Schober tunesmith11/19/2022 ![]() ![]() Musical comedies can still make a lot of money and last forever on Broadway, no matter how bad they are (I realize, dear reader, you can sing and dance to all the so called tunes in Legally Blond ) but opera is pretty much dead, and new ones are like Bishop Berkeley's tree falling over in an empty forest.Įötvös is an interesting figure. But the life of a new opera is usually brief. Angels, the opera, is very clever, and deserved to be heard more widely - it was premiered in 2004. He has used indigenous music in many of his works. Hard to know if allowing a bit of Sondheim in, Eötvös was trying for an "American" effect - New York, pretension, phoniness. The classy alcoholic/sex addict, Dick Rodgers, was only correct when he averred in a rare introspective moment, "I piss melody". The moronic 'critical establishment' of America, a grotesque bunch of stupid, uncultured vampires (they seem to live forever) anointed Sondheim as important based on his imperious arrogance, not on the gifts once not so unusual in musical comedy (one must call it Musical Theater today, doncha know) - after all, Julie Styne could actually write a tune, and Cole Porter was a real composer (tunes instinct with a kind of theatrical wit mixed often with a rueful insight into what living is, witty harmonies - he did study with Vincent D'Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris - and all without even a smidgen of pretension). He's an acrostical wordsmith with a tin ear. A good twenty years of American musical composers condemned themselves to irrelevance in an art form of shrinking importance in America by imitating the lyricist Sondheim, oh yes, he composes, too. The opera, though, is musical comedy length, and indeed, some of it sounds like that ruinous fetish of the musical comedy genre, Stephen Sondheim. The play by the astonishingly obnoxious and unbelievably self important Tony Kushner goes on approximately forever. It takes a real opera queen of the old school (the reform school for the hopeless) to link William Shakespeare with David Belasco!!!! Can't they all starve to death in cardboard boxes during the rare blizzard? pix: the delightful Maria CallasĪmong Opera lovers with IQs over sixteen (alas there aren't many of those) Peter Eötvös is best known for setting that quintessentially American Classic Play Angels in America as an opera (a quintessentially American Classic play is a "masterpiece" that will be forgotten and seen as self indulgent pompous camp after a while). In my not so humble opinion! The opinion is neither humble nor intelligent and the statement above is simply erroneous and PHILISTINE. Bob Rideout: Whatever Dan's examples are, or are not, one thing is certain, they are much closer to the spirit and the letter of Shakespeare than most of the Regie (aka Eurotrash) that passes for legitimate representation of "composers""librettists" and "original sources" (aka Shakeseare, Belasco etc), at least in my limited experience with these celebrated innovations. What he doesn't know about opera, music or anything other than the number of bowel movements Celestina Boninsegna had between acts of Aida would overflow The Atlantic Ocean. Rideout is a preposterous singer maven, who thinks because he's compiled chronologies of now forgotten singers, he is MAGNIFICENT. Daniel Tritter on Opera-L bellini "i capuleti ed i montecchi" handel "giulio cesare" ades "the tempest" barber "anthony and cleopatra" reimann "lear" and for greatness in a brother art form: porter "kiss me, kate" bernstein "west side story" rodgers "the boys from syracuse"(For the record, the Bellini is NOT based on Shakespeare, only a pretentious moron would think so, the Handel is not even remotely based on Shakespeare, only a death bound goon would even broach that.) A response was made by the reigning queen of Opera Smell, empowered by The Little Librarian that could. ![]() The topic was Shakespeare in Opera, as though any of these cretins had ever thought about a play attributed to Shakespeare, or could really understand one. (And yes, dear reader, I have sometimes been described as vicious, sweet as I obviously am. I fancy in moments of fury that the genital female slave he bought to replace her has sneaked up behind him to - PUSH!!! Truly this is one of the most vicious and grotesquely stupid horrors on the Opera 'Net, which is not lacking in those. In my imagination, she is digging his grave in front of him as he watches helpless in his wheelchair. Tritter is an elderly shyster who once married a middling but very capable coloratura named Rita Shane. These are two Ancients of Daze on the grotesque Opera-Smell, enabled by the Little Librarian who could one, Bob Kosovksy. ![]()
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