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A quick note before the main attraction: you can download a free PDF of We are the Monsters for a Tweet or Facebook update. Check out the button in the top right-hand corner of this page. I've also started a Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/aaronpolsonauthor You can't deny the evil empire...
Dario Argento's Opera is a flawed film, but the visuals are great. Forget the last 20 minutes, and you'll be really happy with the result.
*Spoiler Alert* Just about every kill in the film is hinted in this clip.
By:
Betsy Bird,
on 6/29/2010
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Wonka Opera. Hard to say. Harder still to see since the darn thing keeps closing. NPR recently had a great story on the opera Golden Ticket, and the various trials it underwent in a bid to be seen by the masses. The world premier is now going on at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. One of my best friends is the great up and coming contralto Meredith Arwady. I’ll need to find a way to finagle her into that show. Thanks to Marci for the link!
A couple weeks ago we started getting some strange requests in the Children’s Center. Young men in their 20s and 30s were coming in asking for Michael Morpugo’s War Horse. We only have a single circulating copy in the system, while the reference copy sits securely in our stacks. After much blood, sweat, and tears that reference copy was located… only to disappear again a bit later. But why did all these people want to see it? Turns out, Steven Spielberg’s to blame. As The Independent reports, Europe’s finest join up for ‘War Horse’. A casting call went out in NYC as well, hence the hoards of folks looking for the book. It’s out of print, but fear not librarians of the world. By September it looks as if it will be reissued once more. Or so sayeth Baker & Taylor.
- When it comes to children’s literary illustration, no gallery does it like the R. Michelson Galleries. Of course, this being the art world and all, Richard Michelson also exhibits other kinds of art. At the moment he’s gearing up for an exhibit of Leonard Nimoy’s photography. Rich sent me two links about the show (here and here) and then asked me, “Can you recognize the 7 children’s book writers/illustrators that participated in this photoshoot?” Hoo boy. I got one out of seven. Should have gotten two too. You’ll do better in this game if you have an inkling of what authors and illustrators reside in the Northampton, MA area of the world. I wonder how many of you out there will beat my score.
- Big N.D. Wilson news out this week. According to Variety: “Mpower Pictures (‘The Stoning of Soraya M.’) and Beloved Pictures are teaming to co-produce C.S. Lewis’ fantasy novel ‘The Great Divorce.’ Veteran producer and Mpower CEO Steve McEveety will lead the production team. Childrens’ book author N.D. Wilson (‘Leepike Ridge,’ ‘100 Cupboards’) is attached to write…” And SPEAKING of 100 Cupboards: “Three-year-old Beloved Pictures is developing ‘100 Cupboards,’ having acquired feature rights to the N.D. Wilson young-adult fantasy trilogy.” Well played, Nate. Well played indeed. Thanks to Heather for the link.
- You know, blogs are always doing these cute little book giveaway things which is fine. But reporting on them? Dull
The new Magazine is out but I haven't seen a copy yet--here's hoping the color looks as good as we wanted! Fanfare, Boston Globe-Horn Book Award speeches, and other selected content can all be linked to from the table of contents posted on the website.
I hope everybody had good holidays. Mine were a blur of movies (I see on child_lit that everyone is offended by Avatar but the one I'm fuming at is It's Complicated), colds, candy and presents, including a highly entertaining dvd set of Wagner's Ring cycle, which has Brunnhilde wandering existentially through the whole thing and a naked guy swimming in an aquarium as the Rheingold itself.
But now it's back to work. I'll be sunning myself in tropical Minnesota next weekend, speaking to the children's lit students at Hamline University (which for some reason is employing similar imagery to my Rheingold dvd) and then you all are coming to Boston for ALA. On that Saturday, I'll again be at the Horn Book booth asking "Five Questions for . . ." of M.T. Anderson, Kristin Cashore, Lois Lowry, and Mitali Perkins. I'll post the schedule this week.
