24 new of 39 responses total.
I care. In fact, I think it would be really nice to have a Grex dinner gathering before attending a local moviecast at which Leslie could give us a little pre-concert insight into the production and music. You know, something to help us opera newbies along.
Fuck that shit. We had a huge turkey dinner before football tonight. Beat THAT.
I can beat that but not til Monday night.
Monday night is going to be homemade chicken soup.
Are they going to have elephants onstage and all?
I do not know if this production of AIDA included elephants. (This was La Scala's opening night from last season, late 2006.) I wouldn't go expecting elephants.
I won't be able to make it anyway...I just love that Aida calls for live elephants, even though they're rarely used.
The only production of Aida I have seen did have live elephants but had to be presented in a different venue than usual to accomodate them.
I could digress here into a mention of the Thai Elephant Orchestra, in which the elephants actually play the instruments.
Or we could digress to when my daughter rode an elephant in Florida!
((( now linked between Agora and Music )))
Even more opera moviecasts!! Now San Francisco Opera is getting into the game, starting March 2008. The SFO presentations are to include: Puccini, LA RONDINE Puccini, MADAMA BUTTERFLY Saint-Saens, SAMSON & DELILAH Mozart, DON GIOVANNI Mozart, MAGIC FLUTE Philip Glass, APPOMATTOX (a new work) There are a few cast notes in the Gramophone article, but there is no detailed date information. Too busy to look for more details now. One item of note is that San Francisco Opera is going to use a different digital projection system which is claimed to be brighter than the one the Met uses. http://www.gramophone.co.uk/newsMainTemplate.asp?storyID=2929&newssectionID =1 --- I need to get back and write about about last week's moviecast of ROMEO & JULIETTE.
I absolutely LOVE listening to classical music at the Cascades in Jackson, Michigan. For those of you who don't know, it is a tourist spot where there is a waterfall that comes down a bunch of "steps" and there is a light show where the steps change colors. I love the music in the open air. It brings tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat....and I love the colors! :) There is no other way to thoroughly enjoy classical music.
And here, all of this time, I thought it was fun to see the DSO at Orchestra Hall ;)
NO fucking way. slynne, have you ever been to the cascades? I mean, comparably, it's like having sex in a cardboard box or having sex out int he open air with fireworks going on.
What kind of a cardboard box?
corrugated?
re #31: A very tiny one, with staples sticking out all over the place, in below zero weather.
update on resp:6 :: After lots of web searching and some correspondance with the PR firm handling the La Scala opera moviecast series, the news is that one of the distributors for the La Scala series dropped out after the first presentation, and so this week's TRISTAN & ISOLDE, and the remainder of the series from La Scala, will not be shown in Michigan. If you just *have* to see one of the La Scala presentations, the nearest participating theater is in Cleveland. Let me know if anyone needs a link to the full list of participating theaters in the US. (For those who aren't opera geeks: La Scala in Milan is often regarded as the world's premier opera house; its rivals would be Covent Garden in London and the Met in New York, and maybe the Paris Opera.) The Metropolitan Opera series continues; they presented an excellent MACBETH last weekend (I should write a short review) and next up, in mid-February, is Puccini's MANON LESCAUT.
Opera-movie updates: Tomorrow is Benjamin Britten's PETER GRIMES from the Metropolitan Opera, live, 1:30 pm. The repeat is on Sunday afternoon. This is the season's serious drama, about a small fishing village, and an outcast fisherman whose last apprentice died under questionable circumstances. I plan to be at the Quality 16 theater. I have found a theater in Michigan showing the La Scala opera-movie series: it's in Kalamazoo. We are too jammed up with other events to get to any of their shows. The San Francisco Opera series started last weekend; again, we got squeezed out on time for their showing of Puccini's LA RONDINE. The MJR Brighton multiplex is showing the San Francisco series, as well as the previously-announced Canton Emagine. SFO tickets are a discount -- $10-$12, ten bucks less than the Met. The Royal Opera House (Covent Garden) in London has announced a series of four transmissions from April through June. Three are ballets; the one opera will be CARMEN, in late April. I have not found any theater information yet. There will be at least one opera moviecast per week through April. Aieeee.
*Outstanding* performance of "Peter Grimes" by the Metropolitan Opera today. A smaller crowd at the Quality 16, because Britten is less popular, but the performance was fabulous.
Saturday is the Met's moviecast of Wagner's TRISTAN & ISOLDE, all 5.5 hours of it. The Met has had to use four Tristans and two Isoldes to get through five or six performances in this run -- Tristan #4 will appear for the first time Saturday. The show has had to be halted in mid-performance twice -- once when Isolde #1 was taken down by an unhappy stomach, and once when Tristan #3 was on a piece of scenery which broke and send tumbling into the "prompter's box". So, Saturday offers the potential of seeing a complete trainwreck! But we will hope they pull it off.
I was reading a New York Times online article (I think) about the various problems that have cropped up with the Tristan und Isolde opera. Something about one show having to employ three different Tristan's one for each act?
The 2008-2009 season of Metropolitan Opera "moviecasts" starts on MONDAY, September 22. They will be broadcasting the Met's opening night, which will be a Renee Fleming gala. There will be three fully staged, unconnected acts, to show off Ms. Fleming. As an opera buff I think this will be an interesting, novel experience, but I doubt it would work for "the general public," who might prefer to see a story with a beginning, middle and end.
You have several choices: