In 2022, I emailed 158 art-related items to my members of my free Sunday Recommendations list. For supporters, I recommended 52 more items. This week: my favorites in the categories of decorative arts, music, opera, movies, and TV. Six of these were originally shared only with supporters: they’re marked with a pair of asterisks.
This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/KFUpIhZg94U.
Decorative arts
WINNER:
- **Boddington, Mark. Furniture (late 1900s-early 2000s). Mark Boddington established Silverlining, a furniture-making business based in Wales, U.K., more than 35 years ago. You’ll find his bespoke pieces in palaces, corporate headquarters, yachts, private jets, and private homes … or you can look at them on his website. Among my favorites: Crescent Single Seater Chair, Champagne Drinks Table, Cosmic Dining Table, Drinks Table, Land, Sea and Sky Table, and the Fibonacci Cabinet. I ran across Boddington’s name in the Dick Francis novel Come to Grief, 1995: Sid Halley has a Boddington piece in his home.
RUNNER UP:
- **Water Entertainment Technologies (WET). Fountains in New York, Dubai, and elsewhere (1980s-2010s). Water Entertainment Technologies was founded in 1983 by three Disney Imagineers: Mark Fuller, Melanie Simon, and Alan Robinson. Their innovative mechanisms (many manufactured in-house) include laminar flow fountains, water that spurts up from open-jointed pavers, and robotic water nozzles that allow the fountains to be “choreographed” to music. WET’s most famous project is the fountain at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, which incorporates 4,500 lights and 1,200 nozzles that shoot water as high as 240 feet. In New York City, WET created the fountains outside the Brooklyn Museum, the fountains at Columbus Circle, and the fountain at Lincoln Center. The more recent Dubai Fountain incorporates lights and nozzles stretching 902 feet, with water shooting to 500 feet. The amazing Surreal Fountain in Dubai uses water and fire; see WET’s website (the Creations tab) for video of the fountain and of its construction. More on WET in this article from the New Yorker. YouTube has a plethora of videos of all the fountains mentioned above. HT Iris B.
Music, classical & pop
WINNER:
- Beethoven, Ludwig van. Seventh Symphony, 4th movement (1811-1812 / 2016). Heather MacDonald is one of the few political writers I read regularly. From her essay “Classical Music under Racial Attack“: “Today’s warriors against ‘classism’ would presumably accuse José Antonio Abreu, a Venezuelan socialist economist, of being an unwitting tool of white ‘patriarchal power,’ in the words of the BBC Magazine. Abreu founded El Sistema, a program of free classical music training for barrio children in Caracas, in the belief that playing Bach, Schubert, and Brahms would help deliver them from poverty and crime into a higher and better world. El Sistema, Abreu said in 2008, was meant to ‘reveal to our children the beauty of music [so that] music shall reveal to our children the beauty of life.’ Philip Ewell can sneer at Beethoven as, at best, ‘above average.’ The BBC Magazine can snark that the formula for musical ‘greatness’ only appears to be ‘wild hair + cantankerousness + 32 sonatas’ but is, in fact, a ‘manufactured quality’ bestowed by classical music industries in order to ‘sell scores of “greatness” to as many people as possible.’ The graduates of El Sistema know better, including its most famous product, Gustavo Dudamel, conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Dudamel said of Beethoven during a live HD concert broadcast in 2011: ‘He is not just the reference point of classical music; he is the master of us all.’ The Seventh Symphony is ‘happiness. It’s the only word that I find perfect for this music.'” Here: Dudamel conducts the fourth movement of the Seventh Symphony with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela.
RUNNERS UP:
- **Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra in C major, K 299 (1778). This concerto was commissioned while Mozart was in Paris by a French nobleman who played the flute; his daughter played the harp. At this time the harp was not yet a standard orchestral instrument, and Mozart wrote no other works for it. In the video, the harpist is mesmerizing. So is watching the harp and flute toss the melody back and forth. HT Paul Bakacs.
- Tampa Bay Heralds of Harmony. Tribute to Old Glory (2020). Happy Independence Day! I love a good barbershop performance. HT Rand S.
Opera
TIED FOR FIRST:
- Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. “Voi Che Sapete,” from Le Nozze di Figaro (1786). A young man sings about falling in love for the first time. The role of Cherubino in Nozze is a trouser role, always sung by a soprano … because you can rely on an adult woman to pretend to be a teenage boy, but you can’t rely on a teenage boy to sing a major opera role consistently, and act it persuasively. Watch Isabel Leonard, my favorite Cherubino. (HT Allegra D.) Charlotte Church sings a very poetic English version.