Wow, what a great movie. I'd gone in expecting another Spirited Away, which I found gorgeous but rambling and portentous and adult, but Ponyo is a true kids' movie. That's not to say I didn't have a fine time playing spot-the-allusion--forget "The Little Mermaid," Ponyo has The Magic Flute all over it--but the heroes seem like true five-year-olds. I also loved the way the human boy, Sosuke, interacted with his mother Liz Lemon--needing her, disregarding her, helping her--and always from the point of view of a kid, not from an adult's idea of how a kid should view things. It's great, too, in a world of airbrushed Pixar animation, to see moving pictures again--when was the last time a cartoon showed what looked like a hand-drawn line? And, best of all, I never once heard a joke or saw a scene that seemed intended as a sop or wink to the adults in the audience, something even the best Pixar movies do regularly. I love the fact that even nine-year-olds might feel too old for this film.
I think Sendak would adore this movie--it was preceded by a preview of Where the Wild Things Are and, truth be told, I felt a little worried by the wooden dialogue. But let's wait for the whole thing.
By: Megan,
on 8/6/2009
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Megan Branch, Intern
Operas are always full of intrigue, suspense, drama, romance—and characters with really great names like Figaro, Egisto, and Gorislava. In Who Married Figaro? A Book of Opera Characters, Joyce Bourne, co-author of the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, has written over 2,500 entries about the people behind all of those funny-sounding names. Yesterday, we posted a quiz about some of opera’s figures. The answers are below. How did you do?
1. Concepción,from Ravel’s L’Heure Espagnole, would invite her lovers over while Torquemada was out of the house and suggest that “they hide in large clocks and when he finds them she passes them off as customers.”
2. Erda, featured in the Wagner operas Das Rheingold and Siegfried, was the mother of three Norns and nine Valkyries. “She rises from the earth only when she sees impending disaster.”
3. The Golden Cockerel from Rimsky-Korsakov’s play of the same name was only a fair-weather friend of the Tsar: the Cockerel “later pecks him on the head and kills him.”
4. Noye, from Noye’s Fludde, was the father of Sem, Ham, and Jaffett. Noye was told by God to “build an ark in which all his family and animals ride out the storm.” Noye’s Fludde also incorporates hymns sung by the audience.
5. Prunier “reads Magda’s hand and tells her that she may, like the swallow (la rondine) find a bright future, but there is also tragedy in store. Prunier is secretly in love with Magda’s maid Lisette.
6. Sportin’ Life sold dope to Bess “and, under its influence, she leaves for New York while Porgy is being questioned by the police.”
7. Tito Vespasiano,from La Clemenza di Tito, was “anxious that his people see him not as a dictator but as a clement ruler.”
8. Zoroastro “resolves the complications of the relationships between Orlando and his former love Angelica.”
9. Spalanzani invented the doll, Olympia, with whom Hoffmann later fell in love.
10. Nick Shadow from Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress took Tom Rakewell away from his fiancé, Anne, and led him “to a life of debauchery. When all Tom’s money is gone, they play cards” for Tom’s soul. Tom wins and “in anger Shadow condemns him to a life of insanity.”
By: Megan,
on 8/5/2009
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Megan Branch, Intern
Operas are always full of intrigue, suspense, drama, romance—and characters with really great names like Figaro, Egisto, and Gorislava. In Who Married Figaro? A Book of Opera Characters, Joyce Bourne, co-author of the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, has written over 2,500 entries about the people behind all of those funny-sounding names. Here’s a quiz about some of opera’s figures. Go ahead and see if you can get all the answers right in the comments. Be sure to check back tomorrow for the answers.
1. The clockmaker’s wife hid her many lovers inside of clocks to conceal them from her husband, Torquemada.
2. This earth goddess, mother of twelve, only leaves the earth to deal with disaster.
3. This very special bird has the job of warning Tsar Dodon of enemies.
4. The title character from the Britten opera that incorporates an audience sing-along and a well-known story from the Bible.
5. This character, from Puccini’s La Rondine, was a palm reader in love with a maid.
6. Gershwin’s seller of ‘happy-dust’ in Porgy and Bess.
7. Mozart’s Roman emperor who didn’t want to seem like a dictator.
8. The magician who helped to smooth over relationship complications in Handel’s Orlando.
9. This inventor made the mechanical doll that Hoffmann fell in love with in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann.
10. This ‘shadowy’ character was the devil in disguise, stole a soul after a lost game of cards and his signature aria is “I burn! I freeze!”.
'Donna Maddalena, formerly known as Princess Spocawntwa, tenderly cradles her lover, Governor Tom, who has been pierced through with an assegai by her father, the nefarious dwarf Chief Mulggthwly, as they sing the passionate trio, "Son morto con quest'assegai!"'
(From the Act III finale to Alessandro Smith's 1897 opera "The Tragical History of the Indian Princess Spocawntwa.")
-------------------------------------
-- Another installment in my series of opera spoofs, "Sangue ed Amore."
From Luigi Pozzo's 1782 comedy, "La serva celata." The caption reads:
"Act II Finale. Madame X, concealed behind the curtain, awaits the arrival of Sir Reginald that she may learn the fate of her nephew's military career.
Sir Reginald, concealed behind the Japanese screen, awaits the arrival of Alison the maid, in order to secretly test her constancy.
Alison the maid, concealed beneath the rug, awaits the arrival of her lover, Hyperion Ringwell, to learn whether he is faithful to her.
Hyperion Ringwell, concealed within the armoire, awaits the arrival of Michaela, that he may observe her dealings with Francesco.
Michaela, concealed in a secret compartment in the ceiling, awaits the arrival of Francesco, that she may overhear his amorous advances upon Alison the maid.
Francesco, concealed within the chest, awaits the arrival of his aunt and lover, Madame X, to observe whether she keep her secret promise.
Elliott the butler, concealed behind the arras, waits for everyone to leave so that he may get back to work."
--
Another installment in my series of opera spoofs, "Sangue ed Amore."
I must indulge my inner-geek from time to time.
As reported in the NYTimes:
FLORIS SCHÖNFELD, a multidisciplinary artist from the Netherlands, is developing a Klingon opera as a "nonprofit research work in progress."
The Klingon opera Mr. Schönfeld is developing is called “ ’u’.” The apostrophes before and after the “u” are part of the title and are pronounced by Mr. Schönfeld like short coughs. The title, he said, stands for universe or universal.
I am also liking the
trailer for the Star Trek Movie very much.
Gertrude Stein by Robert Indiana
Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's opera
The Mother of Us All is a wildly fantasized biography of Susan B. Anthony, who, wondering and worrying over whether her celebrity has obscured her cause, asks of her supporters (in her tremendously moving final aria), "Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know do you know?"
You know. Go vote.
By: Kirsty,
on 10/8/2008
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Wagner’s The Ring is one of the world’s most famous operas. In this excerpt from Who Married Figaro? A Book of Opera Characters (by Joyce Bourne), the internationally renowned soprano Dame Anne Evans talks about her experience of the character Brünnhilde. Brünnhilde is one of the nine Valkyries who appear in the opera, and the daughter of Erda and Wotan, and is the character who ultimately returns The Ring to the Rhine.
It is doubtful 
if any other role in the operatic repertory demands as much of a singer as does Brünnhilde in The Ring. For a start it has an extraordinarily wide tessitura. Apart from the opening ‘Hojotohos’, with their high Cs, much of the Walküre Brünnhilde lies easily within a mezzo-soprano’s compass. Siegfried, on the other hand, is a true soprano role, particularly in the final, joyous pages where the phrases lead inexorably to the sustained, climactic C. The Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde embraces elements of both the other two operas and calls for huge vocal and physical stamina. Few, if any, sopranos find all three Brünnhildes equally easy to sing; every singer of this role that I know finds the Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde the most rewarding, both dramatically and vocally. (On one occasion at least, Bayreuth employed a different Brünnhilde for each opera, but it did not prove satisfactory from a dramatic point of view.)
