Edward Lambert

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on May 11, 2011

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The Art of Venus: review by Charlotte Valori

Packing all the punches: Edward Lambert’s The Art of Venus, Tête à Têteoperissimawhispers / August 16, 2017 “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history. Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas.” So, in 1914, suffragette Mary Richardson explained why she had slashed the Rokeby Venus, a masterpiece by Velázquez which still hangs today (restored) in the National Gallery. Edward Lambert’s The Art of Venus takes Richardson’s act of aesthetic terrorism as a starting point for imagining Venus herself, a goddess both mighty and furious at her reduction, by humanity, to a mere sex symbol. Venus, sung with sculptural beauty and luminous, near-maleficent presence by Kate Symonds-Joy, rails with disdainful fury at a rather endearing Mars (smooth-voiced barito…

Lorca's Ballad of the moon, moon

For The Butterfly's Spell, I wanted an interlude in between the two acts, and used this famous ballad, in my own translation. Here are some other translations that I looked at; most of them I thought almost as incomprehensible in English as the Spanish original. I'm sorry to have lost the attributions.

La luna vino a la fragua con su polisón de nardos. El niño la mira, mira. El niño la está mirando. En el aire conmovido mueve la luna sus brazos y enseña, lúbrica y pura, sus senos de duro estaño. Huye luna, luna, luna. Si vinieran los gitanos, harían con tu corazón collares y anillos blancos. Niño, déjame que baile. Cuando vengan los gitanos, te encontrarán sobre el yunque con los ojillos cerrados. Huye luna, luna, luna, que ya siento sus caballos. Niño, déjame, no pises mi blancor almidonado. El jinete se acercaba tocando el tambor del llano. Dentro de la fragua el niño, tiene los ojos cerrados. Por el olivar ven'an, bronce y sueño, los gitanos. Las cabezas levantadas y lo…

Aspects of "Work" in Manchester Art Gallery

It was thrilling to be able to attend the first performance of my Aspects of Work in the Pre-Raphaelite Gallery of Manchester Art Gallery where Ford Madox Brown's famous panorama of Victorian life is beautifully displayed.

Performed by Julian Jacobson and Mariko Brown
Translating a picture, especially one as far reaching as this, into another art form seems an unlikely task: music can make a good attempt at capturing the mood of a painting - but ‘Work” is a complex and compressed panorama of Victorian life, and interpreting all that in musical terms was going to be a challenge.
The realism of “Work” is typical of the Pre Raphaelites (of whose brotherhood Brown was never actually a member) with their immense attention to detail. “Work” took 10 or more years to create. I was attracted to the very idea that Brown was also celebrating his own labour of love, a delight in an achievement that is hand made and crafted with great skill and care, hard toil, patience and perseverance.
Brown…

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