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Favourite British cultural videos

oggbashan

oggbashan

Dying Truth seeker
Joined
Jul 3, 2002
Posts
56,017
Globe theatre - Beatrice and Benedict from Much Ado About Nothing:

https://youtu.be/KkmSIy8PayY

Don Quixote - Act I finale (Marianela Nuñez and Carlos Acosta, The Royal Ballet

https://youtu.be/5fKxzQ8ARTQ


Royal Ballet again: Clog Dance from Act I of Frederick Ashton's La fille mal gardée.

https://youtu.be/BT9naCq0fdE

Royal Opera: Near end of La Centerola (Rossini)

https://youtu.be/I7aXUf0OBaw

Sugar Plum Pas De Deux from Nutcracker

https://youtu.be/qy6dlGpC3Ns

Drunk Scene from Garsington Opera's La Perichole by Offenbach

https://youtu.be/4CV_MHjTsBI

Lawrence Olivier Crispin's Day speech from film Henry V (1944)

https://youtu.be/x26GN6rQbZI

Richard Burton reads from Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood

https://youtu.be/gymiPlOqsY0

Richard Burton reads Dylan Thomas@ Do Not Go Gentle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DLqN1RvfUc

Richard Burton: The Present Tense of the verb To Be:

https://youtu.be/fDNCEp8Utjo

Shakespeare in original dialect:

https://youtu.be/YiblRSqhL04
 
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Hi Ogg- can you edit the post to include some sort of description of the content so it's not just a string of random clips? Or at least the titles?

Also, why these?
 
I think you like your dance on the light side. The Don Quixote excerpt was wonderful and the Sugar Plum pas was probably, technically, the best I've seen.

The Crispin's Day speech wasn't how I'd imagined it would look, but it was moving.

The reading of Under the Milk Wood was beautiful, and it was hard to think a lot after that.
 
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PBS's show Great Performances presented Much Ado About Nothing last weekend. It was filmed at one of the open air theaters in Central Park, NYC. It's one of Shakespeare's comedies that I hadn't seen. And it was wonderful. Not conventional, but wonderful. The original language but a more modern setting. I literally laughed and cried. Only Shakespeare could do a RomCom with a true potential for tragedy.

Link to the video from PBS: Great Performances, Much Ado About Nothing. This is supposedly the entire episode.
 
really enjoyed these

The snippets of ballet were wonderful. I especially enjoyed the Don Quixote. I agree with NW that Nutcracker was wonderful, but they seemed to be having so much fun with the Don Quixote.
 
The first time I really experienced Shakespeare the way I think WS wanted it to impact his audience was Kenneth Branagh's 'Henry V'; Branagh understands the cadence and metre of Shakespeare like no-one I'd ever heard before, he brought the story alive for me, he didn't just stand and declaim, transferring a dry-as-dust rendition of the stage play to the screen exactly as it would ordinarily have played on stage, with a few outdoor scenes cut-in the way the Olivier version did; for the first time I got the jokes, and actually laughed out loud, which made my husband look at me like I'd suddenly lost my mind. He reckons Shakespeare gives him an overwhelming urge to kill himself in the forest, probably because he was force-fed it at school, that and Gilbert and Sullivan, and avoids Shakespeare charity galas like the plague; he'll donate but at the last moment he'll find that he's suddenly lost a leg and can't go, here's the keys, have fun.

He's not a complete lost cause though; to his way of thinking, the two most beautiful operatic arias in the world, that will actually reduce him to tears, are Diana Damrau singing the 'Queen of The Night Aria from Mozart's 'The Magic Flute',

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuBeBjqKSGQ

and 'The Flower Duet' from Délibe's 'Lakme'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd8qJLSu2HI

When I hear these coming from his study I know he's in his happy place.

When he's at the piano and starts playing Chopin, all those crashing, minor key chords and progressions I know he's feeling blue and leave him alone to work out whatever's troubling him; Will is a classically trained pianist, and we have a concert grand piano, so the volume is deafening, especially when he gets into Liszt's 'Transcendental Études'; when he plays those endless scales and gloomy, slamming great chords and blue notes I keep expecting wolves to start howling outside as the Slavonic Twilight descends...
 
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NotWise said:
I think you like your dance on the light side. The Don Quixote excerpt was wonderful and the Sugar Plum pas was probably, technically, the best I've seen.

The Crispin's Day speech wasn't how I'd imagined it would look, but it was moving.

The reading of Under the Milk Wood was beautiful, and it was hard to think a lot after that.
Click to expand...

Some of us learned that on at school.
I could never quite get my head round Olivier's phrasing & deliver. Brannah comes close, as does Burton (they're on you tube). And I wondered if James Earl Jones (yes, Darth Vader) has done the famous Crispin's day speech. I cannot find it so far, but he has done one which can make you sit up:-

Othello's Defence.

Now, there's a voice. . . .
 
Lori_the_Hoosier said:
and 'The Flower Duet' from Délibe's 'Lakme'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd8qJLSu2HI

When I hear these coming from his study I know he's in his happy place.

.
Click to expand...

I agree about the "Flower Duet" but have a small preference for the version by Sumi Jo and Ah-Kyung Lee. The singers seem to both complement and contrast perfectly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4MmatVblDk

One that calms me no end is the second movement from Beethoven's Pathetique.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGq3-Fi_zQY

Definitely 'Happy Place' stuff.
 
Lori_the_Hoosier said:
The first time I really experienced Shakespeare the way I think WS wanted it to impact his audience was Kenneth Branagh's 'Henry V'; Branagh understands the cadence and metre of Shakespeare like no-one I'd ever heard before, he brought the story alive for me, he didn't just stand and declaim, transferring a dry-as-dust rendition of the stage play to the screen exactly as it would ordinarily have played on stage, with a few outdoor scenes cut-in the way the Olivier version did; for the first time I got the jokes, and actually laughed out loud,
Click to expand...

Same here. I loved Branagh's Henry V. I actually got the soundtrack (on cassette, no less) and wore it out. I don't know how many times I watched it. And you're right, speaking the lines almost casually, like a real conversation between friends was relevatory. I'll also credit Branagh with showing people that Shakespeare done that way is very well received, or received well enough that there are now films of others of his plays that are equally accessible. The Hollow Crown with Tom Hiddleston. There's a Hamlet with David Tennant, not to mention Baz Lurhman's (sp) utterly off the wall Romeo and Juliet.

I think that the Olivier clip Ogg posted suffers from having Branagh's soundtrack tacked on to it, because some of the speech is drowned out.
 
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