Not only must a Brünnhilde be master of the actual notes, she must also be master of the text – written by Wagner himself – so that she can use it to make the character live, because in Wagner the drama must come out of the words as well as the music: the two are inseparable. A Brünnhilde must be able to colour her voice to match the changes of mood and situation, which are often reflected in the change of harmonies. For example, when in the Todesverkündigung [’prophecy of death’] from Act 2 of Die Walküre Brünnhilde comes to tell Siegmund of his impending death, she must adopt a grave, dark tone. Then, as she begins to understand the nature of Siegmund and Sieglinde’s great love for each other – an emotion she has never known before – she has to sing with the utmost tenderness and warmth. In Siegfried, Brünnhilde experiences love herself, though, strictly speaking, the long Act 3 scene between Siegfried and Brünnhilde is not a love duet as such, but rather a falling-in-love duet, in which the two characters gradually discover one another.
At the end of Götterdämmerung Act 1, Brünnhilde has to switch almost instantly from sheer joy to whispered terror as she beholds not the expected Siegfried, but a complete stranger – Siegfried disguised as Gunther. Once Siegfried/Gunther has snatched the Ring from her hand, she feels raped – she has assumed, wrongly, that the Ring would protect her from a mere mortal. At the beginning of the next act, Brünnhilde is drained of all life. Harry Kupfer, in his Bayreuth production [first seen in 1988], underlined her humiliation by having her carried on in a net, like an animal that had been hunted down and captured. Only when Gunther announces the impending marriage of Siegfried and Gutrune does she burst into life. Her first reaction is one of alarm, which turns into terrible rage. By the end of the cycle, Brünnhilde has changed from the immortal hoyden of Walküre Act 2 to the wisest of mortal women as she leaps on to the funeral pyre to join Siegfried in death. Together, the music and text are infallible in guiding the singer through the twists and turns of the plot.
I have sung Brünnhilde now in nine productions, all of them very different. If I had to choose just one it would have to be Kupfer’s. His characters were not cardboard cutouts, but real people involved in real situations. Not everyone liked the result, but I was stimulated and excited by it. Such was the strength of the production dramatically that I always felt that if the music were to stop suddenly the play would continue unhindered, so believable were the relationships between the characters. For me the role of Brünnhilde is the Everest of the soprano repertoire. It never fails to fill me with awe.
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Angel-Juan Diego Florez (wow, is he good-looking) did not repeat his repeat of "Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!" in the Met's "HD Live" transmission yesterday afternoon. Good for him, although he perhaps needn't have implied, in an intermission interview, that he decided against the encore because the audience didn't clap hard enough.
It was fun, opera with popcorn (Richard) and ice cream (me). But talk about blue-hair city, I swear I was the youngest person in the (sold-out) theater, and I ain't no spring chicken. But my fears for the future of the art form are comforted by the fact that almost everybody up on the stage/screen was younger than I, and that my fellow audience members probably listened to Elvis and the Beatles in earlier days. At least Joan Baez. The Met does transmit these performances to a few NYC public schools for free viewing (and has other educational outreach to youth as well) so they're demonstrably concerned with the graying of their audience, but maybe some art appreciation takes time. There was an old (even then) storybook of opera plots I took out over and over again from the public library when I was nine or so, but I didn't get into opera itself until college, and I was spending a semester abroad in London, where students could see the English National Opera for a couple of pounds. My first was Salome, with Josephine Barstow as the crazy (and, ultimately, naked) lady. I was hooked.
ANNA NICOLE SMITH: the opera(?)
by Eleanor Tylbor
It was Andy Warhol who said in the future, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes. If that's the case then ex-Playboy centrefold,
Anna Nicole Smith, will have had her share of being a celebrity, and then some.
Her life will soon be the focus of an opera by the co-creator of the cult musical, "Jerry Spring: The Opera" if all goes as planned.
Composer Richard Thomas is writing the libretto for a contemporary piece, to be staged at the Royal Opera House no less, in 2010. He said the tragic life story of Ms Smith, a former stripper who died from an overdose of prescription drugs a year ago, was "a classic American tale about celebrity" which was "intrinsically operatic".
