How many restaurants do you know of where you can walk on the roof? Lincoln, the ultra expensive new stand alone restaurant at Lincoln Center (average check for a glass of wine and two courses is $120 per person), offers a steeply angled 10,000-square-foot rooftop swath of green for picnics and sunning. I’m not making this up.
The 147-by-70-foot lawn offers much needed green space to the Lincoln Center campus, which has undergone a recent transformation with a price tag of more than a billion dollars. That’s billion with a “B.” They hired the firm behind the Bellagio fountains in Vegas to rework the Lincoln Center plaza fountain, and new wide steps leading up from Broadway have risers that have LCD lights spelling out promotions.
The Henry Moore sculptures, reflecting pool and grass-roofed restaurant, looking toward the Juilliard School. A corner of Avery Fisher Hall is on the right.
The southwest edge of the restaurant roof is at plaza level, but ascends up nine grassy steps to 23 feet in height. The tall grass surface (90 percent fescue, 10 percent Kentucky bluegrass) is energy-saving, temperature-regulating, and storm-water-absorbing. The restaurant structure straddles the steps that connect Avery Fisher Hall and the Vivian Beaumont Theater, descending from the plaza level down to West 65th Street, facing a reworked Juilliard building and Alice Tully Hall.
The scene from an upper floor of the Juilliard Building looking across W. 65th St. toward the Met. Avery Fisher Hall is to the left, the Vivian Beaumont Theater to the right.
The grass roof lies just a few feet above the restaurant's wood slat ceiling (shown below right)
LINCOLN CENTER: CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OCTOBER 15, 2009 - JANUARY 16, 2010
After nearly five decades of artistic excellence and service, Lincoln Center has embarked upon a major transformation initiative to fully modernize its concert halls and public spaces, renew its 16-acre urban campus, and reinforce its vitality. The complex, bordered by Columbus (9th Ave.), 62nd St., Amsterdam (10th Ave.), 66th St. and Broadway, includes the Juilliard School and Damrosch Park in addition to fines arts spaces (Jazz at Lincoln Center is south of the main campus, at 60th St and Broadway, Columbus Circle). Thirteen arts organizations are in residence at Lincoln Center.
To that end, the first exhibition to focus on the evolution and influence of America’s first performing arts center, “Lincoln Center: Celebrating 50 Years” features a collection of some 400 historic and contemporary objects: photographs, correspondence, costumes, set pieces, props and video recordings.
Images and memorabilia from the May 14, 1959 groundbreaking ceremony, including a signed photograph of President Dwight D. Eisenhower on the site as well as the shovel he wielded at the event, are among the items on display. A selection of architectural renderings and photographed models offer a full look at Lincoln Center’s architecture and planning from the original vision of the late 1950s to the current revitalization projects now underway. Rare performance images, video excerpts and personal correspondences are on display, including Leonard Bernstein, Beverly Sills, Julius Rudel, John D. Rockefeller, George Balanchine, Pierre Boulez, Rudolph Bing, Placido Domingo, Leontyne Price, Luciano Pavarotti, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Wynton Marsalis and Jessye Norman, among many others.
The landmark performances and commissions that have come to define Lincoln Center as one of the world’s leading performing arts centers are documented in photographs and set pieces as well as signed scores, programs, memorabilia and selections of costumes and set designs. Behind-the-scenes photographs, video clips and documents illuminate Lincoln Center’s historic and continuing dedication to innovative technology. From its pioneering role in introducing opera super-titles to its award winning broadcast series Live From Lincoln Center and The Met: Live in HD, Lincoln Center’s pursuit of state-of-the-art technology has been and continues to be a vital ingredient in Lincoln Center’s defining synthesis of innovation and tradition.
Lincoln Center’s strong commitment to arts education is also highlighted. Photographs of artists who trained and studied at Lincoln Center include a youthful Martin Scorsese (winner at the Film Society’s first National Student Film Festival in 1965), a young Darci Kistler in class at the School of American Ballet with teacher Suki Schorer, as well as Kevin Kline and Patti LuPone during their Juilliard years. Also on view are student art work and letters as well a listing of musical cues for a 1962 Young People’s Concert notated front and back with Leonard Bernstein’s own edits.
The Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center is located at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza (between the Metropolitan Opera House and the Vivian Beaumont Theater; see map below). Exhibition hours through January 16, 2010, are Monday and Thursday from 12:00 p.m. to 8 p.m.; Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 11:00 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.; closed Sundays and holidays. Admission is free. For exhibition information, call 212.870.1630 or visit the Library’s website at www.nypl.org/lpa.
On October 1, 2009, the Lincoln Center Revson Fountain, the centerpiece of Josie Robertson Plaza, returned to a fully functioning state. WET Design, the company responsible for the landmark fountain display at Bellagio Las Vegas, redesigned the Philip Johnson original fountain. A ring of water jets that can rise 12 feet high “dances” at various heights and configurations. High pressure water cannons shoot columns of (recycled!) water up to 40 feet into the air.
