Heathcliff in the squadra azzurra

The Xavier Newswire talks about the final show of the Xavier Players’ 2009 season, “Workshop,” which included several plays written, directed and acted by students. Including

“Fishbone,” written by sophomore Brigid Gallagher and directed by sophomore Lisa Margevicius, presented many of my favorite segments of the night. “Fishbone” was a collection of skits that reinterpreted several literary classics. The skits exposed the bawdiness of many of literature’s most highly regarded works. The director and producer characters, played by juniors Lauren Brinkman and Santiago Segura, underscored the absurdity with humorous banter. The reinterpretations of “Wuthering Heights” and “Jane Eyre” were my favorites. Who doesn’t loving seeing junior Stuart McNeil dressed in drag? (Des Dale)

The Guardian talks about The Pop Confessional, the Friday competitions at The Bodega Social Club in Nottingham, UK. One of them is called Beat My Bush:

Basically customers are encouraged to get up on stage and mime (although we have had folk sing) their way through "Wuthering Heights" in a long flowing dress and wig, whilst the original video is projected onto a wall alongside. Subject to the state of our prop-box, there are usually two contestants (female or male) involved in this debacle.

The Merced Sun-Star talks about the book industry in Iraq illustrating the article with a picture of an Arabic translation of Jane Eyre at a recent book fair at Baghdad University. That Arabic translation was presented on BrontëBlog several months ago.

Jornal do Panorama (Brazil) has an article about the Brontë sisters. Golmania (Italy) begins an article about the Napoli football team with a quote from Wuthering Heights (!!). Página 12 (Argentina) talks about Jane Eyre 2006. El Diario de Xalapa (Mexico) publishes an alert for tomorrow, April 26. A new chance to listen to Julio César Oliva's Cumbres Borrascosas at the 5th Encuentro Internacional de Guitarra Xalapa 2009.

Le Nouvel Observateur remembers the thirtieth anniversary of the premiere (May 9, 1979) of André Téchiné's Les Soeurs Brontë:

Elles se sont donné la réplique pour la première fois dans «les Soeurs Brontë», d'André Téchiné. Il y a trente ans, exactement. La rumeur les disait rivales. Elles avaient à peu près le même âge.
On prétendait que, sur le tournage, leurs agents respectifs calculaient, chronomètre à la main, le nombre de gros plans dont le cinéaste voulait bien les gratifier. Dans son coin, le sémiologue Roland Barthes, qui jouait Thackeray et s'y connaissait en mythologies, comptait les points. Emily Brontë, c'était la noire Isabelle Adjani, devenue déjà une icône grâce à la Comédie-Française. Anne Brontë, c'était la rousse Isabelle Huppert, inscrite depuis «la Dentellière» dans le registre trompeur de l'effacement, de la transparence. (Jérôme Garcin) (Google translation)

The same magazine reviews Paris-Brest by Tanguy Viel and quotes a Brontë reference in the novel:

«Voilà comment débutait véritablement cette histoire, de cette manière énigmatique et bien sûr de cette manière romanesque, à l'enterrement de ma grand-mère, où on sentait bien qu'il allait se passer des choses violentes et tendues, des choses, disons, gothiques, parce que ce je voulais aussi, c'était que ça fasse comme un roman anglais du XIXe siècle, quelque chose comme “Les Hauts de Hurlevent”.

Film Music: The Neglected Art reviews the recent reissue of Michel Legrand's Wuthering Heights 1970 soundtrack:

Michel Legrand featured his Cathy or “Theme from Wuthering Heights” as the primary one, using it with delicacy for the flutes in the opening title, yearning strings, stately French horns, mixing it with other motifs such as “Rendezvous on the Moors,” “Castle Grounds,” and other instruments throughout the 46+ minute score. “Yorkshire Moors” uses the modern guitar to sound baroque like, an interesting orchestration that is mixed with the “Wuthering Heights” theme, flutes, harpsichord, a dissonant horn, and oboe. “Cathy’s Theme” is a lush romantic version of the “Theme from Wuthering Heights” offering many solos from the London Studio Orchestra members including harp, flute, violin, and oboe. “The Grange,” quite modern sounding like a traffic sequence is mixed with the gloomy harpsichord chords to make for an interesting mixture in this cue. “Hindley” is one of those tracks that is made up of several different smaller cues ranging from trumpet fanfares, lower register brass, “Theme from Wuthering Heights,” and church type music. The mixture works well as a nice underscore track. (sdtom)

View from the Stalls reviews the ongoing Tamasha Theatre's performances of Wuthering Heights at the Citizen's Theatre in Glasgow and Internet Mandy Database vindicates Anne Brontë.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights