La vida Havana
After scouring its theatres, churches and museums,COLIN EATLOCK reports that Havana's high arts are
alive and thriving. You just need to know where to look

COLIN EATLOCK
Special to The Globe and Mail
Saturday, March 17, 2001

HAVANA -- It seems there's always music in the warm air of Havana. Each day, it
starts about noon and mixes in the narrow, cobbled streets like a tropical salad --
everything from Afro-Cuban salsa, son and guaguanco styles, to Latin jazz and
European chamber music.

Lying geographically between North and South America, and ethnically somewhere
between Europe and Africa, Cuba is a cultural melting pot that has simmered for 500
years. The contrasts and contradictions of the country come into sharp focus in
Havana, with its ultramodern airport and broken pay phones, its beautifully restored
buildings and squalid neighbourhoods, its Communist institutions and enterprising
initiatives.

Many tourists would hate this place for its decrepitude, poverty and general confusion,
but for those who don't mind, it's a city with plenty to offer. In addition to the music
(and despite what you've heard, it's not all Buena Vista Social Club), there are art
museums and commercial galleries, historic sites, classical, modern and folkloric dance,
and a lively theatre scene, all within easy reach of the beach.

Planning in advance can be frustrating: on my first day, I discovered that the Museo
Nacional de Bellas Artes -- containing works by Rubens, Goya and Velazquez -- was
closed for renovations, without any indication as to where its collection had gone. (In
fact a Web search when I returned home revealed some of it is open to the public at a
temporary location on Calle Trocadero until renovations are complete.)

But there's always some performance or exposition on, and you soon learn to live like
the Cubans, enjoying what's happening when it's available.

With a population of more than two million, Havana is strategically located at the
entrance of a large natural harbour, where Spanish fortifications have guarded against
invasion for centuries.

Today, the invaders come from Europe, South America and Japan and, increasingly,
from the United States. Although tourist travel to Cuba is illegal for most U.S. citizens,
many passengers on my flight from Toronto were Americans, indifferent to their
scofflaw behaviour or, in some cases, downright proud of it. And they come from
Canada: Last year more than 300,000 Canadians visited the Caribbean's largest nation.
Architecture

Havana eagerly attracts visitors with a bountiful array of museums and historic sites,
and usually the Cubans get it right. With the aid of UNESCO, the United Nations'
cultural agency, they've undertaken a Herculean task: the restoration of Old Havana to
its colonial elegance. Slowly working up from the harbour towards the Parque Central,
the massive, meticulous project is a kind of slow race to repair the town's precious
buildings before they collapse entirely. In its partially completed state, the restoration is
already a major attraction, with well-lit streets and grey-clad tourist police providing a
strong, silent presence. The area is dotted with bars, restaurants, shops and numerous
museums.

Of course, the Roman Catholic Church has been around much longer than the
Communist Party, and many old churches can be found in the city -- some spruced up
three years ago for the Pope's 1998 arrival.

Perhaps most worth a visit is the Church and Monastery of St. Francis of Assisi, near
the port terminal building in Old Havana. The oldest Franciscan church in the New
World, it was founded in 1608, and like many of Havana's early buildings, it's built of
grey, unpainted granite. There's a fine collection of religious artifacts, and the climb up
the bell tower's rickety wooden stairs is an experience straight out of Hitchcock's
Vertigo. The view of the city and harbour is excellent.
Museums

Several museums in Old Havana contain furniture, silverware, pottery, glass and other
items from the colonial period. (The best of these is the Palace of the Captains-General,
where Spanish governors once lived.) The Casa de Africa presents another aspect of
Cuba's history: an impressive collection of Afro-Cuban religious artifacts.

Other museums, such as the Casa de los Arabes and the Casa de Asia (with Middle-
and Far-Eastern collections) may seem out of place in the Caribbean, but are attractive
nonetheless. And as many of these small "boutique" museums are in elegant old
Spanish houses with airy courtyards, it's often worth the price of admission (usually $2
U.S.) just to visit the building.

Occasionally, though, the Cubans get it wrong. The Museo de Finanzas is little more
than an empty vault where dictator Fulgencio Batista once stashed his loot. A few old
bank-notes are displayed on the walls beside Fidel Castro's admonition that "the system
of unjust economic relations is the most flagrant and brutal violation of human rights
conceivable."

Havana's Deposito de Automovil is in a way redundant, since the city streets are
already an automobile museum, full of old American cars alongside Ladas and weird
little taxis resembling oranges on wheels. But this museum has an impressive collection
of vehicles dating back to a 1905 Cadillac. There's also a Titanic-sized Rolls-Royce,
which belonged to Batista, near the sleek 1960 Chevrolet that Che Guevara drove when
he was minister of industry.

The museums sometimes incorporate pro-government sentiments into their exhibits, but
for a full dose of politics there's nothing like the Museo de la Revolucion. Housed in
the former Presidential Palace, its displays and documents outline Cuba's history from
the beginning of the "neo-colonial period" in 1898 -- when American influence replaced
Spanish domination -- through the excesses of the Batista regime, to the 1959 victory of
the revolution and beyond. Fresh-faced Cuban Army recruits are regularly trooped
through its marble halls to see hats, shoes, belts, eyeglasses and a telephone owned by
revolutionaries.
Museums outside
Old Havana

A few museums can also be found in Vedado, a neighbourhood to the west of the city's
centre. A once-prosperous suburb built in the early 20th century, some of its houses
retain a semblance of their former glory while others are virtually piles of rubble. One
house that's very well maintained is the neo-classical mansion of Countess of Revilia de
Camargo. Today, it contains the Museo de Artes Decorativos, a lavish display of 18th-
and 19th-century European treasures that recall a time when Havana was "the Paris of
the Caribbean," and many luxury goods, including porcelain from Worcester, Meissen
and Sèvres, were imported. The tastefully appointed rooms have national themes: there's
one full of Chinese screens, another featuring English furniture and landscape painting.
In the French room, a marble bust of Marie Antoinette smiles demurely, her graceful
neck intact. (I also met Ms. Antoinette at the Museo Napoleonico, another, less
impressive, Vedado institution.)

While not exactly a museum, Vedado's Columbus Cemetery offers a surreal perspective
on Havana society. Here it's made apparent that the burial of the dead was once a
competitive activity, as families vied with one another to produce a phantasmagoria of
mausoleum architecture: miniature Greek temples, medieval castles, gothic cathedrals
and Egyptian pyramids. Unfortunately many are in a state of disrepair -- it seems that
adequate housing is a problem, even for Havana's dead.
Dance and theatre

When the sun sets, Havana's performing arts come to life. Facing the Parque Central,
is the faux-baroque Gran Teatro, built in 1837 by an impresario whose wealth, it's said,
was derived from smuggling. Today the stately theatre -- one of the oldest in the New
World -- basks in the glories of its rich history: Caruso sang there, Pavlova danced,
Bernhardt acted. The building's principal theatre is the Sala Garcia Lorca, an intimate
1,500-seat auditorium with five balconies and good acoustics. If you attend a
performance, be sure to ask for seats with a full view, and never purchase tickets from
anyone but the box-office staff.

Remarkably, the Gran Teatro was once the most technologically advanced in the world,
thanks to an Italian scientist named Antonio Meucci. Some say the experiments of this
eccentric inventor who arrived in Havana in 1835 produced electrical lighting effects
and an internal telephone system long before Edison or Bell. Nowadays things are
pretty much low-tech, and even the huge curtain must be manually raised by five men.
But Meucci's ingenious spirit lives on in the theatre: in the wardrobe room, 100-year-old
manual sewing-machines are run on washing-machine motors.

The theatre is home to Cuba's esteemed Ballet Nacional. Created in 1948, it's still
directed by its founding prima ballerina, Alicia Alonso, who continued to dance into her
70s and who remains the driving force behind the company. The Gran Teatro is also
used by Havana's flamenco ensemble and by the opera company, the Teatro Lirico
Nacional.

