Music review: RSNO: Gene Kelly '“ A Life in Music, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
RSNO: Gene Kelly – A Life in Music, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall ****
I’m sure there was a darker side to the man whose trademark cuffed trousers, white socks and loafers took the starch out cinematic dance attire - a quick google search confirmed he wasn’t all sweetness and light - but Ward Kelly’s genuine narrative won over her hefty Glaswegian audience, even when the projection momentarily failed.
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Hide AdShe set the scene perfectly for screened extracts that ranged from Anchors Aweigh (The Worry Song) and the balletic sentimentality of Brigadoon (Heather on the Hill) to Brigadoon’s stirring Entrance of the Clans (featuring pipers from Edinburgh’s Military Tattoo) and the hideously caricatured The Hat My Dear Old Father Wore.
Kelly’s genius was most markedly represented in the ingeniously complexity of the American in Paris Ballet, Henry Mancini’s quirky Coffee House Ballet, conceived for a 1959 TV Special, and the immortal Singing in the Rain, all vividly illuminated by the visceral underscoring of the RSNO, directed by Neil Thomson. All very fascinating.