Now it is your turn to wait
In honor of National Procrastination Week La Cieca has a challenge for you, the cher public. If you’re anything like your doyenne (and she thinks at least some of you are in most important ways) you possess opera-related media that have been sitting on a shelf or wherever it is you stow your opera-related media for days, weeks, months, even years without so much as a listen, or, for that matter, without even being freed from that constraining shrink-wrap.
So here’s the game. You find a CD, DVD, audio file or opera-related book you’ve been meaning to get to for while, and, well, get to it. Then post a quick account of the experience in the comments section below. Points will be won for length of the procrastination, the decision-making process that led you to choose one thing over another from the slush pile, and of course interesting critique.
Given that La Cieca didn’t get around to creating this competition until two days into National Procrastination Week, she’s going to cut you a little slack and say that comments will be accepted until midnight on Friday, March 12. The best procrastinator (which, ironically, in this case, will mean one who manages not to procrastinate) will receive a $100 gift card from amazon.com.
Wonderful! I never quite got around to observing National Procrastination Week last year.
Hmmm… what to choose? The Bayreuth Holländer with Estes? Or the Ponelle Tristan with J. Meier? Or perhaps the Met Bocaneggra with Milnes? For whatever reason, I rarely get around to watching DVDs but that doesn’t stop me from accumulating them. I waited so long to watch the Met Sonnambula with Dessay/Florez that I had on my PVR that my machine finally died. I’m hoping for a PBS rerun this summer.
I guess it’s time for me to finish Grout’s Short History of Opera.
Hmmm….I’ve got at least seven or eight canidates.
In a hilarious dose of irony (or at least a really insane coincidence) National Procrastination week happens to be the busiest week of my life, so the odds of me actually finding the time to watch/listen to a full length-opera is slim.
yall a bunch of amateurs. a mere week? procrastination is a lifetime occupation for me.
Does it count if I can’t find it? I know it’s somewhere, but my candidate would be a CD distributed with the program book for the 1989 season at the Arena in Verona.
The CD was a promotion for the next season – I went but never bothered to play the CD. Maybe the shrink wrapper shrank it?
Hmm, my Solti Ring has been waiting on a shelf for ca. 12 years now. It was a gift from myself for myself after one of the most dificulties exams during my studies, but somehow, I still don’t think I’m ready for it. I guess I’ll never become a Wagnerian
Liana: I’m going to find out where you live and come over and force you listen to that Ring (easier than getting around to watching my DVDs. LOL).
Kashania, I actually have half a shelf of supposedly great Wagner recordings I couldn’t get myself to listen to. But it’s not like I’m not making progress; twelve years ago, I used to fall asleep after 5 minutes of Wagner; now I can stand 15, and if it’s Nilsson, even 20. And I even love her Liebestod. So I suppose there is still hope
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Liana!
Stay Strong! Resist the temptation, as once Der Meister has lured you into his clutches, your brain will never be the same. I’m condemned to 12 recordings with primitive sound, all because I am too curious!
Also, please accept my congratulations to you and your proud country on the bicentennial of The Greatest, F. Chopin. He is my absolute favorite and, I hope, is honored during this important anniversary, with sufficient pomp and circumstance.
Thank you, Camille. And good luck with the 12 recordings
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Liana,
When I started listening/going to opera two years ago, I vowed that I was an anti-Wagner. Don’t know why – guess I just assumed his stuff was too heavy or just too much and that I wouldn’t be able to handle or enjoy it. In November I got free tickets to Gotterdammerung at WNO and I was just in awe of the music. Since then, I’ve listened to the Ring in reverse order w/ Das Rheingold yet to go. I’ve been listening to Tristan und Isolde a lot recently.
I hope that you’re able to sit down and find something in Wagner that you like to keep you listening for more than 20 minutes.
Good luck!
Thanks
; since my progress on Wagner listening is langsam aber sicher, there is Hoffnung that one day, perhaps in not so distant Zukunft, I’ll really enjoy that music. I’ll probably give it another try during holidays; unfortunately, with Wagner one needs free time, in order to concentrate and listen properly.
Haha very true! I just got a new Tristan und Isolde and I’m afraid it’ll take me several days to get through it all.
I don’t know if anybody else does this, but have you ever tried playing video games while listening to them? I’ve found the fun-factor will keep me focused through recordings of any length, and their automation keeps them from distracting my attention from the music.
Laugh away – it works =D
Sorry, wouldn’t work. Video games bore me much more than Wagner
. But you actually did give me an idea; i think knitting could be a solution (and I’m serious, so thanks 
)
Ahh but have you ever tried to count stitches when your attention was elsewhere?? Video games have just the right amount of mindlessness for opera…
I knit only things where I don’t have to count
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I actually run long distance to Tristan or Walkure. I really like it actually. One Act and you can go for miles and miles.
chekurupi
Say, I listened to that Solti Ring Cycle once
The Solti Ring is a waste. Nothing but glorious moments. The Bohm Ring. I just finished listening to the ’39 Met Die Meistersinger. It makes Die Meistersinger fly by.
Are we voting for favorite Rings? Furtwangler/La Scala for me.
Okay, “Inge Borkh Singt Ihre Memoiren” needs to come off the shelf. But to find it…
Oh, that Borkh disc is REMARKABLE, a real hoot; she was clearly brilliant at the cabaret format. Listening, one can just imagine the schwul audience around her!
What a pity Dr. Dame Elisabeth did not allow microphones when she essayed a similar light-hearted exercise at an SS reunion in Bitburg.
Ha!
Gott, that picture scared me at first!
Thought that La Cieca had surreptitiously snuck into my bathroom @ 8 am to snap me in a photo-op, pre-maquillage!!!!
On second thought, is that one of ol’ Arnie’s paintings?
Well, this is an exhortation of sorts for me to plow through that “Richard Wagner 100 Jahre Bayeuth auf Schallplatte — die Fruehen Festspielsaenger 1876 – 1906″ jeez – the title alone is exhausting, and it’s TWELVE c.d.s — so I will probably not live through it. Maybe have it done for next year’s procrastination week.
Oh, speaking of procrastination, Cieca cara, your Christmas present is still undelivered. You-know-who has been too busy, but I shall be back in the ‘hood in another ten days, so I’ll get it to you – as St. Paddy’s day present. Au revoir!