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A reflection on opera...
Apr. 1st, 2009 09:56 pmHa, April Fool's Day today...
Personally, I haven't had had jokes played on me today (yes, HK ppl are sooo likely to play tricks on ppl...-____-) but I've had my own share of laughs when reading this amusing guide to opera in the central library today. Basically, I've never seen a book explain the often hypocritical, confusing and sometimes ridculous world of opera (I mean, seriously, even the famous soprano Kiri Te Kanawa admits operas can be totally unrealistic...for example, in Wagner's 'Tristan and Isolde', the two main characters take HALF AN HOUR to basically die...
That's a LONG time. And also it's slightly ridiculous when you know that characters like Mimi in Puccini's 'La Boheme' who are dying of tubercolosis and still the soprano playing her is belting out her last aria...-___- Weird, I know...but I guess that's why people come to the opera and not the theatre because the two of them are completely different things.
Anyways...the book I was reading. If you're familiar with Mozart's 'Don Giovanni', it's pretty funny how the author explains it. The story is of a dissolute Spanish nobleman who simply cannot live without women, has a considerably frightening list of 'conquests' to his name already and later gets his comeuppence when he tries to utlise his old tricks against the wrong people and ending up being dragged to hell. Extremely melodramatic but many of the melodies in it are simply beautiful. The iconic 'La ci darem la mano' duet between the Don and Zerlina (a peasant girl that the Don ends up seducing on the day of her wedding to another guy...geez, what skills [and cheek], lol) is one of the most famous duets/seductions in opera but the author simply sums it up as "Don Giovanni seduces Zerlina in record time (three minutes and fifteen seconds) with a tune which goes on to seduce the rest of the musical world". XDDDDD
And the opera as a whole? Simply this: "The one where Don Giovanni scored 1965 [women] before the opera even starts and attempts four more before being dragged down to hell". I mean, this opera is over two hours long, nearly three...and contains some complicated scenes, etc but basically it can be summed up in something like that. Brilliant. LOL. The one summing up Tschaikovsky's tragic romance of 'Eugene Onegin' is also hilarious and cutting: "The one where the main character kills his best friend, Tatyana spends a whole night writing a letter to Onegin and all ending in a pathetic tragedy. There is also a lot of ballroom dancing." XDDDD
(*imagines everyone on her f-list looking utterly clueless as to what she is rambling on about*)
Personally, I haven't had had jokes played on me today (yes, HK ppl are sooo likely to play tricks on ppl...-____-) but I've had my own share of laughs when reading this amusing guide to opera in the central library today. Basically, I've never seen a book explain the often hypocritical, confusing and sometimes ridculous world of opera (I mean, seriously, even the famous soprano Kiri Te Kanawa admits operas can be totally unrealistic...for example, in Wagner's 'Tristan and Isolde', the two main characters take HALF AN HOUR to basically die...
That's a LONG time. And also it's slightly ridiculous when you know that characters like Mimi in Puccini's 'La Boheme' who are dying of tubercolosis and still the soprano playing her is belting out her last aria...-___- Weird, I know...but I guess that's why people come to the opera and not the theatre because the two of them are completely different things.
Anyways...the book I was reading. If you're familiar with Mozart's 'Don Giovanni', it's pretty funny how the author explains it. The story is of a dissolute Spanish nobleman who simply cannot live without women, has a considerably frightening list of 'conquests' to his name already and later gets his comeuppence when he tries to utlise his old tricks against the wrong people and ending up being dragged to hell. Extremely melodramatic but many of the melodies in it are simply beautiful. The iconic 'La ci darem la mano' duet between the Don and Zerlina (a peasant girl that the Don ends up seducing on the day of her wedding to another guy...geez, what skills [and cheek], lol) is one of the most famous duets/seductions in opera but the author simply sums it up as "Don Giovanni seduces Zerlina in record time (three minutes and fifteen seconds) with a tune which goes on to seduce the rest of the musical world". XDDDDD
And the opera as a whole? Simply this: "The one where Don Giovanni scored 1965 [women] before the opera even starts and attempts four more before being dragged down to hell". I mean, this opera is over two hours long, nearly three...and contains some complicated scenes, etc but basically it can be summed up in something like that. Brilliant. LOL. The one summing up Tschaikovsky's tragic romance of 'Eugene Onegin' is also hilarious and cutting: "The one where the main character kills his best friend, Tatyana spends a whole night writing a letter to Onegin and all ending in a pathetic tragedy. There is also a lot of ballroom dancing." XDDDD
(*imagines everyone on her f-list looking utterly clueless as to what she is rambling on about*)
