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Mar. 6th, 2006 10:53 am
Snobbish cultural potpourri
Three operas in four days--I thought I could handle it but I guess it did me in after all. There was appeal in all of them although, as suspected, Lyric's Orfeo was fairly anti-climactic after COT's Dido and Aeneas. She does what she can, the old bird, but COT has a more compact stage that's easier to fill with sensible action, not to mention a younger and better-looking cast that's up to the challenge. On the big stage, I kept recognising decisions which had been made because it's just not practical to get the middle-aged chorus across the half-mile of floorboards in less time than it takes to sing a complete aria.
Moreover, COT even managed to bring some interest to The Padlock, which so firmly belongs in the Justly Forgotten pile that watching could so easily have felt like passing through the foyer of the d'Orsay, wherein are gathered representative conventional works of the time so that the visitor can appreciate the innovation and mastery of the great modern pieces which follow. They also managed to goose up the tragic death of Dido in such a way as to impact 21st-century sensibilities without seeming gimmicky. No mean feat, in either case. It's going to be a good season to come.
Being sick is about the only time when I really wish I had a television set. Usually, I'm content to catch up on the (literal) piles of reading I have, but sometimes my eyes or my brain simply aren't up to the task. Nowadays I tend to fall back on recorded music to get through those times.
Even so, I've managed to finish off Mehta's outstanding Maximum City and get within sight of the end of Fuentes' Terra Nostra. I've been nursing it along for so many months now--reading it intensely for a week, ignoring it for three, kinda like that--that I've formed a certain familiarity with the characters. In the chapter I was reading Saturday night, one of the principals begins reminiscing about events originally related by the others and it had something of the feeling of recalling old mutual friends. "Oh, yes, La Señora with her peach pits and her little mouse friend, who could forget?" By now, it's half a year in the past even for me. I asked![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu if this was something like the relationship he had to the Yoknapatawphans back in the day and he said it was.
The Oscars haven't held my interest for years now. I think my basic problem is that we started off on the wrong foot. Nuphy's watched them ever since he was a small child, but that's because his family was in the biz; he always saw them for the orgy of self-congratulation and fluffery that they are and enjoys them for that, not in spite of it. When I was growing up, however, they had long since become respectable and I earnestly swallowed all the hype about what a serious recognition of cinematic excellence they were. It's not surprising, then, that when disillusionment finally struck, I turned bitter; now not even the pleasures of wicked mockery are enough to draw me back. That might work for a shorter ceremony, but not for the bloated ego marathon the show has become. Besides, I never see more than at most one of the nominees for Best Picture any more.
Moreover, COT even managed to bring some interest to The Padlock, which so firmly belongs in the Justly Forgotten pile that watching could so easily have felt like passing through the foyer of the d'Orsay, wherein are gathered representative conventional works of the time so that the visitor can appreciate the innovation and mastery of the great modern pieces which follow. They also managed to goose up the tragic death of Dido in such a way as to impact 21st-century sensibilities without seeming gimmicky. No mean feat, in either case. It's going to be a good season to come.
Being sick is about the only time when I really wish I had a television set. Usually, I'm content to catch up on the (literal) piles of reading I have, but sometimes my eyes or my brain simply aren't up to the task. Nowadays I tend to fall back on recorded music to get through those times.
Even so, I've managed to finish off Mehta's outstanding Maximum City and get within sight of the end of Fuentes' Terra Nostra. I've been nursing it along for so many months now--reading it intensely for a week, ignoring it for three, kinda like that--that I've formed a certain familiarity with the characters. In the chapter I was reading Saturday night, one of the principals begins reminiscing about events originally related by the others and it had something of the feeling of recalling old mutual friends. "Oh, yes, La Señora with her peach pits and her little mouse friend, who could forget?" By now, it's half a year in the past even for me. I asked
monshu if this was something like the relationship he had to the Yoknapatawphans back in the day and he said it was.The Oscars haven't held my interest for years now. I think my basic problem is that we started off on the wrong foot. Nuphy's watched them ever since he was a small child, but that's because his family was in the biz; he always saw them for the orgy of self-congratulation and fluffery that they are and enjoys them for that, not in spite of it. When I was growing up, however, they had long since become respectable and I earnestly swallowed all the hype about what a serious recognition of cinematic excellence they were. It's not surprising, then, that when disillusionment finally struck, I turned bitter; now not even the pleasures of wicked mockery are enough to draw me back. That might work for a shorter ceremony, but not for the bloated ego marathon the show has become. Besides, I never see more than at most one of the nominees for Best Picture any more.