Perhaps he meant soap opera-ish.
The production, still in the early stages of development, is intended to be shown on the main stage at the Royal Opera House, accompanied by a 90-piece orchestra. Mr Thomas admitted that he was fascinated by stories which might seem "trashy".
He told The Independent newspaper: "It's an incredible story. It's very operatic and sad.
She was quite a smart lady with the tragic flaw that she could not seem to get through life without a vat of prescription painkillers."
However, his choice of subject, a woman labelled "the queen of trailer trash" by American tabloids, is unlikely to appeal to diehard fans of classical opera, some of whom have accused the Royal Opera House of dumbing down.
Read the backgrounder about the soon-to-be-(soap)opera here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/04/nsmith404.xmlPersonally, I wouldn't waste my money on this show and why anyone would want to do a show based on the life of Anna Nicole Smith is beyond stupid or inane.
Yawn... Pass... Not for nothing...
Saturday night we went to see a semi-pro production of Puccini's Turandot in the dining hall of Lowell House, a Harvard College dorm that has been putting on operas since the 1920s. Turandot is pretty grand as these things go and the production didn't miniaturize anything--full orchestra, colorful (very "Oriental") sets and costumes, big voices in the big parts. The program, and a preshow announcer, politely admonished us to applaud only at the end of an act, a request (rather stuffy, but maybe they were worried about time) that the audience adhered to until Calaf's big third-act opening number, "Nessun Dorma." We all clapped madly.
It was practically Pavlovian. We clapped because it was a beautiful performance, but also because we knew the tune and loved it, and we knew other people knew the tune and loved it--group hug, anyone? "Nessun Dorma" is a high culture artifact that secured a place for itself outside the gates when it was kicked over the wall by Luciano Pavarotti at the 1990 World Cup. Now it shows up everywhere (fabulously by Aretha Franklin at the 1998 Grammys); it has nothing to do with Turandot; and you can get it as a ringtone.
Purists scorn but I love this. Opera buffs are like librarians or anybody in a community of shared aesthetic commitment (although Wayne Kostenbaum writes that putting two opera queens in the same room spells trouble). Everybody likes being an insider to something, whether it's opera or--I hoped I would get here--children's books. We saw that in spades here last week, when children's-book-lovers came together to rail at what they perceived was an attack by me on their affections. But it was also a very in-groupy fight on all sides, one amongst ourselves, the kind of debate that reinforces allegiance to the group because all sides agree that This Matters.
I don't think we adults who love children's books do so to be insidery (hmm, children's books or high fashion. Which will make me cooler?) but our shared love does give us an inside to be in. We like having a cultural vocabulary shared by a few, but we are also aware that the reason we're few is because children's books don't matter to most adults. This cognitive dissonance can cause both anxiety and a pleasant sense of superiority.
So we too like it when one of Ours is kicked over the wall, whether it's everybody reading Harry Potter or, my favorite example, a country song that can cite Charlotte's Web ("now I'm the one that's caught in . . .") and assume that listeners will know the reference. It reinforces our superiority (we knew Harry Potter before he was Harry Potter) and soothes our anxiety (if Charlotte's Web is part-of-everything then maybe I am too). Mostly it's just nice to have your affections confirmed, like when you convince a friend to like a book or a song you like. It makes you like it even more.
By: Rebecca,
on 3/4/2008
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Oslo, Norway
Coordinates: 59 54 N 10 43 E
Population: 808,000 (2007 est.)
I’m not sure if location, expense, or as the Onion’s Our Dumb World insinuates, a residual fear of Viking invasion is to blame, but Oslo, one of my favorite European cities, doesn’t seem to get its fair share of attention. (more…)
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I love working the circulation desk at school libraries because that is where I really get a sense of what kids are taking home with them. Checking out a library book is such a commitment for some children. Even though the book is "free," it is fascinating how seriously some kids make their decision.
