litlover12

For once in my life, I'm happy about multiple Grammy nominations! (Seriously, this NEVER happens!) Some of my favorite artists and albums and songs this year actually got nominated. Like these:
( Read more... )

I just had the most glorious long weekend in NYC with friends. I went to FIVE! shows, all of which were wonderful: A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, Tosca (first time at the Met!), The King & I, Daddy Long Legs, and The Fantasticks. (My friends saw some of the same ones and some different ones.) And we ate at some great restaurants and went to The Strand Bookstore and all kinds of other cool places. It was so much fun. I was badly in need of a vacation, and this one was just what the doctor ordered.

I didn't take as many pictures as I meant to, but there are a few below the cut!

( Read more... )

A bunch of fans in my Met Opera Facebook group were having hissy fits because Desdemona is going to wear a red dress in Otello this season, which is JUST NOT DONE.

This of course gave me an opportunity to use my favorite classic movie line about a red dress: "It's 1852, dumplin'! 1852! Not the Dark Ages!" (Go here and skip to 2:48.)

. . . I love it when fandoms collide. :-)

Opera is back! By which I mean the Met season is back, and thus the Live in HD broadcasts are back. Not a minute too soon, too. My DVR just went rogue and ate about half my recordings, including a couple of PBS opera broadcasts I really wanted to see. (GRRRRR.) So it was extra-fantastic to get to see Verdi's Macbeth at the movie theater yesterday. I'd never heard or seen it before. That's some spectacular music. And it was interesting to see how closely the libretto followed Shakespeare.

And holy whoa, Anna Netrebko! She was absolutely blow-you-away awesome. Fierce and raw and commanding and sensual and everything Lady Macbeth ought to be, and in amazing voice to boot. It's like the role was written for her. (In addition, her interview at intermission was a hoot! She was so energized and excited, she was bouncing all over the place.) I've always liked her, but now she's even winning over the haters, from what I'm hearing and reading online. It's really nice to see.

If you're into opera at all and you have a free night on Wednesday, try to catch the encore broadcast of this. Or else watch for it to come to PBS (fingers crossed). It's so worth the time.

(goldvermilion87 will get that reference!)

( 'Carmen' mini-review ahead )

Reporting in from the Land of the Opera Newbies, to announce that I am now a total Puccini fangirl. I heard Tosca on CD (with Maria Callas), and it was just . . . whoa . . . WOW. That is some unbelievably gorgeous music.

Just imagine if I'd actually understood the words! I'd read the synopsis, so I knew what was going on, but I only actually caught about seven or eight words in the whole opera. They're harder to catch when they're being sung. If I'm really going to make a go of being an opera fan, I have GOT to brush up on my Italian. (Not that it'll help with the German, French, and Russian operas, but at least it'll be a start!)

But maybe it's just as well. If I'd actually been experiencing the meaning of the words along with the music, I might have had to pull over to the side of the road and bawl. Seriously, it was that powerful.

. . . I've been meaning to post this.

"Giuseppe Verdi at 200: An appreciation"

It's not like I know much about Verdi -- as I said, opera newbie here. But I love the writer's enthusiasm. I love this:

"Here’s where I’m supposed to sit down and write some big expository paragraph in sober-sounding prose explaining all the facts and why Verdi is amazing and why you should care. And I can’t do it. Verdi is way too personal for me. . . .

"I can’t explain to you why you should like Verdi, because I can’t believe you won’t hear it for yourself. It’s hardest for us to teach, or explain, the things that come most naturally to us, and for me Verdi has always made perfect sense. Something about his work accords with my sense of how life works, and how stories can be told and experienced."

We all have artists (composers, writers, whoever) that we feel like that about. I love that Anne Midgette has expressed this so well for all of us.

(Also, I like this: ". . . the plot synopses, which I find almost impossible to understand . . ." I looked up some Verdi plot synopses, and they are almost impossible to understand. Maybe that's why Eugene Onegin's lack of plot doesn't bother me, or even appeals to me -- because so many operas with plots just get silly!)