Mystery? Science?
This is post number 3,000 on parterre.com.
To read what La Cieca should have posted for this milestone, you might want to take a look at this comment (you can skip over the scolding first paragraph).
Among other milestones: we’re currently at 116,478 comments (an average of about 40 comments per post) and, though it may be premature to boast, all indications are that April 2010 will the highest number of monthly pageviews on parterre.com ever, a cool half million.
cieca dearie, just out of curiosity, how many of those cool half-million posts were by BETSY ANN BOBOLINK?
We’ve already tabulated that — 14,212 — narrowly edged by QPF’s video posts
@WindyCityOperaman, COT’s Moses direction was indeed insipid; the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a hick burg. However, the Elcia, Sian Davies, was terrific on 4/22. And this really is an under-rated opera, a lot of beautiful music and a couple of Rossini crescendos, as well. While, I prefer the French version, the one Muti conducted for DVD, over Chicago’s Italian-language version, overall a good show in Chicago.
The real COT surprise was Cavalli’s Giasone (Jason); what a hoot, and totally engrossing. The 1960s costumes worked well and if director Justin Way “borrowed” a few ideas from other operas and ballets (e.g., the baby carriage from Paul Taylor’s “The Rite of Spring” ballet and some of the David McVicar’s idea of including dance steps a la “Giulio Cesare”), Way did so with panache, rather than plagarizing.
Jason’s three hours flew by and at the 4/25 prima there a lot of younger folks compared to the mostly older crowd for Moses. With their $15 student rush and other student discounts, COT is creating a model that other companies should study in their efforts to woo younger audiences.
#6 Nerva – I almost hesitate to mention your post on Mims, but you are so
waaay off base! It was a very short career and rather sad; she was used, and
I mean that literally, by the Met in big roles before she was ready — and she
could not say no. I attended the Whitaker vocal competition in which she
placed third, as I recall, singing the most hard-worked Traviata Act I,
I think I have ever heard. Birgit Nilsson and Eleanor Steber were judges,
and the consensus was that Mims was a “manufactured” voice and would
soon come apart; even so she got a third. The first went to a gorgeous
low mezzo, a really beautiful natural voice, who never bothered to make
much of a career though she should have. You carrying the torch for
Mims or something?
18: I disagree with you most emphatically about the act 2 set. In fact, it seemed to me that here Bondy demonstrated that he had studied his Sardou most carefully. In the play “La Tosca,” the interrogation of the diva is held in a room in the Castel Sant’Angelo that Scarpia has taken over as a sort of pied-a-terre: in the room are a desk, a small table, a sofa and (in an alcove) a bed.
What Bondy was trying to suggest in the Met’s second act set is that Scarpia is working out of a provisional space, a suite of rooms hastily adapted for use in a state of emergency. The implication (again, supported by the play) is that Scarpia is not a well-established and longtime Rome institution, but rather an interloper, a stranger who is doing violence to the city.
It seems to me that the whole point of this set is that it should appear ugly and mismatched, as if some disused room in the palace were hastily cleaned out, a few pieces of furniture were dragged in, and Scarpia got down to his nefarious business. To me this is a much more disquieting setting for the act because of its implications of randomness and chaos.
This and the bleak first act set combine to remind us that circa 1800 Rome was very down-at-heel place, dangerous and dark and not all flower markets and jolly sacristans.
Yes, I realize there are stars mentioned in the stage directions for the last act, but I would rather have a plain blank wall instead of the Christmas decorations we usually get. The “stelle” mentioned by Cavaradossi are in his memory, and a case can be made that his recollection is all the more poignant against a backdrop of bleak, slate-colored sky.
Correction: COT’s Jason prima was 4/23, not 4/25 (a little “jet lagged” here). The Trib’s review at http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-live-0426-opera-review-20100426,0,2659380.column
nails this hoot of a production.
Welcome to all the newcomers!
And Nerva, perhaps he’d like ROssini better if it starred Deanna Durban and was conducted by Leopold Stokowski