To boldly go where too many regies have gone before
Okay, La Cieca is finally ready to add another hard and fast “don’t” to her Rules for Stage Directors.
To wit: Even if a scene calls for something fantastical, and even if the mezzo doesn’t actually walk out of the production when she first sees the costume… if your imagery immediately and inevitably screams “Star Trek,” well… just don’t!
If you will avoid just this one little thing, O Regisseur, La Cieca promises she will not ask you why the company of Little House on the Prairie is playing host to Richard Tucker in cantorial garb.
Appalling, nowhere near the Patricia Payne class in the role.
the Patricia Payne class
Is that a size of starship?
speaking of regie, i have a question. ESPECIALLY DIRECTED TO SQUIRREL:
in the zeff boheme… mimi is immediately made to look like she’s about to die from her uber pale color (stratas)… how come all the recent mimis at the met have been moving a lot like theyre super happy and super energetic?
rommie, you are the resident Zeffirelli Boheme expert, so I’m sure you are on to something. However I love a conspiracy theory too!
There is an interesting recent article by David Thomson in the WALL STREET JOOURNAL
“something odd is happening to our actors. No one seems to talk about it, but it’s there, and it has to do with our uneasiness over “sincerity.”
This could open a broad discussion of how singers preparing for operatic careers are thrown into situations calling for them to interact with stage directors who do not understand opera or music. It’s all too much for me to think about but there is a problem common to opera and theater that is not often addressed.
Years ago I would have posted something like this first on Opera-L, but thanks to La Cieca and those posting here, Parterre has evolved to be a much more interesting place.
See http://tinyurl.com/yhlyhds
and no cieca, you did not just diss on startrek! *snap*
My first impression was that it’s less Trek than Sendak. “Where the Wild Thing Sings.”
In the Star Wars division:
Kate Aldrich is a much better singer.
I am all for imaginative stagings of problematic works, but I’ve never been able to figure out, in this one, exactly why Ascanio is a robot.
I love the Salzburg production of Cellini. The scenes on the rooftop with the helicopter, the great trio of Cellini Theresa and Firamosca (hiding in a movable smoke stack like Groucho Marx), the cell phones, the neighbors, etc, plus the use of a really fine edition to made all of it possible is very entertaining. I too do not understand why Kate was made to look like R2D2 and it must have been so difficult for her working in that dreadful costume, but she pulled it off with great aplomb.
She’s C3PO, not R2D2!
I haven’t seen the rest of this production, but apparently it is coming out on DVD soon. So far I’ve been able to say that this number must make sense in a context I haven’t seen.
Is this the Metroid version of Ballo, or what?
and that vibrato… eeek