Weekend at Bernie's 2
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Zambello has allowed emotion, charm and enchantment to be drowned in a sea of bewilderingly over-stylized designs .... visual incoherence, plus some not always useful elaboration of a simple, disarming storyline, make what should have been a slam-dunk for stage presentation a waterlogged misstep .... if Disney Theatrical chief Thomas Schumacher's aim in enlisting Zambello and team was to develop another eye-popping theatrical event to transcend the kid-fare label, he needs to keep fishing. (Variety)Zambello takes pains to explain "in a remarkably un-defensive tone" that even without a massive marketing effort, a show with the obscure and forbidding title "Disney's The Little Mermaid" still managed to sell a lot of tickets in Denver. The damning review in Variety she dismisses as (literal) nepotism, since, as she points out, the editor-in-chief of the showbiz rag is the uncle of Roger Bart, who is the star of Young Frankenstein: The New Mel Brooks Musical. (Having both shows on Broadway simultaneously obviously would split the the "bazoom and fart joke" demographic so key to the success of a Disney musical.)
Labels: alex ross, critic, festoonery, gay gay gay gay gay
Dreadfully overheated and over-loud, the prolix first act has a slavering and maudlin sensuality that gave me the creeps ....
[T]he rapturous sublimity that glows through the last 20 minutes struck me as profoundly bogus and cheap. Why Jurowski and the LPO should wish to waste their talents and time on this tosh beats me ....
I felt slightly sick when it was all over and had to lie down in a darkened room.
The opera was chosen by Fräu Lehmann for her benefit, and from a financial point of view her selection was a very wise one . . . . From an artistic point of view the choice does not seem to be so commendable. There is no artistic reason why Lilli Lehmann should present herself to the New York public as a colorature singer. She may have been actuated by a not unnatural desire to display her versatility, but to get up a performance of Bellini's "Norma" for her benefit savors rather of self-esteem than of a strong devotion to honest art . . . . She demonstrated that her voice possessed far more flexibility and that she had a greater command of the pure ornamentation of signing that anyone suspected ... It must be said, however, that Fräu Lehmann took many of the elaborate ornamental passages at a very moderate tempo and sang them with very evident labor, thus depriving them of much of that brilliancy which the smooth, mellow, pliable Italian voices impart to them. Fiorituri without brilliancy have no "raison d' étre," and no Italian diva of standing would have received half the applause that Fräu Lehmann did for singing these passages as she did. The audience was excited by astonishment at the fact that she could do it at all.Well, that was a longer pullquote than La Cieca originally intended to use, but, goodness, that is such excellent critical writing, isn't it? Anyway, back to the argument. Lehmann, Rosa Ponselle, Gina Cigna, Zinka Milanov and of course Maria Callas were all big established stars when they took on Norma at the Met. So were Joan Sutherland and Montserrat Caballé. If Shirley Verrett, Renata Scotto and Jane Eaglen received mixed reviews for their Met performances of the opera, it wasn't because of lack of star power or clout -- they were all extremely important names on the Met roster at the time of their casting.
Labels: bel canto, caballe, critic, fleming, met, midgette, nyt, scotto, voigt
Must we hear about it every time this Crack Addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new--and typically half witted--political grandstanding?Johnson also says Page has confirmed that his supervisors at the Post have already taken disciplinary action against him. According to a source, Page has been placed on leave.
I'd be grateful if you would take me off your mailing list. I Cannot think of anything the useless Marion Barry could do that would interest me in the slightest, up to and including overdose.
Sincerely, Tim Page
Labels: critic, levine, little stevie, met, our own
Labels: critic, la cieca ci guarda la cieca ci vede, midgette
Labels: critic, hunkentenor
Verdi has a way of testing his singers at the opening curtain. (See also "La Traviata," Act I, Scene 1.)
Labels: 2007, bel canto, critic, dessay, gcn, giordani, hunkentenor, met, netrebko, nyco, review, stephen costello
Renée Fleming just might be the the world's most undivalike diva. [well, duh!]
Much like, say, Audrey Hepburn, the 48-year-old soprano manages to gracefully balance sophistication and poise with an appealing sense of grounded genuineness. [whaaaaaa...?]
Labels: blog, chat, critic, hunkentenor, sieglinde, stephen costello
Labels: critic, first emperor, laura hope cruisey
Labels: critic
Rachel deBenedet and Vivian Reed in The Second Tosca. (Photograph by Neilson Barnard.)
Labels: camp, critic, crossover, diva, festoonery, gay gay gay gay gay, gcn, jj, this diva looks like that diva
Labels: blog, camp, critic, diva, drag, filth, fleming, gay gay gay gay gay, gcn, la cieca ci guarda la cieca ci vede, maury d'annato, met, midgette, nyco, nyt, our own, parody, podcast, review, voigt, youtube
Labels: 2008, blog, camp, critic, diva, filth, gay, jj, met, midgette, nyco, nyt, our own, podcast, youtube
While Belgian-born Mortier’s fellow students were trashing universities and other sites of the “establishment” across Europe in 1968, Mortier was disrupting opera productions he considered too conservative, according to a New York Times magazine profile. Now he sits atop the world he once sought to overturn, exploring, as he puts it, “socio-political associations” in opera. Mortier is the musical equivalent of the academic tenured radical—Roger Kimball’s famous phrase for 1960s campus protesters who now run universities.H-Mac goes on to invoke the usual gang of boogeymen: Peter Sellars, Calixto Bieito, Pamela Rosenberg ... you know, the hate-music leftist crowd. The point that none of these three has the slightest influence in American music or theater at the moment seems to escape Ms. Mac Donald. But, after all, logic has so little place in scare tactics, does it?
One may read consistently brilliant cultural criticism on a blog or else unremitting unspellchecked drivel. But that's the risk one takes in reading any sort of journalistic writing. The difference is that in more traditional media, the grossly incompetent tend to get sifted out before they actually get published. An idiot blogger needs only to figure out how to turn on the computer.
But no writing can have cultural value unless it is actually read, and no writer can make an impact on the culture unless he has an audience. Now, admittedly, some blogs garner millions of page views without offering a single serious idea in return, but one could say the same thing about tabloid newspapers and "reality" television. There are serious readers, though, who are attracted by provocative ideas well expressed, and there are certainly blogs whose content is both interesting and stylish. These are the blogs that can be said to offer substantial cultural criticism.
Particularly in the U.S., mainstream media have been reducing their arts coverage, arguing that there is not a broad audience for this kind of content. Blogs have, I think, helped to fill the gap for those of us who are indeed interested in serious discussion of arts topics. One boon peculiar to the blog format is that a blogger need not trim his thoughts to an arbitrary word count; neither need he expend half his column-inches rehashing the plot of Carmen or reminding the reader of Mozart's Masonic connection. Instead, he can present his ideas unmediated.
Of course mediation is not always a bad thing; most blogs could use an editor's eye. But readers, I think, are willing to tolerate the odd prolix or inelegant sentence if the ideas presented therein are provocative.
A further "point" is the community aspect of blogging. Most blogs allow comments by readers, and so the communication becomes two-way. The blogger is not simply handing down his thoughts from on high; rather, his posting constitutes the first argument in a debate. Admittedly many of these "debates" either fizzle out or "flame" out, but in the best cases, one can find a real forum of ideas on a blog.
Labels: critic