6 THENEWYORKER, SEPTEMBER 2, 2019
felt as though I were writhing on a pin: again
and again the carnal tapioca, the vacant gazes,
the fatuous frolic. But everything in Renoir
that is hard to take and almost impossible to
think about, because it makes no concessions
to intelligence, affirms his stature as a revolu-
tionary artist. You can’t dethrone him without
throwing overboard the fundamental logic
of modernism as a sequence of jolting aes-
thetic breakthroughs, entitled to special rank
on the grounds of originality and influence.
Renoir’s colors attain complex harmonies even
as you may crave sunglasses to mitigate their
screeching chromas. He’s like a house guest
so annoying that you might consider burning
down the house to be rid of him. Let’s not do
that.—P.S. (Through Sept. 22.)
RongRong
Walther Collection
CHELSEA The radical, seminal, and short-lived
Beijing East Village was founded in 1992, in
the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre,
when young men and women found cheap
lodging and artistic freedom in a suburban
village favored by “garbage collectors, con-
struction workers, and the unemployed,” as
the photographer RongRong wrote in his
diary. This intimate show revisits the scene
in candid black-and-white images, shot with a
35-mm. camera that he bought with money he
earned by working in his father’s store in Fu-
jian Province. At the time, photography didn’t
exist as an art form in China; RongRong’s
indelible pictures of his peers’ courageous,
outlandish performances helped to change
that. Among the many revelations here is a
1993 portrait of the artist Zhang Huan—who
is now world-renowned—staging his first-ever
performance, inserting a salvaged mannequin
leg between his legs like a living Hans Bell-
mer doll. Within months, the police raided
the East Village and the experiment ended.
History repeated itself this July, when police
in riot gear descended on two Beijing art dis-
tricts, forcing hundreds of artists out of their
studios.—Andrea K. Scott (Through Oct. 12.)
The Resonant Bodies Festival empowers singers to flex their creativity
with experimental vocal-music programs of their own design. It’s
a testament to the attractiveness of that invitation that this year’s
edition, at Roulette, in Brooklyn (Sept. 3-5), has drawn big names
from the mainstream classical and contemporary scenes who want
in on the artistic liberation. Each night is anchored by a major draw,
including the adventurous countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo;
the composer-singers Ted Hearne and Kate Soper, whose brave
vocal writing drives their genre-defying work; and the powerhouse
mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, who likes to wield her punch of a
voice in mustachioed drag as the tenor divo Blythely Oratonio. “He
doesn’t think about cracking on a high note,” Blythe said of her drag
persona, on the festival’s podcast. “He doesn’t think about people’s
perceptions. He is who he wants to be.”—Oussama Zahr
RECITAL SERIES
1
CLASSICAL MUSIC
“Don Pasquale”
Berkshire Opera Festival
OUT OF TOWN Donizetti’s bel-canto tickler “Don
Pasquale” brought May-December marriages,
ILLUSTRATION BY MOLLY MENDOZA
conspicuous consumption, and one gratuitous
face slap to the opera stage almost two centu-
ries before Bravo put “The Real Housewives”
on television. Jonathon Loy directs Craig
Colclough, Deanna Breiwick, Matthew Grills,
and Emmett O’Hanlon in a traditional pro-
duction of the vivacious, slightly mean-spir-
ited comedy at the Berkshire Opera Festival;
Brian Garman conducts.—Oussama Zahr (Aug.
27 and Aug. 30 at 7:30.)
Summer HD Festival
Lincoln Center
This year, the Met’s Summer HD Festival is
a collection of greatest hits culled from the
previous season. The second half of the out-
door movie series, which plays on a big screen
at Lincoln Center Plaza, features some of the
starriest lineups from the past twelve months,
including Roberto Alagna and Elīna Garanča
in “Samson et Dalila,” Jonas Kaufmann in “La
Fanciulla del West,” Pretty Yende in “La Fille
du Régiment,” and Anna Netrebko, Anita
Rachvelishvili, and Piotr Beczala in “Adriana
Lecouvreur.” No tickets are required, and
seats are first come, first served.—O.Z. (Aug.
28-Sept. 2 at 8.)
Here and Now Festival
Bargemusic
Showcasing new and recent music over Labor
Day weekend has become a lively tradition
at Bargemusic. This year’s festival features
premières by the composers Paul Chihara,
Louis Karchin, Kathleen Supové, David Tay-
lor, Stanley Walden, and Jonathan Criner,
among others. Performers include the trom-
bonist Taylor and the pianists Supové, Ursula
Oppens, and Jerome Lowenthal.—Steve Smith
(Aug. 30 at 7, Aug. 31 at 6, and Sept. 1 at 4.)
CreArt Music Festival
The Plaxall Gallery
CreArtBox, a Long Island City-based per-
forming-arts organization that seeks to en-
hance its musical presentations with visual
complements, mounts its second annual fes-
tival. Opening night offers Ned Rorem’s Trio
for Flute, Cello, and Piano, alongside trios by
Haydn and Mendelssohn adapted for the same
instrumentation. Saturday’s program pairs
Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” with
“Mandalas in the Rubble,” a new piece by the
Chinese composer Dai Wei, which examines
the resilience of faith in Nepal after a 2015
earthquake. The sopranos Ariadne Greif and
Nina Dante perform in the world première
of “Two Roads,” an interdisciplinary cham-
ber opera by Guillermo Laporta, to close the
event.—S.S. (Aug. 30-Sept. 1 at 8.)
Trio Solisti
Maverick Concerts
OUT OF TOWN The members of Trio Solisti—the
violinist Maria Bachmann, the cellist Alexis
Pia Gerlach, and the pianist Fabio Bidini—
play with a unified sense of purpose that goes
beyond collegiality, or even camaraderie, into
warm familiarity. For the final concert of the
Maverick Chamber Music Festival, held each
