To Tour Or Not To Tour

TO TOUR OR NOT TO TOUR

The main event of Thursday was a bus tour to the Danish countryside. Thanks to my brother Billy, we were inspired to book a tour to “Hamlet’s” castle of Kronborg. The character of the melancholy Prince may have been fictional, but Shakespeare correctly located the castle in the town of Elsinore (English version of Helsingfor.)

The tour started out with an hour and a half drive to Frederiksborg, a great 17th century royal castle which is now the national historical museum. Though most of the huge palace was destroyed by a fire in the 18th century, it was rebuilt, thanks to the generosity of the brewer Carlsberg in the early 20th century. It’s furnished with the rich, rather heavy furniture and decorative style of the Baroque age, and some of the rooms, such as the chapel are very imposing. Jim even managed to photograph a nesting grebe in reed waters, since the castle is surrounded by a large moat. The visit to Frederiksborg was the best part of the excursion.

Then we briefly stopped at Fredenborg, a castle that the Queen still uses. After that photo stop we finally arrived at Kronborg, too late to visit the interior which closed at 5 PM. But we explored the grounds and enjoyed the magnificent view from the site, close to the ocean. I felt peeved that the tour guide brought us so late to the Renaissance castle, since the tour had been labeled “Hamlet’s Castle” and also that we returned a half hour late to Copenhagen. Yet it’s always worthwhile to see the landscape of any country, to obtain an idea of the differences between city and country.

After a brief stop at the Royal Hotel we left for Tivoli Gardens, to have a delicious dinner at one of the restaurants in the amusement park, La Vecchia Signora (The Old Lady.) Then we saw the unique pantomime theater. Danish pantomime is part slapstick, part ballet, and based on the old Italian theater form called the commedia del’arte. Characters like Harlequin, Colombina and Pierrot chase each other around the stage. The colorful and amusing commedia’s survival into the 20th century appears to be thanks to the Danes. The shows are done twice daily at Tivoli. They are the best events in the park in my opinion.

Friday we boarded the Emerald Princess, which sailed away from Copenhagen Friday evening.
--Dan

Christianborg Palace

The Royal Theater

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

A Busy Day In Copenhagen

Photos: Thorvaldsen Museum

We started our morning on Wednesday with a visit to the Thorvaldsen Museum, the oldest museum in the city (1848.) This building, part of the Christianborg Palace complex, houses the sculptures of Denmark’s most famous sculptor, an artist who lived in Rome during the early Romantic period, but one worked in a neo-Classical style. His numerous portrait busts, exquisite reliefs and over-life sized statues of mythological characters are located in an interesting setting, with the rooms often decorated with ceilings paintings done in a faux-Pompeii style. Bertil Thorvaldsen lived most of his life in Rome, where he was an enormous success, but the King of Denmark persuaded him to leave sunny Italy for the last ten years of his life, and in return, had the museum constructed to display the sculptor’s works.

Our second stop of the day was the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, a museum which houses ancient art and some 19th century European art. We enjoyed lunch at the museum’s café which is located on the edge of the indoor courtyard garden. After eating, we explored the wonderful paintings by Courbet, Manet, Monet, Gauguin and Van Gogh, among others. The collection is particularly strong for Gauguin, probably because he was married to a Danish woman. Jim decided to leave and explore the Tivoli Gardens and Amusement Park, while Dan stayed at the Museum. There I saw some of the ancient art collections, which are extensive, and feature works from Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome. The Glyptotek also houses much late 19th century French and Danish sculpture. In one large hall a group of Korean musicians were tuning up, and a security told me that the President of South Korea was visiting the city.

I returned to the Christianborg Palace to see the royal reception rooms. They are impressive and two of the finest figure wonderful 20th century tapestries, one series from the 1920s devoted to Danish folk tales and another set, just installed in 2000, concerned with the history of Denmark from the Vikings to the present day. This unusual set of large-scale tapestries is done in very bright colors and in a variety of figural styles, all woven at the Gobelins factory in France from 1990 to 2000, and designed by a contemporary Dane.

The Christianborg Palace is a large complex, and in one of the buildings the Parliament convenes. The reception rooms are sometimes used for receptions by the current Queen, Margarethe, but she lives in a different palace, Amalienborg. I searched for the Theater Museum, also on the grounds of the complex. It features designs for plays on its walls, but also contains an entire, small 18th century theater. Though most of Christianborg was destroyed by fire in the 18th century, this building (and the Royal Stables) survived. The main buildings were rebuilt in 1928.

After a short rest at the Royal Hotel, where Jim returned a bit later, we walked to one of the large squares and had a Japanese dinner before heading to the Royal Theater. There we enjoyed seeing the Royal Danish Ballet. When Americans usually think of the most famous ballet companies in the world, they might list ABT, the NY City Ballet, The Royal Ballet of London, the Paris Opera Ballet, and then the Bolshoi and Kirov of Russia. But the precision and training of the Danes also places them in such exalted company. Our triple bill included only one piece by Denmark’s greatest choreographer, August Bournonville. His “Konserveratoriet” is a light-hearted look at dance training, and features his expressive and fast choreography. The company also danced “Alumnus” a new work by contemporary choreographer Johan Kobborg. Its humor was forced, but the second half “Salute” was a tribute to Bournonville and was set to music by Lumbye, one of the Danish composers that the master regularly used. Unfortunately, the third work on the program was Harald Lander’s bravura “Etudes”. Though it’s a thorough work-out for the dancers, the music by Riisager is bombastic and the choreography matches. This 1948 work would have been better left in the history books. Still, it was rewarding to see the great tradition of ballet continue in Copenhagen.
--Dan

Copenhagen's Tivoli Amusement Park

A couple of hours spent in Tivoli can be a lot of fun. It's an inside the city amusement park and garden that is popular with tourists and locals alike. There are plenty of exciting rides including a great roller coaster, over 40 restaurants and cafes, and beautifully planted gardens. Big name entertainers appear regularly, and the fun atmosphere of the park provides an interesting contrast to the hustle and bustle of the city just outside the gates.

