Saw Ben Bagby's Beowulf performance at Lincoln Center the first Wednesday I was back, which was stunning and I recommend it highly to anyone's got the chance to catch it. Two-and-a-quarter hours of Anglo-Saxon poetry in the original, with lyre accompaniment and supertitled translations. One man with a lyre, sitting on a piano bench, the stage otherwise empty but for two candles on tall wrought iron stands. No intermission.
And attentive silence, even during the pauses when he sipped water and retuned his lyre. No wriggling, minimal coughing, no whispering. And that long pause at the end, before the applause, the "My God, we're stunned" sort of pause.
Standing ovation. And he deserved it. The poem deserved it.
He went from "Hwaet, wé Gar-Déna" through to the scene where Hroþgar rewards Beowulf for killing Grendel, with a few appropriate omissions; the whole thing would take at least five hours.
Needless to say, I'm very grateful to my mother, who saw that there were tickets, snagged a pair, and immediately rang me up to tell me to clear out my schedule that day. We had tickets for the back row of the orchestra section, but got moved up to the second row, about five seats in--just about dead centre.
ETA: I found the URL for Ben Bagby's website:
http://www.bagbybeowulf.com/ Includes upcoming concert listings!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
