pro boner
La Cieca was just tipped that leather-loving tunesmith David Del Tredici is journeying below the belt once more, offering the premiere of his song cycle “My Favorite Penis Poems” at Symphony Space on December 4. Soprano Melissa Fogarty will sing the composer’s “frank, erotic, and bawdy” setting of explicit poems from from Rumi to Allen Ginsberg.
A collar and leash, you say? Well, I’ve heard that’s what it takes to get some people to sit through a Del Tredici piece…
To me, a song cycle about penises would be rather like Mark Twain’s infamous quip on the weather: Everyone’s singing about them but no one’s doing anything.
Is it true he’s begun work on the latest installment of the Wonderland series, “One of these days, Alice….”?
Little Boy Toys seem to be popping up all over the media these days. In the current issue of Soap Opera Digest Michelle Stafford comments that she would like to play the role done by Josh Morrow, “but I don’t have a penis.” Please, Michelle, if you read Cieca, I will help you.
Perhaps DDT’s piece could be programmed with a straight composer’s setting of John Updike’s poem, “C*nts.”
Das waeren doch Backen und keine Wangen, liebes Blindchen.
And here I always thought “D’amor sull’ali rosee” was a penis poem….
A tenor named Frankenberry singing wingwang songs should be an amazing addition to world Tenor folklore.
Thanks, Melot’s YB: I always love a good Simpsons reference. I saw DDT downtown in a VERY small venue a while ago (2002 or 3?) and don’t remember being v. impressed.
This will be translated and sent to the Liceo as
“Los [poemas favoritos de la pinga.” I think Stuttgart might call it… Meine poesia favoriten des meine Schwanz (I know only a few German words but at least you get my drift.)
Is this a squel to the “Vagina Monologues”???.
Before I discovered Parterre, I only listened to Pat Robertson and Mother Teresa…What happened to me??
Schwanzengesänge (??)
The poems are by Antler, Marilyn Kallet, Edward Field, Alfred Corn, and Allen Ginsberg. The Kallet and Rumi poems are both about women, hence the soprano singing them. The Ginsberg is a duet of near Wagnerian proportions.
In the original high keys, these are GREAT Tenor songs, guys! If you don’t want to “sing gay,” you’ll have to miss out on most of the fun though. I bet Sean Penn wouldn’t hesitate to sing gay.
To answer a few questions above: David is still amazingly dynamic. He might not be your type, Windy, but he’s a force to be reckoned with!
The Germans would probably prefer something blunt; “Cock-poems” might do it. However, such tonal music by a living composer seems to make a lot of European audiences feel, well, queer. Fine if you wrote it 150 years ago, but write it now…
There are, in fact, many penississimos written throughout.
Some people will hate them, some people will love them, but these are great songs and deserve to be heard by lovers of new songs everywhere.
And keep the puns and pot-shots cumming. Alice doesn’t mind a little nastiness now and then! After all, the little pie says, “Eat Me”….