Winner of the 2008 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, Rodgers and Hammerstein's SOUTH PACIFIC concerns the lives of U.S. military men, nurses and residents of the Polynesian island they occupy during World War II. Nurse Nellie Forbush is “In Love With a Wonderful Guy,” a French planter, Émile, with small children. Clean-cut Lt. Cable has fallen hard for Bloody Mary's daughter Liat. And the seabees, sailors and marines will tell you that there is “Nothing Like a Dame.” The show's ravishing score also includes “Cockeyed Optimist,” “I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Younger Than Springtime,” “Honey Bun” and “This Nearly Was Mine.” In fact, some would say the musical score is the real star of this show.
The touchy issues of race and war that permeate the book of this sixty year old musical are still relevant. Based upon James Michener’s “Tales of the South Pacific,” this was the second ever musical to win the Pulitzer Prize.
The Lincoln Center Theater production of South Pacific, helmed by Tony-winning director Bartlett Sher, opened April 3 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater and was originally scheduled to close June 22, 2008. Lincoln Center Theater later announced that the musical would play an open-ended run at the Beaumont. Good luck getting tickets.
Current Cast Complications:
Noted operatic bass-baritone David Pittsinger will twice assume the role of Émile de Becque while Tony Award winner Paulo Szot fulfills his previously scheduled opera commitments. Szot, who earned a Best Actor Tony for his portrayal of South Pacific's romantic leading man, will take leave to appear in “The Merry Widow” for Opera Marseille this winter and “Carmen” for Opera Toulouse in the spring. In Szot's absence, David Pittsinger has been announced to assume the role of French plantation owner Emile de Becque from Dec. 2-Jan 25, 2009, and again from March 12-April 12, 2009. Later this season Pittsinger will also appear in the New York City Opera's concert performance of “Antony and Cleopatra” at Carnegie Hall.
Matthew Morrison (who plays Lt. Cable, shown below in leather jacket) will leave the production January 4, 2009, to take on the leading role in a FOX TV sit-com called GLEE, which will premiere in May. His role is the director of a high school glee club down on its luck.
Below: Brazilian opera star Paul Szot as Émile de Becque and Kelli O'Hara as Nellie Forbush.
Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center Broadway and West 65th Street
The Metropolitan Opera was founded in 1883. The first Metropolitan Opera House was built on Broadway and 39th Street by a group of wealthy businessmen who wanted their own opera house. In the company’s early years everything was sung in Italian (even Carmen and Lohengrin), soon followed by a shift to German (including Aida and Faust), before finally settling on a policy of performing works in their original language.
The Metropolitan Opera House (Broadway at 39th St.) in 1905.
Enrico Caruso first sang at the Met in 1903, and by the time of his death had performed there more times than with all the world’s other opera companies combined. Arturo Toscanini made his debut in 1908 (there were two seasons with both Toscanini and Gustav Mahler on the conducting roster). Later, Bruno Walter, George Szell, Fritz Reiner, and Dimitri Mitropoulos contributed powerful musical direction. James Levine made his debut in 1971 and has been Music Director since 1976 (holding also the title of Artistic Director 1986-2004).
Almost from the beginning, it was clear that the opera house on 39th Street did not have adequate stage facilities. However, it was not until the Metropolitan Opera joined with other New York institutions in forming Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts that a new home became possible. The new Metropolitan Opera House, which opened at Lincoln Center in September of 1966, was equipped with the finest technical facilities. Seating capacity is 3,800.
Hansel und Gretel was the first complete opera broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera on Christmas Day, 1931. Regular Saturday afternoon live radio broadcasts quickly made the Metropolitan Opera a permanent presence in communities throughout the United States and Canada. The Met continues its hugely successful radio broadcast series — now in its 77th year — the longest-running classical music series in American broadcast history, which is now heard in 42 countries around the world.
In 1995, the Metropolitan introduced Met Titles, a unique system of simultaneous translation. Met Titles appear on individual computerized screens mounted in specially built railings at the back of each row of seats, providing libretto translations into English, Spanish and German. “Met Titles” are provided for all Metropolitan Opera performances, and have recently expanded to include Spanish and German for select operas.
In the 2006-07 season, the company launched Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD, a series of performance transmissions shown live in high definition (HD) in movie theaters around the world. The series expanded from six to eight opera transmissions in 2007-08, reaching over 600 participating venues in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Each season the Metropolitan stages more than two hundred opera performances in New York. More than 800,000 people attend the performances in the opera house during the season, and millions more experience the Met through advanced new media distribution initiatives and state-of-the-art technology.
The Henry Moore sculptures, reflecting pool and grass-roofed restaurant, looking toward the Juilliard School. A corner of Avery Fisher Hall is on the right.
The scene from an upper floor of the Juilliard Building looking across W. 65th St. toward the Met. Avery Fisher Hall is to the left, the Vivian Beaumont Theater to the right.
