A little "did you know?" tidbit. When Charles Gounod's (1818-1893) opera Faust wasn't selling tickets, the producer gave away tickets for the first three performances to people out of town and declared the performances were sold out. Wondering what all the fuss was about, the public began buying tickets, and Faust became a hit. ------ By Dallas Opera
Faust by Charles Gounod
Showing posts with label opera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opera. Show all posts
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The Tales of Hoffman
An Unfinished Tale...
Indeed, a tale of tales! Enjoyed the opening night (Saturday, November 7, 2009) of "Tales of Hoffman" at the Elle Caulkins Opera Colorado. It's my first time seeing this production, a production that showed an amazing talent, not only by the principles, but an amazing chorus, stage director, and production.
Overview Inspired by the tales of the German Romantic poet E.T.A. Hoffmann, the opera tours a dramatic dreamscape populated with beautiful courtesans, magical portraits and fantastical automatons. The lush music fuels the visual style of the stage design inspired by
19th century couture and Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher. This innovative production brings to life Offenbach's vivid fantasy of a poet obsessed with four remarkable women – and the four villains bent on his destruction.Stage Director Renaud DoucetSet and Costume Design André BarbeConductor Emmanuel Joel-Hornak This production is a co-production between Opera Colorado, Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Boston Lyric Opera.Me and Julian Gavin, tenor- at Elle Caulkins Opera House
http://www.operacolorado.org/operas/hoffmann/
http://www.operacolorado.org/operas/hoffmann/
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
'Timberbrit': Opera Tackles The Trials Of Britney
Mellissa Hughes — pictured on a recent music-video shoot in Brooklyn, N.Y. — plays Britney Spears in Timberbrit, an experimental opera by composer Jacob Cooper.
What a relief to know that "THIS" is not on our Colorado Opera upcoming season (thanks Greg), or EVER season. Listening to this gave me chills, no, not the chills we are accustomed to in Lucia, Rigoletto, Tosca, etc. it was a chill of disgust! Composer Jacob Cooper I suppose is following his dream (and maybe a crush on the pop singer), but if he needs content for the next composition, please Jacob, give me a ring, I have plenty of material for you. The only prolonged death scene I could see here, would me my own.
By Paula Kechichian
The article below is by Claire Happel:
August 4, 2009 - Opera has a long history of over-the-top spectacle and melodramatic plots. Composer Jacob Cooper decided to embrace that excess, creating a contemporary opera that imagines the tragic end of one particularly tempestuous pop diva.
The work is called Timberbrit — as in Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears. It's a tragic tale that imagines Spears' last concert, in the final hours of her life. Timberlake returns after a long absence to win back Spears' love, but in the end she chooses the audience's love above all else.
Cooper began work on the opera by experimenting with a technique called time-stretching. Using digital audio software, he slowed down Spears' songs — and suddenly the light pop tunes seemed hauntingly tragic. Phrases like "Hit me baby one more time" took on an entirely different and more weighted meaning.
Cooper then collaborated with his performers to create new pieces of music inspired by those slowed-down hits, and writer Yuka Igarashi crafted fresh lyrics using the vernacular of Spears' songs — tears, love, dreams, innocence.
As a doctoral student at Yale, Cooper has looked at the psychological aspects of how traditional operas stretch time during death scenes — the way a dying character in Rigoletto or Boris Godunov, say, will pause to sing a 10-minute aria. Not realistic perhaps, but it packs a punch.
Cooper has expanded on that distinctive musical tradition by creating an entire opera enveloped by a fatal slowness of action. The idea is that in Timberbrit, Spears' prolonged destruction amplifies the tragedy of her downfall.
The opera premiered in New York City as a semistaged production in 2008 and is currently being developed into a fully staged version.
Meanwhile, the cast and crew of Timberbrit recently shot a music video of Cooper's song "Worst Fantasy," inspired by Spears' "Toxic." In keeping with the opera's process, the videographers started with a slowed-down, stretched-out recording of the original, then manipulated it and built on it to create something new.
The result: a distillation of Spears' music videos and public meltdowns that forces viewers to take a second look at both pop-star lives and the way the public devours them.
This piece was originally produced for NPR's Intern Edition by Claire Happel and Sarah Metcalf.
The work is called Timberbrit — as in Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears. It's a tragic tale that imagines Spears' last concert, in the final hours of her life. Timberlake returns after a long absence to win back Spears' love, but in the end she chooses the audience's love above all else.
Cooper began work on the opera by experimenting with a technique called time-stretching. Using digital audio software, he slowed down Spears' songs — and suddenly the light pop tunes seemed hauntingly tragic. Phrases like "Hit me baby one more time" took on an entirely different and more weighted meaning.