It is fun to note the continuing popularity of Ann M. Martin's The Doll People and The Meanest Doll in the World at the elementary schools where I work. Girls check-out these books everywhere I sub.
I loved dolls as a girl. I liked stories about dolls and doll houses. My own little entlings did not share my enthusiasm. They tolerated dolls but never really played with them.
I read Pam Conrad's Tub People books to
my kids because we had tub people at our
house when they were small.
As a girl I read all of Rumer Godden's doll stories.
I loved the Tasha Tudor illustrations of
The Doll's House...
...and the idea of a Japanese doll house,
with sliding screens, was so appealing in Miss Happiness and Miss Flower and the sequel, Little Plum
In
A Secret Garden, Sara Crewe's beautiful doll,
with her exquisite wardrobe and beautiful accessories,
probably led to my fascination with American Girl doll catalogs.
hmmm ... Tasha Tudor again.
...and then there was
Big Susan by Elizabeth Orton Jones, probably my first
doll book.
The Newbery award winning
Hitty: her first hundred years by Rachel Field was another doll book from my childhood. I think the new edition with Rosemary Well's illustrations make the book more accessible to readers today.
I leave you with a lovely doll moment with the exquisite,
Laura Claycomb as Olympia in
The Tales of Hoffman.
From
Wikipedia:
Offenbach intended that the four soprano roles be played by the same singer, for Olympia, Giulietta and Antonia are three facets of Stella, Hoffmann's unreachable love...While the doubling of the four villians is quite common, most performances of the work use multiple sopranos for the heroines. This is due to the different skills needed for each role: Olympia requires a skilled coloratura singer with stratospheric high notes, Antonia is written for a more lyric voice, and Guilietta is usually performed by a dramatic soprano or even a mezzo-soprano.
Stratospheric, indeed.
When Renee Fleming announced that upon consideration she would not, in fact, be singing Norma at the Met (or anyplace else), my first thought was, good call, Renee, but my second was to wonder if writers have any equivalent kind of challenge.
Bellini's Norma is something of a Mount Everest for sopranos. She's an allegedly virginal Druid priestess who has in fact been getting it on with with one of the occupying Romans with two children resulting. Then she finds out that her boyfriend has been cheating on her with her number-one handmaiden, Adalgisa. They sing a duet of "Does He Love You (the Way He Loves Me)?" later popularized by Reba McEntire and Linda Davis. Then Norma thinks about killing the children but instead decides to kill herself, and the boyfriend, realizing how good he had it, joins her in self-immolation.
It's passionate stuff, as you can see, but the challenge comes from marrying the drama with the sheer technical difficulty of Bellini's bel canto music--lots of fast scales, trills and other coloratura magic coupled with tons of close harmony. You need a big but agile voice and those are rare. There haven't been any hugely acclaimed Normas since Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland (although I've been hearing good things about a recent Edita Gruberova recording). But every big-girl soprano has it in her landscape if not in her sights: will I do it? Can I do it? Will I disgrace myself? etc.
But writers have to make it up for themselves every time; we don't say, "yeah, Holes was great, but when's he going to write Walk Two Moons?" I do know that children's writers, particularly, face the "so when are you going to write a real book" question, but only from amateurs. Is there a mountain a writer is expected to climb? Do you feel the need to write a Big Book? We'll leave the question of whether you should kill yourself, your boyfriend, your best friend, or your children for another time.
Unlike this lucky little guy, who sat the whole thing out, I had to wear my big-boy shoes twice this weekend, first for the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards on Friday and then again for Dame Kiri's farewell recital last night. Lolly and Kitty will be busy today to bring you more pictures and moments from Friday night's celebration; I'm betting Kiri has her feet up, too.
P.S. The photo is by Richard, whose birthday it is today. Happy birthday sweetheart!
The day the music died: Luciano Pavarotti is dead at age 71. http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/06/pavarotti.dead/
Ironically, I had just read the name "Pavarotti" in my book when I heard the news of his passing. People think I'm kidding but I swear these psychic connections happen all the time. Next time you see me, I'll be the madam on the boardwalk reading your palms.
