Palabras nuevas

• chupóptero 1. m. coloq. Persona que, sin prestar servicios efectivos, percibe uno o más sueldos.
• metralla 3. f. Mil. Munición menuda con que se cargaban las piezas de artillería, proyectiles y bombas, y actualmente otros explosivos.
• metralleta 1. f. Arma de fuego automática, de cañón más corto que el fusil y de gran velocidad de disparo.

It's raining Rossini

The jokes page in the back of a magazine I read as an adolescent defined "intellectual" as "someone who can hear the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger". By a slightly tweaked version of this definition, bunj, e., and I--maybe Nuphy, too!--are all philistines.

What can I say? For better or worse, it would be easier for me to smell bacon without thinking of breakfast than it would be for me to hear the overture to Barber of Seville without thinking of a wascally wabbit massaging Elmer Fudd's pliant dome. (And if I can't hear Der Walkürenritt without thinking of a "speah and magic helmet", at least I can listen to the overture to Tannhäuser without imagining a Rubenesque white mare.) Which makes the Lyric's borderline-cartoonish production design rather appropriate.

I'd actually seen this production before a few years ago, but I'd managed to forget innumerable amusing props and clever bits of business. I certainly would've remembered if Arcangelo had made his entrance in the same state of advanced déshabille as Nathan "Nothing Between me And My Calvins" Gunn and then adjusted "piccolo Figaro" in the process of donning his duds. Subliminally, I must've appreciated even then how much the sets scream "80s" ("Very 'Rock Me, Amadeus'", in the words of bunj), but it didn't dominate my consciousness like it did once it was pointed out to me last evening.

All in all, a very good time at the opera. Shame, though, that Flores was too ill to sing Almaviva and that rather than Shore (who made a fantastic Falstaff) we got the merely adequate Kraus as Don Bartolo. As it was, the only truly dynamite singer was DiDonato, who played Rosina like a snotty teenager but sang her like an Iberian baladista. When I first heard her voice, I wondered if they'd given the part to an alto by mistake, she had such a full tone. For a moment, it seemed almost too heavy for an ingénue role, but her acting made her wholly convincing as a young ward in love.

What more is there to say? I've seen Barber more than any other opera at this point--twice at the Lyric, once at COT (back in their alles auf Englisch Athenaeum days), and once at Northwestern. I know, the serious Ringheads are scoffing, but that's twice as many times as I've seen almost anything else in the regular repertoire. (And when it comes to warhorses like Butterfly, Tosca, and Traviata, twice is already one time too many.) I gladly accept its repetitiveness and self-indulgent silliness because I know and love all the melodies--and for that, I can thank none other than Carl Stalling.