symphony was just one heck of a good time.

Soprano Melina Pyron, tenor Scott Ramsay, and conductor Karen Lynne Deal take a bow mid-concert after Puccinni LaBoheme, the finale to Act I.

Two operatic soloists from the Chicago Lyric Opera joined the Orchestra for the performance. Soprano Melina Pyron and tenor Scott Ramsay performed the finale from the first act of Puccini’s “La Boheme” and selections from Rogers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” together. Both were very talented; however, at times their vocals were not loud enough and they were drowned out by the instruments.
Pyron and Ramsay were singing these romantic duets, though there was not any visible chemistry between the performers. Maybe it is just hard to find a romance believable when it is happening in front of over 50 people with musical instruments. However, I did think they performed much better alone with their respective solos: Puccini’s “O Mio Babbino Caro” and Donizetti’s “Una furtiva lagrima.”
The symphony played medleys from both “West Side Story” and “Phantom of the Opera.” With “West Side Story,” the music began washing over the listener like a lullaby then, suddenly, in the next instant it was upbeat and everybody is ready to rumble with the Jets and Sharks. The “Phantom” music, which gave me goose bumps, took the audience on the turbulent ride of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical in about 10 minutes.
One of the highlights of the performance was when guest conductor Paul Vermel, Maestra Deal’s mentor, took the baton for Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Maestro Vermel, who was celebrating his 81st birthday that evening, was a most darling Frenchman who announced to the audience, “you should be very happy, very privileged to have an orchestra such as this.”
Tchaikovsky’s work was not an easy piece because the music is constantly going back and forth between flurries of musical activity that makes you think “What’s going to happen next?” and a slow and steady beat that relaxes and soothes the listener. Eventually, it bursts into a soaring melody that conjures up images of two lovers running in slow motion towards one another in a green field filled with flowers.
You know when someone says something takes their breath away? The symphony is like that- the music filled the room with its richness and heart until there practically was not any air left to breathe.
The pops concert drew a fairly good size audience despite the cold and wet weather that had descended upon the Springfield area Saturday evening. The show was billed as a Valentine performance so the loving couples were out in abundance.
The Illinois Symphony Orchestra is currently in its 11th year. It was formed in 1993 by the joining of the Bloomington-Normal Symphony Society and the Springfield Symphony Orchestra Association.
The Illinois Symphony Orchestra will be performing three more concerts this season: the Illinois Chamber Orchestra Series’s third installment, Mozart meets Beethoven; the third Masterworks Series installment, Webber meets Beethoven, on April 2; and the fourth Masterworks concert, Tchaikovsky meets Rachmaninoff, on April 30.

Kabul Blues
‘Osama’ provides glimpse of life under Taliban

By Brian Mackey - Feature Writer

“Osama” tells the story of an Afghan widow and her daughter in the time of the Taliban. The misogynist theocrats that ran Afghanistan from the mid 1990s until late 2001 enforced a strict moral code. Men were not permitted to cut their beards, and daily Muslim prayers were not optional.
Women could not appear in public without a burka, the head-to-toe covering that kept men safe from the arousal and temptation that accompanies the merest glance at a woman’s bare wrist. Women were also forbidden to appear in public without a male relative, and this is where the daughter/Osama comes in.
The widow, whose husband died in one of the many wars that ravaged Afghanistan in the latter half of the 20th century, is apparently trained as a doctor or nurse. The Taliban close her hospital, and her last patient dies. Under the strict religious law, she is not permitted to work. With no son, brother, father or any other male relative to act as breadwinner for the family, her prospects are grim.
It is at this point that she decides to dress her pre-adolescent daughter as a boy to escort her in public and try to find work. A gender 180 would be difficult under any circumstances, but it was especially so under the prowling eyes of the black-turbaned enforcers of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. The mother wins a job for her son/daughter from a local man who fought with her husband in the wars for control of Kabul.
The Taliban soon come around to take young boys for religious and military training. With instruction on everything from Koranic verse to how to cleanse one’s genitals, the young girl does not have an easy time of it. Things go downhill from there.
“Osama” bears witness to the daily indignities and grinding hardships that afflicted (and doubtless still do) the women of Afghanistan. Music is forbidden, as are pictures. The women in Taliban-Afghan society are less than human; none of them even has a name save Osama, and that is only after she assumes the role of a boy.
The Taliban’s religious police are able to find fault with nearly everyone, no matter how innocent their person or purpose. In one scene, the doctor/mother is being taken home on a bicycle by her patient’s father. While the camera stays tightly focused on her feet, dangling off the back left side of the bike, the Taliban interrogate the man, who must claim that he is her husband or risk punishment.
“You bastard!” they say (there is apparently no more degrading insult in Afghanistan, as the curse is repeated several times). “Aren’t you ashamed to take you wife on the bike? Men will be aroused.”
There you have it: “Men will be aroused.”
In another scene, justice is dispensed to two “infidels” who had the impudence to film the Taliban in one case and treat the Afghan sick in the other.
This is the first film made in post-Taliban Afghanistan. The writer-director, Siddiq Barmak, cast all non-professional actors, but the language barrier makes it hard to tell if there are any problems in the acting..
“Osama” has an undercurrent of terror lurking around each corner, much like life under the brutal regime must have been. But more than that, it challenges non-Afghans to bear witness to the misery of a nation.
We rightly denounce sexism at home and around the world, but the international community did next to nothing for the women of Afghanistan. “Osama” offers no answers, but it does make sure you know the question is legitimate.