School began today. The school bus forgot to pick up my older daughter. On the flip side, she likes her classes, teachers and schedule. She came home smiling and confident. We learned my younger daughter achieved a perfect score-- 785-- on her 6th grade English Language Assessment. My nephew said, in response to the news: "I always knew she was a freakin' genius." (Yes, he said "freakin" and for a teen from Long Island, that's standard operating procedure.) Little Genius wants to change her schedule because her friends all have lunch at 5th period, vs her 4th period lunch. This should be her worst worry ever.
More bad news. NO MORE MICROWAVED BUTTERED POPCORN. Nooooo. Noooooo. My snack of choice. Nooooo. Please. "They can't take that away from me, no no..."
See http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2007-09-05-popcorn-lung_N.htm
Check your cupboards. Damn, that's my popcorn they're talking about. Containing the flavoring diacetyl. Has been known to cause lung ailments. (Not to poke fun of myself, but I am not as addicted as the man known in the news story as "Mr. Popcorn," the one who pops his popcorn bags at least two times a day, inhaling the steamy aroma as he retrieves the bag from the microwave.) I am fearful, truth be told, of this news, because I have, of late, found myself gagging with little, awkward coughing fits. (I attribute this dilemma due to my tendency to talk while eating but the hypochondriac in me will find medical connections in the smallest of moments.)
Good night, Bad Day. Ciao, Luciano. Y... grazi.
We saw one of my favorite operas on Sunday, Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, premiered in 1863 and putatively set in Ceylon. Its big tune, a duet for tenor and baritone, is apparently England's perennial number one favorite. The Opera Boston production we saw played the Orientalism up to the hilt, with shadow puppets, projections of many-handed (I'm guessing) Hindu gods, and sinuous dancing girls. I'm guessing it was no more "authentic" than the opera itself, which shamelessly indulges itself and the audience in exotica.
It made me remember a sumptuous picture book edition of Aida by Leontyne Price and the Dillons, trumpeted by the publisher as a retelling, via Verdi, as an African story. Nope, pure Italiano, based on a scenario by a French Egyptologist. And Turandot is about as Chinese as I am. These operas make me think about our own field's stern requirements for cultural authenticity and against Orientalism. Bizet, Verdi, and Puccini would be banished from the shelves. I guess I should be grateful they are operas, not books, and thus subjected to grown-up criteria that acknowledge the presence and even perniciousness of stereotyping without making it the trump card of evaluation.
OK...here is one of my all time favorite resources for finding clothing from any period. Costumer's Manifesto. I found this years ago online and remembered to blog it. I'm using it again in my ongoing research. The front page looks dry, but take time to get into the links and it'll quickly become a must have resource for any clothing info you need for creating illustrations in other time periods. Just look at this one link and you'll see what I mean.
Besides..it's just a fascinating place. It makes me wish I'd gone into theatre in a deeper way. (I only did a few things growing up in high school, back stage, and earlier, but have always loved the drama, creativity and art involved in theatre. This weekend I'm going to see Falstaff ! (wish I could take pics)
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Aaron Polson for world emperor! (As long as I can be a general, otherwise...) Down with the evil empire! Yeah, I said it.
I've had this movie on the queue for a bit. I enjoy some Italian horror now and then (Suspiria, anyone?), but I have to be in the mood.
World Emperor--I'd vote for it!
Yeah, I could see getting into this movie, just for the sheer aesthetic awesome.
Tony - Er...emperor of awkward, maybe.
Katey - If you ignore the acting, it's amazing. ;)
I tried "Liking" your author page but it wouldn't let me. I don't understand Facebook apparently. or Good Reads for that matter. These wacky kids and their damned interwebs!
I tell ya what, Barry: I just play the games they tell me to play.
I like you. I like you. And I liked you over on facebook (which is most definitely an evil empire).
Thanks, Cate. Facebook is...necessary. For now.