Meanderings of an opera obsessed mind...

I can't sleep...AGAIN.

So what am I doing now? Well, the title pretty much says it all...as for what or who I'm drawing -- at the moment, I really have no idea.

And who knew that opera could be so funny? If you told me a year ago that opera could be comedic, I would have thought you mad. But I'm proved wrong yet again when one watches operas like Le Nozze di Figaro or Cosi and operettas like Die Fledermaus and Die lustige Witwe.

Here I am trying to sketch and listen to Mozart's Cosi fan tutte at the same time and then I get slightly bored and play my copy of the 1996 MET Cosi with TA, Mentzer, Vaness and Hadley (I'm sorry I can't remember the baritone who played Guglielmo...oops). I get to the scene where the two officers are saying farewell to their lady-loves...and I'm giggling non-stop at the the antics the singers get up to. Guglielmo is overacting his 'despair' at leaving, Hadley's body language (he plays Ferrando) clearly tells Guglielmo to get a move on and isn't too keen to deal with his hyperactive and overemotional fiancee (played wonderfully by Susanne Mentzer; definitely one of the most prettiest Cherubinos, Zerlinas and Dorabellas around. Von Stade obviously gets first place over Mentzer for singing but acting-wise, I simply adore Mentzer who is simply adorable when she gets into character). Vaness as Fiordiligi is trying her best to play older sister but also is frightened at the news of her fiancee going away to war while TA, as usual, plays Don Alfonso with all the sly cynicism and charm. What always makes me laugh is when the two couples are tearfully saying their farewells, he's more interested in pouring the sand out of his shoe (the set does indeed have sand since it's set on a pier/beach) XD

And the Allen/Vaness/Mentzer trio of Soave sia il vento is sublime...so is Francisco Araiza's Un' aura amorosa on my Cosi CD. Sometimes I really prefer Araiza to great tenors like Pavarotti or Domingo for some reason. Domingo was basically the first tenor I listened to (when I bought a highlights CD of  Bizet's Carmen during QBS...we were listening to the darn thing in music lessons for some weird reason) but I wasn't really impressed with a tenor's voice until the first time I saw Araiza sing Dalla sua pace on the 1987 Don Giovanni. I liked Jose van Dam (the Belgian bass-baritone) as Escamillo but again, my mind didn't click with baritone voices till the introduction of a particular British baritone as Count Danilo on Youtube. Really, it's all Jeremy Brett's fault for getting me into opera since it was his singing of the English translations of the songs in Die lustige Witwe that got me looking for other singers singing the same thing. XD

Ah, but I've rambled too long...back to sketching!

Gah...apologies for the lack of posting...waaaaaay too exhausted over the past two weeks while getting used to HKU, timetable, people, professors and the idea of very scary coursework deadlines which all seem to clash in October/November...O____O (and I thought A-level deadlines were bad...) Just kidding. ;-)

Ahem...anyways...first of all...two things before I go on about my rant/log about HKU...(and two things that I kinda forgot on their respective days...to my dismay)

1. Happy belated 64th birthday to Sir Thomas Allen whose birthday was on the 10th! (I had thought it was the 12th or the 14th but then realised I got it TOTALLY wrong on both counts...sorry, Sir Thomas...) And yeah, the fact that I'm posting this little tidbit shows that my addiction to his fantastic baritone voice and acting has increased rather worryingly....lol. Long may he live and sing! =)

PS...if you have no idea what on earth he looks like or sounds like...



http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xeND9sRMr9w

...there you go...the link is to one of my favourite Sir Thomas arias (and probably more well known)...'Largo al factotum' from Rossini's The Barber of Seville (Il Barbiere di Siviglia) but his Count Danilo in Lehar's The Merry Widow with Felicity Lott, his Count in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) and not to mention his triumphant Don Giovanni in Mozart's opera of the same name are brilliant as well. [Parts of those performances can also be seen on Youtube] =)

2. The 13th anniversary of Jeremy Brett's passing on September 12th 1995. Yes, kind of weird I know to put two opposite events in the same post but they both happened in the near same time frame...I know this is cliche but in the apt words of Shakespeare: 'Now cracks a noble heart...good night, sweet prince...may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."


Hmm...actually, I now think that mixing up my horrible rant with these two significant events would be callous of me. I'll reserve my rant and put it in another post...lol.