Pacino leaves memorable impression at Academy bash
Headlining this year's Academy of Music Anniversary Concert and Ball: Al Pacino. Al Pacino? The Academy's white-tie bash, its premier annual fund-raiser, has always trained its old-world spotlight on a big-name musical guest or two. This year's choice, though, is famous for being Michael Corleone in the Godfather films and Tony Montana in Scarface - in other words, characters whose violin cases might contain items other than a violin.
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Headlining this year's Academy of Music Anniversary Concert and Ball: Al Pacino.
Al Pacino?
The Academy's white-tie bash, its premier annual fund-raiser, has always trained its old-world spotlight on a big-name musical guest or two. This year's choice, though, is famous for being Michael Corleone in the Godfather films and Tony Montana in Scarface - in other words, characters whose violin cases might contain items other than a violin.
And so wags wondered: When it came time for Pacino to step out on stage with the Philadelphia Orchestra, exactly what would he do?
Saturday night, the 74-year-old actor charmed.
"I mean, really, this is different," confessed Pacino to the crowd. But then he spoke movingly about the first time he heard a great orchestra live - Igor Stravinsky conducting the New York Philharmonic in The Rite of Spring, when Pacino was still a teenager living in the East Village - and the actor had them eating out of his hand, musician or no.
True, the Academy, built as an opera house, is closely associated with artists of the musical subspecies such as Rachmaninoff, Stokowski, and Maria Callas.
But actorly types have also projected their personas to the rafters, or entertained servicemen and women in the Academy's World War II-era Stage Door Canteen - Abbott and Costello, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and Harpo Marx (OK, he actually played the harp).
The Academy itself had a Hollywood cameo as the setting in parts of Martin Scorsese's film The Age of Innocence.
Pacino, decidedly not of the age of innocence, had neither Victorian veneer nor musical ability to offer. But what he did bring to the party was the bit of trivia that Eleonora Duse, an idol of his, had twice performed on the Academy stage.
He then recited a monologue from Richard III ("Now is the winter of our discontent . . . ") as the orchestra led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin played William Walton's desperately gorgeous score to the 1955 film in the background. A section of Copland's Clarinet Concerto was heard beneath his recitation of an e.e. cummings poem.
After the concert, patrons gathered up their gowns and jewels and headed to the Hyatt at the Bellevue for dinner and dancing.
This year's iteration of the Academy fête - the 58th for the 158-year-old hall - had an expected attendance of 1,400 (a bit over last year's 1,261), raising $1.6 million before expenses, a spokeswoman said.
The city's business, arts, and philanthropic leadership was well-represented, with R. Anderson and Daria Pew, John and Leigh Middleton, Joseph and Jeanette Neubauer, and others in attendance.
Young violinist Simone Porter joined the orchestra for two short pieces, but it was Pacino, many agreed, who made an improbably sincere and memorable impression.
"The more he learned about the Grand Old Lady of Locust Street the more impressed he was," said Daria Pew, wife of longtime Academy supporter R. Anderson Pew and a Pacino fan who was among those who suggested him as this year's guest. "He absolutely fell in love with the place."
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