- **Verdi, Giuseppe. “Bella figlia dell’ amore,” from Rigoletto (1851). My translation & comments, as a PDF, are here. You can find at least a dozen versions of this quartet on Youtube. I like this performance with Anna Netrebko, Elina Garanca, Ramon Vargas, and Ludovic Tezier, because the camerawork makes it easy to follow the different singers. This one from the Met Opera, 1991, includes Pavarotti singing the Duke; Pavarotti is always worth hearing. The beautiful BBC production from 2011 includes Placido Domingo as Rigoletto and Vittorio Grigolo (swooooons) as the Duke; alas, the subtitles are in Spanish. “Bella figlia” starts at 1:53 in the BBC clip.
RUNNERS UP:
- **Gilbert & Sullivan. Pirates of Penzance (1983). Adaptation of a delightfully silly Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, starring Kevin Kline, Linda Ronstadt, Rex Smith and Angela Lansbury. The cast recording has Kline, Ronstadt, and Smith, but not Lansbury.
- **Bizet, Georges. “Habanera” from Carmen (1875). PDF with notes & translation here. This recording is by Angela Gheorghiu.
- Verdi, Giuseppe. “Sempre libera,” from La Traviata (1853). The situation: Violetta, a famed Parisian courtesan (“La Traviata” means “the fallen woman”), hosts a lavish party celebrating her recovery from an illness. She’s introduced to idealistic young Alfredo. Together they sing a drinking song that’s now famous (“Libiamo ne’ lieti calici”). Alfredo admits that he’s been in love with Violetta for some time; after he leaves, she wonders whether she should settle down with him. But she decides she needs to stay unattached so she can live her life as she pleases: “Sempre libera,” “Always free.” While she’s singing, though, she can hear Alfredo in the distance, singing of his love. The vocal fireworks Verdi calls for match Violetta’s mood perfectly, and are a wonderful contrast to Alfredo’s simple vocal line. Alfredo’s short bit is apparently very persuasive, because when the curtain rises on Act 2, Violetta and Alfredo are living together in the country. The Italian and the English translation (not mine) are here. Video of Venera Gimadieva singing it here, and Renee Fleming here.
Film
WINNER:
- Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Heroism, plus respect for the skill of American military pilots. I enjoyed this one very much, even though I’m not always a fan of Tom Cruise.
RUNNER UP:
- Good Night Oppy (2022). This is my kind of uplifting movie. The engineers and scientists who designed the Mars rover Opportunity were hoping it would last 90 days. It kept exploring for 15 years. Extremely well told, with interviews from those involved. Industrial Light & Magic used hundreds of thousands of photos from Mars to create the colors and geology of the CG animation, as well as audio recordings from Perseverance, a later Mars rover, for the sounds. More on that here. HT Dale F.
TV
WINNER:
- Reacher, season 1 (2022). Created for Amazon Prime. The lead character, an ex-military police officer, combines strength, intelligence, and a low-key sense of humor. I highly recommend this season, as well as the Lee Child book on which it’s based (The Killing Floor – see this post), but not so much the movies with Tom Cruise.
RUNNERS UP:
- **Community (6 seasons) (2009-2015). Remember when Saturday Night Live made jokes that were fearless and funny, rather than woke and winceful? Community reminds me of that. My husband and I kept this show for nights when we needed a dose of laughter to wind down. Its finale wins my award for most inventive. Available via Netflix.
- Only Murders in the Building (2021+). An amusing murder mystery with Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, available on Hulu. HT Marian C.
More
- In 2022 I published 3 books: Starry Solitudes: A Collection of Inspiring and Thought-Provoking Poetry (98 poems I’ve recommended over the past five years); Sunny Sundays: Highlights of Five Years of Sunday Recommendations (more here); and Timeline 1900-2021: Events Worldwide, US Politics & Culture, Economics, Science & Technology, Books, Visual Arts, Architecture, Film & TV, Music (more here).
- For more of my writings, see the Books and Essays page. All my books are available in Kindle and/or print format via my Amazon author page. And check out dozens of videos from 2021 on my YouTube channel.
- For favorites from earlier years, see the Favorite Recommendations and Photos link.
- Want wonderful art such as these recommendations delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my Sunday Recommendations list and rewards for recurring support: details here.