It's raining Rossini

[muckefuck]

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.

Comments

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I'm not an intellectual, I'm just too young.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

In our Brave New World of syndication, there's no such thing as "too young". Rabbit of Seville was around for 30 years before I ever laid eyes on it.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

True, but we weren't in a Brave New World of syndication during the time I was passing through the formative years when such associations are made!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Was this back when England had like two television channels (three if you were south of the Trent and the weather was cloudy)?

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

We had
1) Anglia (http://youtube.com/watch?v=QTPMILtqB_c), after 9am
2) BBC1 East, after 9am
3) You could just get BBC1 London if you had a honking big aerial on your roof, but it was identical to BBC1 East for almost the whole day except grainier
4) BBC2, except that it actually went off the air at about 11am and didn't come back on until about four! I remember before I went to school turning on BBC2 and just getting static.

And half the time when I was waiting for a programme to come on, they'd put up a card with a still from the programme and the caption "Such-and-such Follows Shortly" and play lift music for five minutes.

Maybe I am actually old.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

That said, I think I've shown I'm not a real intellectual because I think of the Anglia knight ident when I hear Handel's Water Music.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Mouret's Fanfare-Rondeau always recalls for me the opening credits of Masterpiece Theater. That makes me a pseudo-intellectual!

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I can have no pretentions even to the prefix, since it makes me think of the Cookie Monster parody (is it actually the same music, though?)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Nope, it's a parodic approximation. Compare:

Monsterpiece Theater Theme
Mouret's "Fanfare-Rondeau"

[teapot-farm.livejournal.com]

Blimey, I'd managed to forget the Anglia knight.

And how come Rossini wrote a short piece based on On Ilkley Moor Ba'ht 'At?? How the hell did that happen?

[lhn.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I suspect the Lone Ranger has dropped into the black hole of most b&w TV. It's out on DVD, but how many people under twenty-five have ever seen (or heard) an episode?

(Though there was apparently a 2003 TV movie on the WB, a pilot for a potential series. Anyone see it?)

[nitouche.livejournal.com]

What's *really* sad is that there are pieces for which I will always hear the Gilligan's Island "Hamlet set to Opera" words.

[his-regard.livejournal.com]

Somebody has to update that definition, becuase these days, one level of remove from the original source just isn't enough.