Cooper then collaborated with his performers to create new pieces of music inspired by those slowed-down hits, and writer Yuka Igarashi crafted fresh lyrics using the vernacular of Spears' songs — tears, love, dreams, innocence.
As a doctoral student at Yale, Cooper has looked at the psychological aspects of how traditional operas stretch time during death scenes — the way a dying character in Rigoletto or Boris Godunov, say, will pause to sing a 10-minute aria. Not realistic perhaps, but it packs a punch.
Cooper has expanded on that distinctive musical tradition by creating an entire opera enveloped by a fatal slowness of action. The idea is that in Timberbrit, Spears' prolonged destruction amplifies the tragedy of her downfall.
The opera premiered in New York City as a semistaged production in 2008 and is currently being developed into a fully staged version.
Meanwhile, the cast and crew of Timberbrit recently shot a music video of Cooper's song "Worst Fantasy," inspired by Spears' "Toxic." In keeping with the opera's process, the videographers started with a slowed-down, stretched-out recording of the original, then manipulated it and built on it to create something new.
The result: a distillation of Spears' music videos and public meltdowns that forces viewers to take a second look at both pop-star lives and the way the public devours them.
This piece was originally produced for NPR's Intern Edition by Claire Happel and Sarah Metcalf.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Durex recruit Mozart for their latest TV ad
Heather Buck as The Queen Of The Night in ENO's The Magic Flute. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
Something for the weekend (well, Tuesday) - and a hilarious advertising misprision of classical music: the current TV ad for Durex's Play O lubricant for women. There are 30 seconds of perfectly groomed young women in the back-arching, pupils-dilating throes of carnal abandon - either in flagrante delicto with a partner, or in the bath, or pressed against a window, that sort of thing - and the music Durex have chosen to accompany it is the Queen of the Night's Act Two aria from Mozart's Magic Flute. The people at Durex judiciously repeat the very highest part of the phrase five times, where Mozart originally has it twice, amplifying the sensual excess of the moment and the women's pleasure, thanks, presumably, to judicious use of Play O.
It sort of makes sense in terms of the deliberate extremity of the vocal acrobatics Mozart demands from his soprano - top Fs in the outer regions of leger-line land above the treble clef. But dramatically, I'm not so sure. Far from erotomania, the aria is actually about a mother trying to turn her daughter into a murderess, as the Queen of the Night bribes Pamina with disownment if she doesn't agree to kill Sarastro. "You will no longer be my daughter" is the phrase that accompanies Durex's advert. Not quite the "I want to get my rocks off" that probably would have worked better, from the adman's point of view.
No matter though: the reason the ad works is the unwritten equation between high-pitched operatic excess and physical or emotional extremity, above all in women. Feminist theorists have had a field day with male composers' treatment of women in operatic plots, and one interpretation of the Queen of the Night is as Exhibit A in the prosecution's case against operatic misogyny. Mozart's character is an evil, hysterical woman, on the side of unknowable but ineluctable darkness, who is defeated by the male world of goodness, light, and wisdom, symbolised by Sarastro and his kingdom. Durex and Play O would presumably rather be on the side of female emancipation ('it's all you need' coos the voiceover), but they're unwittingly tapping into cultural stereotypes of feminine sexuality oppressed by patriarchal hegemony. Or, well, maybe it's just an advert …
It sort of makes sense in terms of the deliberate extremity of the vocal acrobatics Mozart demands from his soprano - top Fs in the outer regions of leger-line land above the treble clef. But dramatically, I'm not so sure. Far from erotomania, the aria is actually about a mother trying to turn her daughter into a murderess, as the Queen of the Night bribes Pamina with disownment if she doesn't agree to kill Sarastro. "You will no longer be my daughter" is the phrase that accompanies Durex's advert. Not quite the "I want to get my rocks off" that probably would have worked better, from the adman's point of view.
No matter though: the reason the ad works is the unwritten equation between high-pitched operatic excess and physical or emotional extremity, above all in women. Feminist theorists have had a field day with male composers' treatment of women in operatic plots, and one interpretation of the Queen of the Night is as Exhibit A in the prosecution's case against operatic misogyny. Mozart's character is an evil, hysterical woman, on the side of unknowable but ineluctable darkness, who is defeated by the male world of goodness, light, and wisdom, symbolised by Sarastro and his kingdom. Durex and Play O would presumably rather be on the side of female emancipation ('it's all you need' coos the voiceover), but they're unwittingly tapping into cultural stereotypes of feminine sexuality oppressed by patriarchal hegemony. Or, well, maybe it's just an advert …
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