Medium rare
La Cieca hears that a highlight of the 2010-2011 New York City Opera season will be the local premiere of Seance on a Wet Afternoon, the Stephen Schwartz tuner to star Lauren Flanigan.
Lighter fare will include A Quiet Place and a triptych of monodramas (including Erwartung) plus revivals of Intermezzo, L’elisir d’amore (in the Jonathan Miller “Brokeback Mountain” production) and Turandot starring Christine Brewer.
CALLING LA CIECA!
Would you care to reveal the title of the film (captioned above) that you are starring in, along with the gentleman’s identity? As well, what is the dire news he has just been given? Will he NOT be receiving the ‘Cobra Jewels’ for X-mas?
I’ll save La C the trouble and identify Maria Ouspenskaya (that’s how it sounds, the spelling may be otherwise) and Lon Chaney Jr. in “The Wolf Man.” Her wonderful accent gave generations of comedians a great target for mimicry.
Tks hndyman! I knew it was Ouspenskaya but I didn’t know Chaney, Jr. I would suppose she is giving him the bad news he’ll soon be howling at the moon!
Madame Ouspenskaya never was much a harbinger of glad tidings, was she?
“In the tragic romance Waterloo Bridge (1940), Ouspenskaya played the tyrannical ballet instructor Madame Olga Kirowa, whose harsh judgment drives a lovestruck student (Vivian Leigh) to prostitution.”
On the other hand,
“…this artistically minded stereotype was somewhat softened by her other less astringent dance instructor role of 1940 in Dance, Girl, Dance (1940-Dorothy Arzner). When she played the doyenne of a threadbare dance troupe whose members included an earthy realist, played with cynical joy by a zippy Lucille Ball and a dreamy idealist and slightly prim Maureen O’Hara, the character actress left the impression of a concerned woman struggling to pass on her love of Terpsichore to her students…. As she points out to her dancers, ‘You do not learn oomph. You are born with it’.”
Dorothy Arzner — “Dyke, ya know…”
In that clip, it is interesting to see the length and literate nature of the introductory text. Not something that the fast-cutting, 3-D, CGI ‘Avatar’ generation could cope with, I’d wager …
If that cartoon Avitar and its blue slimy people are the future of cinema…..I will not be watching. Haven’t seent it, don’t ever intend to.
“You do not learn oomph. You are born with it”….would that those words were stenciled on the entryway hall of Juilliard!
Lots of things in art cannot be learned — they may be hiding inside and not yet deduced, but usually they will find a way out.
I love ‘Waterloo Bridge’! Didn’t know La Cieca-Maya, was in that as well.
La Cieca is an arcobaleno that shines her rays dapertutto!!! Baci!
Aah. No Cobra Yoo-el for Yule.
this is interesting stuff … anyone know whem City Opera plans to announce its 2010/11 season officially?
Look at the complimentary plot similarities of Seance on a Wet Afternoon and Menotti’s one Act The Medium.
The Medium has a challenging bitch of a scene for the star…where the music’s key signature keeps changing bar by bar.