Jim

Sticker Shock In A City Of Spires

Denmark is not a part of the European Union. Once you’re here for a day or two you understand why this is so. The standard of living, or more accurately, the cost of living here is very high. Everything is expensive in terms of dollars. The other evening we dropped $100 each for a nice dinner. Why would the Danes want to join the EU and have to subsidize poorer countries like Portugal?

Jim

Then And Now

Top: The new Copenhagen Opera House

Middle: The new Royal Theater

Bottom: The "Black Diamond" - The Royal Library

From Dan:

Then and Now: Twenty five years ago, when we first visited Scandinavia, on a trip with my father, we had a cursory view and opinion of Copenhagen. True, we saw a few sights, like one of the castles and the pantomime show at the famed Tivoli Gardens. But we took a train and boat to Hamburg overnight, and dismissed the Danish capitol as the weakest of the Scandinavian cities we’d seen, compared to noble Stockholm, eccentric Oslo or picturesque Bergen. Today, perhaps because we’ve had marvelous weather so far and walked around the town, we give the city high marks for its charm. Jim’s idea of taking a canal barge tour paid off; and besides, Copenhagen has grown enormously. Its smart new buildings, like the ‘Diamond’ (State Library), the Royal Theater and the new Opera, are very impressive, comparing favorably with the Baroque and neo-Classical buildings of yesteryear.

Then and Now: Many years ago, my brother William R. Evans used to accurately praise Norway for being a small European country that had produced a major figure in each of the arts: Edvard Munch in painting, Grieg as a great composer, and Ibsen as one of the ground-breaking playwrights of his time. Though perhaps not such exalted levels, Denmark also has given the world leading figures in the arts: the sculptor Thorvaldsen, and the authors Ludvig Holberg (the so-called ‘Moliere’ of the North, who also lived in the 18th century) as well as the more famous Hans Christian Andersen. And in serious music Denmark produced Carl Nielsen, writer of many symphonies and the national opera, “Maskerade,” based on one of Holberg’s comedies.

Then and Now: Being in Copenhagen makes me think of George Balanchine, the greatest choreographer of the Twentieth Century, and probably of all time. He had a short career here at the Royal Danish Ballet, back in the 1930s, just as he did in Paris and in other parts of Europe before Lincoln Kirstein lured him away to start Ballet Society in America which became the renowned New York City Ballet.

Two days before we left for this trip I was lucky enough to see a magnificent performance of Balanchine’s first true masterpiece, the sublime “Apollo,” which is set to a great score by Stravinsky. I’d seen it several times before, with such amazing dancers as Ib Andersen (a Dane, BTW), Sean Lavery and even Rudolf Nureyev. This year the City Ballet corps dancer young Chase Finley danced the part, and he shows great promise, as my special friend Carole Paquette, noted. I was delighted to see a Balanchne triple bill with Carole, the most perceptive and knowledgeable ballet lover I know.

Seeing “Apollo” again elucidated some of its important choreographic passages. The ballet is all about creation. For one, there’s a section where Apollo places his head in the hands of the three Muses, to a sigh played by the orchestra. This shows that even a divine creator can collapse, tired. Then there’s also a moment when Apollo holds the hands of all three Muses and seems to lead them onward, like horses. (Critics have called this the ‘troika’ moment after the three-horses Russian sleighs that the ballet’s creator knew.) This represents divine power (i.e., creativity) leased by the god Apollo. Finally, during the amazing pas de deux with the Muse of Dance, Terpsichore, Apollo kneels on the floor while she precariously balances on his back, making a sort of ‘swimming’ motion with her arms. Surely this shows us the fragile nature of creativity in all its winsome nature. If ever there was a perfect masterpiece of dance, “Apollo” (1928) is it.

Then and Now: today we’ll continue our exploration of ‘wonderful Copenhagen’ and hope to report more on this amazing city soon.

--Dan

Copenhagen In Spring

Top: The main shopping street Stroget

Middle: Nyhavn canal - our waterways tour left from here

Bottom: the view from our hotel room at the Radison Blu

We arrived at 10:30 AM this morning in lovely Copenhagen, where Spring has sprung. Today was sunny and warm with temperatures in the upper 70s. We spent the day walking and in the afternoon we took a one hour tour of the canals and harbor followed by dinner outside at a nice restaurant along side the Nyhavn canal. Copenhagen is really an amazing city. We were last here 26 years ago. It has a lot of beautiful architecture, it is rich in history, and the people are friendly. It's so nice to be pleasantly surprised by a travel destination.

Happy Mother's Day Mom!