In the first week of March, the Teatro Lirico presented La Leyenda del Beso (The
Legend of the Kiss), a zarzuela composed by Reveriano Soutullo and Juan Vert.
Rarely performed in the English-speaking world, zarzuelas are sometimes described as
Spanish operettas -- although unlike operettas they often have nasty endings. It wasn't
the Met or Covent Garden, but the Cubans put on a fine performance, with impressive
standards of vocal artistry. In this production, Cuban choreography was well
represented by Tony Menéndez's Compania Ballet Teatro, an athletic company that
danced up a storm. The weak link was the theatre's orchestra: a musician later told me
that many orchestral instruments in Havana are in dismal condition.
Symphony and orchestra

In addition to dance and lyric theatre, symphonic music is performed by the Orquestra
Nacional at Havana's Teatro Amadeo Roldan. But from outside Cuba it's pretty much
impossible to find out when or what the orchestra is playing. While I was in the city, the
ensemble was on tour in Mexico.

But always check with the local churches. In the Church of St. Francis of Assisi I heard
a rehearsal of Prokofiev's austere Sonata for Cello and Piano, by a young
German-Cuban cellist who now lives in France and a Cuban pianist from Havana.
Surprisingly, a shiny, new Steinway grand piano can be found in the church (I was
informed there were six Steinways in the whole city), where classical concerts are
presented several times a month. You can even purchase CDs of baroque Cuban music
performed by local classical artists, and one of the upcoming attractions -- Moscow's
Chorus of the Kremlin -- suggests there are still some cultural links between Cuba and
Russia.
Popular music

Of course, there's always music in the clubs. At night in Old Havana it's possible to
literally follow your ears through the town, as bands of musicians entertain tourists in
the bars and restaurants, while Cubans listen from the streets. Not all the groups are
good -- and one Havana native I spoke to dismissed the whole scene as "tourist music"
-- so perhaps the best thing to do is just wander until you find what you like. Most
groups also have CDs and cassettes to sell you, and they will certainly try.

The groups seem to move around quite a bit, but if you're lucky, you may hear a septet
called Okay Cuba playing son music at its mellowest, or a female vocal group called
Alina Torres Cuarteto Da Capo singing sophisticated arrangements of popular Cuban
songs. Good spots in Old Havana include the Bar Paris, the Ambrosia and the Hotel
Ambos Mundos, where Ernest Hemingway lived for a time. In Vedado, at El Zorro y el
Cuervo, I heard a dozen crazy kids called the Orquestra Todos Estrellas de Jazz Cubano
(Cuban All-Star Jazz Orchestra), wail long and loud into the night.

Like many other things in the city, Havana's artistic life is in a state of flux. There
seems to be a sincere commitment to the arts in the renovation of the Museo Nacional
and the Escuola Nacional de Ballet, and last year the city proudly launched an
international piano competition. But major institutions must operate with almost no
financial resources, including the opera company, which has a total annual budget of
about $68,000 (U.S.)

Havana's current position at a cultural and economic crossroads makes the city unique:
there's a Benetton store in the old town now, among the Soviet-style shops with empty
shelves. And the city is surely the only place in the world with statues of both Lenin and
Lennon -- John Lennon that is. But wherever Havana goes from here, it can never
return. To see it in its current fascinating state, you must go now.

Navigating Havana's cultural scene

Although there's always lots happening in Havana, planning a specific itinerary in
advance is difficult.

Just getting an open long-distance line to Cuba is a challenge, and unless you are fluent
in Spanish, no-one on the other end of the phone is likely to be of much help.

For this reason, the Internet may be the best resource available for travellers to Havana.
A good place to start is http://www.Lahabana.com. The site lists most of the city's
museums and offers general information about the city. For general tourism travel
information, try http://www.cubaweb.cu. and http://www.cult.cu.

The Ballet Nacional has a Web site at http://www.balletcuba.cubaweb.cu that lists all
performances in 2001. It's even possible to order tickets through the site. Unfortunately,
no other performing arts organization seems to have a schedule posted on the Internet
yet.

Once in Havana, there are several Infotur offices around town, and flyers offering a
month's information on cultural activities are sometimes available in the city's museums.

If you are feeling lucky and have your spanish dictionary handy, you can try the
following phone numbers:

Palace of the Captains-General (Palacio de Gobierno) 011-53-7-61-6395

Church and Monastery of St. Francis of Assisi 011-53-7-62-9683

Casa de Africa 011-53-7-61-5798

Casa de Asia 011-53-7-63-9740

Casa de los Arabes 011-53-7-61-5868

Ballet Nacional 011-53-7-55-2953

Teatro Lirico Nacional 011-53-7-32-9026