Mein lieber Regie!
As Strephon so tactfully intimated, last week’s Regie quiz did indeed represent a “domestic and intimate” production of Verdi’s Luisa Miller, as staged by Stephen Medcalf for the Buxton Festival. (The performance of the name part by Susannah Glanville sent veteran operagoers’ tongues to wagging “Not since Fretwell!”)
Those desirous of a little more blood and semi-nudity with their plywood may find this week’s production more to their taste.
Samson et Dalila
1. Printemps qui commence
2. Lâche! coeur sans amour! Je te méprise! Adieu!
3. Vers les piliers de marbre, enfant, guide mes pas!
A feminist Lohengrin?
1. Act 2 Elsa and Ortrud celebrate their sisterhood.
‘O habe Dank fur so viel Gute’ with an unscripted apprearance from the murdered brother who, in this version, really was murdered by Elsa.
2. ‘Weh, nun ist all unser Gluck dahin’. An Angela Carter-inspired bloody bridal chamber with Elsa not feeling too well. The voyeuse is Ortrud.
3. The swan/Godfrey and the boat. Lohengrin (not pictured) is about to jump into the piano. Not sure why Godfrey has changed his hair colour since picture 1 so perhaps ‘mein lieber regie’ is deliberately misleading.
Macbeth.
Pic 2 actually has Macbeth in it. He is under stress.
Pic 1 is two of the witches.
Pic 3 Macbeth is out of shot, but we see his coat on the piano. He has either just sung or is just about to sing the romanza.
The guy covered in blood, the girl in her nightgown and the cropped hair blond are all dancers, so don’t actually represent character in the libretto. Rather they indicate the emotions that the characters are experiencing (in case we didn’t get that from the music).
The Mikado.
1. Two of the little maids have been very naughty indeed.
2. Ko-ko kontemplates Katisha
3. ‘The sun whose rays’
Mother, blood! It must be Elektra…..or Cosi
A ‘True Blood’ Cosi, with the boys transforming into Vampires. I like that idea.
“…a little more blood…” immediately suggests Ruddigore, especially since last week’s winner is “Strephon” and the name may have kicked La Cieca’s needle into a G&S groove.
But I can’t get any of the photos to fit even the most extreme case of G&S regie, so I’m going with Ruddigore’s forerunner, Marschner’s Der Vampyr, about which I fortunately know so little that the photos don’t even count.
Both works DO feature a Lord Ruthven. Which is curious. Suspicious. And knowing La Cieca, misleading.
Dear Donna C – thanks for recommending the Hérisson. Very good holiday reading. And please do try Wittgenstein’s Mistress – a masterpiece.
(Apologies to all for this off-topic aside)
Holiday Reading? O heartless Manou, I’ve got Tosca’s knife sticking out of my chest and I haven’t even had breakfast yet!
Hedgehog is the Book of Job and King Lear combined, admittedly written by a concierge and a twelve-year-old. But they’re both French Intellectuals! They’ve not only read Wittgenstein’s Mistress, they’ve read Wittgenstein! And Husserl to boot.
Nevertheless, I promise to pack WM with my sunscreen and parasol when next I head off to Provincetown for a lie on the beach.
…and when you do, you will immediately appreciate the difference between a really clever, erudite and witty book (WM) and Madame Barbery’s little tome, which is undoubtedly entertaining, but sometimes falls in the very stereotypes it seeks to shatter, and sprinkles cultural references around more pour épater les bourgeois than to illuminate the text.
Having said that, it is indeed a very good read and I enjoyed it!
(Did you know hat they made a film from the book?)
Now I’ve got two knives sticking out of my chest (I haven’t been able to find the #%*&# pliers to pull the first one out) and now I won’t be able to have my High Tea, what with the burping from breakfast (your favorite bangers and mash, by the way).
Next thing, you’ll be telling me you’re not a fan of my beloved Bernard Henri Lévi.
Ever your bourgeois épaté, D.
PS I regard film as a weak vehicle for conveying the full richesse of a masterpiece like Hérisson. Just look at the mess they made of Gone With The Wind.
Bernard Henri Levy is a poodlefaker (current girlfriend: Daphne Guinness – but one great love: himself). I have heard him lecture many times (carefully unbuttoned shirt, blow dried hair), and he is quite impressive, but alas a national joke in France now.
Third knife? If there is enough blood, are you the answer to this Regie quiz?
Chérie: J’ai suivi avec plaisir le scandale de BHL et La Vie Sexuelle d’Immanuel Kant. Hell, I read People Magazine just like you.
So your third knife breezed by without disturbance either to my heart or to my hairdo.
And I finally managed to extract the first two, the digestive system is back on track, and in fact I feel the urge to do some bathroom reading.
Hamlet, you know.
PS I do envy your having seen the Living Legend in His Own Mind in person. I have a suspicion that his total package is irreplaceable and that the French will invite him to resurrect himself. Vive BHL!
Il faut laisser le dernier mot a Kant :
“Une lecture amusante est aussi utile à la santé que l’exercice du corps.”
D’ac (!), chérie.
My first guess is Der Vampyr, which seems a bit obvious … but nothing else seems obvious at all. It’s certainly not the only other vampire opera I know, Carmela.
1. You see?
2. Precisely.
3. On the other hand….
… unless of course it’s … Der Freischutz! The plot revamped (hehe) as a tale of souls not merely in jeopardy but out of body.
1. Max brings his prey home for dinner with Agathe and Aennchen.
2. Agathe’s dream of Max killing her instead of a dove.
3. The dove itself.
Lulu.
I was thinking it could be Gluck’s Orphee et Eurydice…