Live performances

[treebeau]

Dude! (or is it "?")

Please revert back to this:

OT,

No offense to you...

Regards,
Tim B.

[OperaTenor]

Dude! (or is it "?")

Regards,
Tim B.

You might have to ask Piq...

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

I've considered printing Missile Man photo. On good quality paper, and we could title it "Hagrid the Assyrian Drag Queen". Or, if we had DVDs of the performance, it could go between "To Wong Foo, Love, Julie Newmar" and "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil".

[OperaTenor]

I've considered printing Missile Man photo. On good quality paper, and we could title it "Hagrid the Assyrian Drag Queen". Or, if we had DVDs of the performance, it could go between "To Wong Foo, Love, Julie Newmar" and "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil".

Whatever you do, for the love of God, please don't post that photo on any public internet forums or anything!

Wait....

[barfle]

Well, the Bolshoi is magnificent! I believe Kitri was played by Maria Davidovich (I'll have to look that up), but I haven't seen the role done better, including by Makarova. She appeared to do all the moves effortlessly, and never missed a step. Absolutely flawless.

And one thing that's amazing about the Bolshoi is the depth of talent they show. The corps does a far superior job of dancing together than any other company I have seen. Synchronicity doesn't seem to be something ABT's coaches stress, but when a dozen ballerinas all land with only one sound on the stage, it is worth noting.

I also believe there was a million dollars spent on costumes. While that's down on the list of reasons I go to performances, that simply added to the spectacle.

Worth all the hassle of getting downtown in a DC winter, absolutely!

[treebeau]

To both SISE and OT.

I had to clean coffee off my screen. Wonderful. LOL !

Regards,
Tim B.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

...when a dozen ballerinas all land with only one sound on the stage, it is worth noting.

I also believe there was a million dollars spent on costumes.

OT wishes the SDO would...

[OperaTenor]

Yeah, that costume was a definite "wardrobe malfunction".

So, we started rehearsing for Il Trovatore last Saturday evening. I'm sitting between two guys who are in their first season. Both of them asked, "What's up with this Italian opera stuff?" after having done a Russian and a French opera - neither of them had done an Italian opera before. Meanwhile, you could almost see the veterans visibly relax as we started working on it.

I almost fell out of my chair laughing.

I told them, "Welcome home, boys. This is where you live in opera."

[piqaboo]

Bolshoi - wow!~

Costumes - the color was irrelevant, due to the very yellow lighting of this act. All the phillies looked like they were in tans and browns with metallic highlights. The only time the fabric colors could be seen was during the curtain call. Gotta wonder if the lighting designer and wardrobe bothered to talk with each other. The metallic bits and shapes worked well enough to distinquish phillies from israelites.
OT hid sideways besides a temple statue. We all found him right away, despite his best efforts.
Sampson had some serious guns (biceps). The man takes his work seriously.
Music 1 & 3 act very lovely. Act 2 has lovely bits, but its kinda choppy and disjointed between the chief phillie and Dalila. Saint Saens needed to do a bit more smoothing thru here. The singers handled it very well.

[barfle]

Boshoi - wow is right.

The ballerina's name is Maria Aleksandrova. I messed it up big time. Seriously, if you ever get the chance to see her dance, take it. I have not seen such confidence and style EVER before. And she's gorgeous, to boot.

I would guess (but it's just that) that the wardrobe for dancing would have to be more substantial than for singing. But even from the second tier, it was pretty clear they suited up the cast quite nicely. When the costumes were supposed to match, they matched. When they were supposed to be even more gaudy, they succeeded. I've often wondered how they take care of those things. The performers HAVE to sweat!

I just got tickets to see PDQ Bach at the Kennedy Center. First teir, row A. Saturday, May 12, 8PM.

And to think I complained about all the Leroy Anderson they play here...

[OperaTenor]

We're opening Il Trovatore this Saturday night. This has been an exercise in taking a perfectly respectable opera and schmucking it all up, courtesy of this hack we have for a director. His name is Stephen Lawless, and he's supposed to be a big deal, but googling him didn't turn up much, not like if you google someone like say, Lotfi Mansouri. the most remarkable thing I found on Lawless was a group interview of production people who've worked with him before. Their biggest consensus was on how they waited 24-48 before trying to implement any of his ideas, because they often turned out to be not feasible. they actually called it the "Lawless Law".

What he's done to this production is an apparent attempt to break it away from its reputation as a "park and bark" opera by twisting the story completely. The famous Anvil Chorus is now the Swordfight Chorus, for all intents and purposes - that's all that takes place during the chorus. The clanging normally associated with hammers on anvils is being puctuated by clashing swords. I don't know how that will be reconciled with the translation displayed on the supertitles, because the lyrics are clearly about working in the mines. There are other areas in the opera where what is going on on stage has nothing whatsoever to do with what is being sung. In the Soldier's Chorus, which is a musically and vocally demanding piece, he has the enitre male chorus doing a "sword ballet". We wave around 4ft aluminum claymores in synch while singing. 45 guys. And the coup de gras, IMO, is what he's done at the end of the show. The women in the chorus are finished singing at the end of the second act, but they have to stick around until the end of the show now, in costume, so they can play dead in a tableaux at the very end of the opera. The men sing a miserere chorus off stage, then lay down berhind some "guillotine" doors on upstage right. the doors slide up to show more dead bodies, then go back down. The men then get up and scurry over to upstage left to repeat the process when the stage left guillotine doors open and close.

We've taken to calling the staging "intuitive", and the setting "period post-modern".

And then there's Wozzeck.....

Men singing a capella chords built on adjacent white keys? This piece is referred to as possibly the greatest composition of the 20th century?!

I guess the 20th didn't have a lot to offer...

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Eric Flint uses carefully selected portions of Wozzeck, played loudly, to frighten the Spaniards at the Alte Veste...

I'm not sure swords would be an adequate substitute for the traditional anvils in Il Travestare. I'm sure the chorus will have a fine time mocking the director (musicians on the whole being known for their delicate and forgiving natures. )

[barfle]

Sounds like the only thing he didn't do is add the Revenge Aria to it.

[BigJon]

Do they have workman's comp? That sound dangerous.

I guess the 20th didn't have a lot to offer...

You can say that again . . .

[bignaf]

Phillistines!

[BigJon]

Sorry, big, forgot the

[bignaf]

it's all right, Big, the was understood.

you guys are still Phillistines!

-big

[bignaf]

5200

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Phillistines!

Amen. (BTW, Philistines gets only one "l".) We uncultured lot will just have to admire your fancified modern edumacated cacaphonic music from afar. Way afar. The afarther, the better.

[Shapley]

I thought Bignaf's was twenty-first century music...