By Patricia Robert
What is being billed as an intimate dialogue between poetry and music will take place when T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” is paired with Benjamin Britten’s Cello Suite No. 1 next Sunday, March 26, as part of RiverArts’ “Artist Conver- sation” series.
The event, featuring Edoardo Bal- lerini, a two-time winner of the Audio Publishers Association’s Best Male Nar- rator Audie Award, and Peter Seiden- berg, artistic director of the RiverArts chamber music series, takes place at 3 p.m. in the Lobby Suite of 145 Palisade Street in Dobbs Ferry.
Tickets are $20 and must be bought in advance at riverarts.org.
Seidenberg told the Enterprise that the Britten piece is normally played with no pauses by the cellist, seated alone on stage. For this program, the cello will go silent as the poem is read. Conversely, narration of the poem will cease as the music fills the room. Hence, the dialogue that is described by the presenter.
The post-performance conversation will be led by Marie-Louise Miller, pro- ducer of the “Artist Conversation” series. Ballerini, Seidenberg, and Miller all Hast- ings residents, will be joined in the discus- sion by Neil Arditi, professor of English Literature at Sarah Lawrence College.
“I am so excited that this ‘experi- ment’ is taking place,” Miller said. “I hope that the audience will just let go of their expectations and enjoy the conver- sation between two art forms.”
Miller added that the immersive nature of the event will be enhanced by the proximity of the audience to the performers. Chairs will be arranged in a semi-circle next to the performing area.
According to Ballerini, the idea for the program was the result “of a con- versation Peter and I had during a long winter walk.” The selection of “The Waste Land” as his poem to read came naturally to Ballerini.
“Several years ago, the Eliot estate saw a story about me in The New York Times where I related how, as a college student, I had recorded ‘The Waste Land’ onto my Walkman and would walk around campus listening to it,” Ballerini recalled. “The estate commis- sioned me to do a recording of Eliot’s masterpiece in 2022, the hundredth anniversary of its publication. I’ve since done two readings — one at the New York Public Library and one in Charles- ton, South Carolina.”
Ballerini has a studio in his Hastings home. Two of his recent narrations were of Cormac McCarthy’s “Stella Maris” and Amor Towles’ “The Lincoln High- way.” He is also an actor, best known for a recurring role in “The Sopranos.” He recently completed the seven-episode series “Retreat” with Clive Owen that will be available on Hulu.
“I chose to play the Britten suite alongside of the Eliot not just because of the similarities, both written in England as responses to the world despair expe- rienced by their creators,” Seidenberg said. “But I also wanted to juxtapose these seemingly different mediums to lay bare the difficulties of their mes- sages. We’ve found as we’ve worked on intertwining the works, that as they tug on each other, they expose more than the sum of their parts.”
Miller said the event is an example of RiverArts’ commitment to artistic explo- ration — a “let’s see what happens” and “we believe in you” attitude — that allows for experimental ways of doing things like this particular “Artist Conversation.”