“Osama” will be shown this Friday at 7:00 p.m. in Brookens Auditorium. The screening is sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs through the Independent & Foreign Film Series; admission is free. Running time: 83 minutes. The film is rated PG-13 for mature thematic elements. In Pashtu with English subtitles.

UIS faculty member publishes book on Russian literary critic

By Ron Felten - General Assignment Reporter

Rosina Neginsky, an associate English faculty member, has yet another title to add to her already impressive list of book publications.
Neginsky describes her newest work, “Zinaida Vengerova: In Search of Beauty. A Literary Embassador between East and West,” which was released in January by Peter Lang as a part of the Heidelberg University Series, as “a biography, but also a cultural history and literary criticism that discusses issues related to the turn of the century in Europe.”
Vengerova, the primary focus of the text, was a “once-famous Russian literary critic,” Neginsky said, “whose importance for the turn of the century European intellectual world is no longer sufficiently appreciated.”
In the preface to “In Search of Beauty,” Neginsky explained the seeds for this book were planted while she was a freshman at the University of Paris, where she met teacher Nikolai Ivanovich Gogolev. “He was born at the turn of the 20th century in Russia, in a family of Russian intellectuals,” Neginsky said, “and came to France at the end of World War II.”
Neginsky said Gogolev, as a result of his “outstanding knowledge and feel for literature,” inspired her to learn more about Vengerova and later to write about her. “When [Gogolev] was a child, [Vengerova] was well known to most Russian intellectuals,” Neginsky said. “Her articles and books, as well as her translations, were on the bookshelves of most educated Russian families.”
Neginsky, who described the research for and writing of this book as “a long process,” has also published several volumes of poetry and said she enjoys all forms of writing.
“I think the process of writing and creativity in general gives a meaning to my life,” Neginsky said. “I love writing and I love to be immersed in the world of creativity. I enjoy both academic and creative writing. However, these are two completely different [things].”
Neginsky said many external factors help to decide which type of writing she does in a given period. “I can write poetry when my soul sings and feels alive,” she said. “I cannot write creatively under stress. I need to have blocks of time and I need to be able to immerse in my own world or the world that would inspire creativity. Thus, I am not always able to write poetry because I am often very stressed and in a constant hurry. But when I find time and the congenial state of soul, it is an entire world for me.”
“I like very much academic writing as well,” Neginsky added. “I enjoy very much doing research, discovering new things, going into the depth, and playing with ideas, giving them a variety of different interpretations. It is a different type of thinking and writing than poetry. It is much more rigorous. When I am in that state of mind, it is hard for me to write poetry.”
Neginsky, who was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and raised in Paris, said she first came to the United States and, specifically, to UIUC, as an exchange student. Two years after arriving, Neginsky said, she “was offered a tenure-track position at Grinnell College. As a result, I stayed in the United States. While working at Grinnell College, I finished my Ph.D. and then moved back to Paris, where I taught at a very prestigious school, Ecole Politechnique. Then, for a variety of reasons, I came back to the US and [have been here ever since].”
Neginsky now has two bachelors’ degrees, two masters’ degrees and one doctorate. She teaches a variety of UIS courses, ranging from Ancient Greek and Biblical Motives in European Literature to European Cinema.
“In Search of Beauty” will soon be available at the UIS bookstore, amazon.com, Borders and Barnes & Noble. It may also be ordered directly from the publisher by contacting customerservice@peterlang.com. Neginsky will be participating in a book signing at UIS on March 31.

A Spanish gypsy comes to Sangamon Auditorium

Illinois Symphony Orchestra gives failed Valentine's another chance at Valentine's Pops concert

Kabul Blues

UIS faculty member publishes book on Russian literary critic