response 168 of 221:

May 17 17:36 UTC 2000

>I think everyone's cult-like about something.

Moderation in all things.  Including moderation.

"Savoyard", for those that don't know the word, is the term for a G&S 
aficionado.  It comes from the Savoy Theatre, the original home of the 
D'Oyle Carte Company, which the G&S operettas were originally written 
for.  (And it's called the Savoy Theatre because it's on the site of the 
Savoy Palace, where the Princes of Savoy (in Italy) stayed when they 
came to London in olden times.)

I'm often inclined to think that the true mark of a Savoyard is that 
they not only know nothing from "Utopia Limited" and "The Grand Duke", 
but that they have not the slightest interest or curiosity in them.  
Savoyards often have amazingly narrow tastes: they want to hear the same 
seven G&S masterpieces - half of their total output - again and again, 
with no interest in whatever else these guys may have written.

Fortunately they're not all like that.

Why do I dislike most Wagner?  It's not because I prefer Italian opera: 
I have no taste for Italian opera.  It's not because "the symphony 
entered the opera": in fact, I _like_ it that way, and my reaction to a 
lot of Wagner is "this is beautiful orchestral music; now if only those 
superfluous idiots would stop trying (and usually failing) to sing over 
it."  It's not the length: if Bruckner had only written a 5-hour 
symphony, I would listen in rapt adoration.  And it's not because I 
dislike all Wagner: in fact, _Das Rheingold_ is one of my favorite 
operas.

And why is _Rheingold_ my favorite Wagner?  Because it has no Wagnerian 
love scenes in it.  I hate Wagnerian love scenes (including platonic 
father-daughter love scenes like the one in _Walkure_): they are the 
embodiment of what I dislike most in late Romantic movement: heaving, 
overwrought, agonized, overlong, unlimited and uncontrolled.  By 
comparison Tchaikovsky is a model of classical restraint.  Mahler sounds 
like this too, much of the time, and I don't like him either.  Anyway, 
_Tristan_ is the Wagner opera with the greatest quotient of Wagnerian 
love scenes, and it is accordingly the one I'd avoid with the longest 
pole.

response 170 of 221:

Oct 21 05:03 UTC 2000

Three weeks ago, Leslie & I saw a production from the new Arbor Opera
Company, staged at the auditorium of Pioneer High School.  
This was Donizetti's LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR.   The story, set in 
Scotland, is about poor Lucia, who loves one man but whose brother 
forces her to marry another.  As is usual, the corpses pile up.  :)
 
The three lead roles were pretty well sung.  Arbor Opera's goal is 
to present performance opportunities for young singers.  The opera 
was produced on a shoestring budget of about $30,000, if I remember 
the news story correctly, with about half of that going for the 
orchestra.    The biggest lack was projected titles; I hadn't seen an
opera without projected titles in 10 years, and I found that I missed 
a lot of the story.  Biggest example would be Lucia's aria from the 
first act, sung to the statue in a fountain and foreshadowing all the 
deaths to come.   I had no idea what she was singing about.
 
I'd encourage opera fans in Ann Arbor to turn out and support the 
company's future efforts, just to keep a small local company going.
This production was comparable in overall quality to the University 
of Michigan School of Music productions.
 
-----

Coming up in Ann Arbor:  UMichigan's student production of Verdi's
FALSTAFF, which I need to get a date (and tickets) for.  It's 
sometime in November.
 
Coming up in the review queue:  our doubleheader weekend in Chicago, 
with "The Great Gatsby" and "Queen of Spades."   Also, UM Musical Theatre's
production of Gershwin's "Of Thee I Sing."   I will get caught up, I will 
I will I will...

response 172 of 221:

Oct 21 21:05 UTC 2000

  This talk of fall opera productions is making me homesick, since it's
  reminding me that I won't be getting back to western Michigan to catch
  Opera Grand Rapids' fall production, which usually occurs around this
  time of year.

  Having heard Leslie's high praise for the Seattle opera company's Wagner
  productions, I tried to talk my few social acquaintances out here into
  checking out the first production in the cycle with me earlier this fall
  but couldn't talk anyone into it..  I now regret not going by myself, but
  it was a busy week, etc, etc..

response 174 of 221:

Oct 22 02:20 UTC 2000

(er, "wander over to the School of Music building..."   sheesh)

response 176 of 221:

Jan 31 04:54 UTC 2001

  Ken & Leslie might enjoy an article from this week's Onion:
  "Finest Opera Singer of Her Generation Unknown By Her Generation"
  http://www.theonion.com/onion3703/opera_singer.html

  My favorite quote:

     Raised by symphony violinists Celeste and Antonio Coletti,
     young Alessandra grew up surrounded by opera and classical music.

     "My earliest memories are listening to Enrico Caruso 78s on my
     parents' Victrola," Coletti said. "When I was seven, they took me
     to see Renata Babek in 'La Gioconda.' What a thrill that was.
     I remember asking my mother why there were no other children in
     the audience. She told me they were all across town at Carnegie
     Hall watching Tchaikovsky's 'Queen Of Spades.'"

response 178 of 221:

Mar 16 04:01 UTC 2001

  I didn't expect to like "Tales of Hoffman" but I found it quite interesting.
  (when I saw it performed by Opera Grand Rapids a few years ago, that is..)

response 180 of 221:

Mar 17 00:40 UTC 2001

  Because the only works I'd heard by Offenbach up to that time didn't 
  thrill me and because I read a poor summary of the libretto that made
  it sound like a sequence of unrelated vignettes.

response 182 of 221:

Mar 18 02:07 UTC 2001

  Well, to some extent "Tales From Hoffman" comes pretty close -- 
  it's made up of three stories which I presume were not written to
  be connected in any way, but in the process of adapting them to
  operatic form the librettist added a connecting framework which
  ties them together as elements of an outer story about the
  relationship between an artist and his muse.  

response 184 of 221:

Mar 18 07:31 UTC 2001

A link formed of somebody telling some otherwise unrelated stories is a 
good way to ... um ... to link together some otherwise unrelated 
stories.  (And black is black, and white is white.)  It is indeed a 
very common strategy, but it doesn't make the stories any less 
unrelated.

response 186 of 221:

Mar 18 23:41 UTC 2001

(md is my Dr. MIracle.....)

Would you explain, please, David, how the stories are unrelated when they
all involve the same protagonist (Hoffman), the same antagonist (called
Spalazani or Dr. Miracle, both out to ruin Hoffman's fun), and the same
type of love objects, false, unobtainable, or fickle? The three acts are
practically the *same* story.

response 188 of 221:

Mar 19 19:51 UTC 2001

Sorry, I thought you were making an observation relevant to Tales of
Hoffman. What opera were you referring to?

mcnally?

response 190 of 221:

Mar 20 00:46 UTC 2001

(Looks like you had a relapse in the second paragraph, too.)