#OnTheBigScreen: Promising Young Woman and Met Opera livestreams

8 Jan 2021

Only one film enters the South African box office this week: arresting, blackly comedic quasi-thriller for the #MeToo age, Promising Young Woman. And if you're opting to stay home, this weekend, there are more livestreams from the Met Opera in New York.

Promising Young Woman

From groundbreaking director Emerald Fennell (Killing Eve) comes Promising Young Woman, a delicious new take on revenge. Everyone said Cassie (Carey Mulligan) was a promising young woman - until a mysterious event abruptly derailed her future. But nothing in Cassie’s life is what it appears to be: she’s wickedly smart, tantalisingly cunning and she’s living a secret double life by night. Now, an unexpected encounter is about to give Cassie a chance to right the wrongs of the past in this thrilling and wildly entertaining story.

This arresting, blackly comedic quasi-thriller for the #MeToo age marks Fennell’s feature directorial debut. It subverts the hackneyed notion of the femme fatale.

Opera streamings from the Met Opera

Opera lovers have indulged in 43 weeks of free streamings from the Met Opera in New York, which features outstanding performances from the award-winning live in HD series.

This weekend you can explore some of the bitterest operatic rivalries, fraught love triangles, fearsome face-offs and deadly duels abound - often with thrilling musical results: A saga of star-crossed love and family drama set against the strife of the 17th century English Civil War, Bellini’s bel-canto gem I Puritani (8 January) overflows with ravishing arias and ensembles.

Director David McVicar’s brings opera’s favourite double bill to new life on 9 January, setting the two operas in the same Sicilian setting, separated by two generations, in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, a lay-about villager leaves the girl he’s impregnated for another man’s wife. In Pagliacci, a tortured clown plots against his beautiful young wife, whom he suspects of carrying on with a younger man. Neither ending is happy; each is exquisite. Marcelo Álvarez takes on the rare feat of singing both leading tenor roles.

A prime example of the lyrical and virtuosic bel canto style of singing, the Donizetti’s Tudor tragedy Maria Stuarda (10 January) tells of two queens - Mary, Queen of Scots and her jealous cousin Queen Elizabeth I - who are both vying for the English crown, featuring South African soprano Elza van den Heever as Queen Elizabeth.

Verdi’s turbulent tragedy Il Trovatore (11 January) features four characters caught in a web of family ties, politics and love is a mainstay of the operatic repertory. David McVicar’s dramatic production highlights the raw emotions that drive Verdi’s turbulent tale of love and revenge.

About Daniel Dercksen

Daniel Dercksen has been a contributor for Lifestyle since 2012. As the driving force behind the successful independent training initiative The Writing Studio and a published film and theatre journalist of 40 years, teaching workshops in creative writing, playwriting and screenwriting throughout South Africa and internationally the past 22 years. Visit www.writingstudio.co.za