It's about time I started another one of these. I don't really remember when exactly I first heard this Korean tenor. All I know is that I was looking videos of Kyle Ketelsen and came across this video of him and this tenor in the third act of Carmen. I heard the tenor as the title role in Verdi's Don Carlo in the winter of 2010.
I forget how long it's been since I first heard Yonghoon Lee sing, although it may have been about two or three years, I don't know. I have not heard him as much as I would like to, which is a shame because he a is an amazing singer and incredibly hot. He always seems to have a tormented look on his face when he sings, which makes him all the more compelling to watch. I'll admit, when I first heard of him, I thought he was Chinese. Nope, he's from South Korea (heck, that's the only one of the two Koreas that's producing all the good stuff, the northern half sucks).
This guy does not have a website. I really wish he'd get one. It would really be awesome. He's hot and talented. Oh, and I really wish he'd come and perform for Madison. That would be so amazing.
Here's an old show that hasn't been around since God-knows-when! Have you ever heard this phrase before? "The story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent." Those are the opening lines from the 1960's TV show Dragnet. Set in Los Angeles California, the show follows the work of Police Sergeant Joe Friday.
Here are four Episodes:
The LSD Story: The infamous drug has made it's way into the hands of teenage users. Sergeant Friday and his colleagues must figure out a way to stop it from getting out of control.
The Big Explosion: Someone has burglarized a construction company and made off with a ton of dynamite. Someone clearly plans to use it, but who?
The Big Glasses: An elderly woman goes missing. Her husband claims that she left him, but the testimony of their daughter gives Friday plenty of reason to suspect murder.
Big September: A beautiful blonde secretary is found murdered, and a man is found a few blocks away behaving suspiciously.
Few people make cops shows like this anymore. Why can't we have shows that have cops doing paperwork? That's what Friday and his colleagues often do. And much of the show consists of interrogation. But it's thrilling nonetheless. And it just goes to show that often a simple story is needed, not like the flashbacks we get in shows like CSI; and there's also not much in the way for of onscreen violence and blood. The police prefer it that way frankly.
Number 9: Yonghoon Lee (Korean Tenor)
I haven't seen much of him but I have officially decided to add him to the list simply because I'm tired of dithering about waiting for him to make another appearance over the radio. I heard once on the Met broadcasts in the title role of Verdi's Don Carlo back in December of 2010. He is incredibly stunning both vocally and visually (translation: he's sexy). He is also very good in the role of Don Jose in Bizet's Carmen, and as Mario Cavaradossi in Puccnini's Tosca. He has got to perform here in Madison.
Saturday was the simulcast of Riccardo Zandonai's opera inspired by Canto V of the Inferno section of Dante's poem The Divine Comedy. This is the second opera that I have heard about the adulterous lovers Francesca and Paolo, but the first one I have come across that didn't have the Circle Two bookends. Soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek sang the title role. Two seasons ago she sang Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walkure, making this the second opera she has performed at the Met. Tenor Marcello Giordani, who appeared last season in the the title role of Ernani, returned to the met in the role of Francesca's brother-in-law and illicit lover. Baritone Mark Delavan is Giovanni, Francesca's jealous husband. And tenor Robert Brubaker sang the role of Malatestino, Giovanni and Paolo's youngest brother.
Given the amount of details, I'll keep it simple. This opera follows the traditional legend of Francesca and Paolo; namely the "We read one day for pleasure/Of Lancelot how love constrained him/We were alone and without suspicion" storyline.
In Act 1 Francesca is afraid as she prepares for her wedding. Her brother and the bridegroom's father have both decided that rather than having the lame and somewhat deformed Giovanni come to claim his bride, they will send his handsome brother Paolo as his proxy. Oops. Francesca and Paolo fall for each other at first sight. But Francesca is really Giovanni's wife, so she's struggles between duty and lust in Act 2.
During Act 2, there's a battle going one and here is is where we meet the third brother, Malatestino. He has just been wounded in the eye, and he wears a patch later on. Robert Brubaker describes the character as being just plain angry. Which make sense because he's got one older brother who is the powerful one, and one older brother who is the handsome one; so what's he? The youngest son whose not going to inherit anything worth beans due to the utterly ridiculous inheritance laws of the day, so he takes it out on everyone. In this act, Francesca is trying to be a dutiful wife.
Act 3 follows shows Francesca and Paolo giving in to their desires over the book they are reading about adulterous passion between Lancelot and Guinevere. This follows the excuse made by Francesca in Canto V when she is trying to justify her actions as the sinners in Hell blame other people or other things for their sin. She says "Gallehaut was the book and he who wrote it" in that part of the poem. And it shows the lovers kissing after reading the part about Lancelot and Guinevere sharing an illicit kiss.
However, it's only after they read about the kiss that they give into their desires. Francesca tries to resist Paolo at first; she knows it is dangerous and could lead to their downfall. But he persists and she finally gives in.
Act 4 shows Malatestino creeping out Francesca, whom he himself desires, and then he tells Giovanni about the affair between Paolo and Francesca. Giovanni kills the lovers in the very last scene.
There were three things other than Malatestino that really stood out to me. Giovanni struck me as less of a brutish husband and more of an ugly-but-loving husband. Come to think of it, he wasn't really deformed at all. He actually rather attractive. He just happened to walk with a limp. He's got a heart. And Mark Delavan pointed out during the intermission that at the time, if a man's wife was being unfaithful, he was supposed to take action. So it seems he just simply took his duty too far in that matter. After he kills the lovers, he just sits there wondering if there was something else he could have done. He is more of a sympathetic character than people make him out to be.
Also, I like how Zandonai made Francesca a sympathetic character without sugarcoating the fact that her love for Paolo could get her in trouble. We see what happens in Act 4 when she's been seeing Paolo at night for some time now (in real life the affair lasted ten years). She is a frightened and much more skittish woman than in the previous acts. She's terrified when Malatestino tries make advances on her; in the previous act she says it's not his one eye that scares her but the one that sees.
The other thing was Francesca's ladies-in-waiting and her maid. These five women struck me as both supportive of Francesca, and not really helping matters at the same time. They sing and dance and crown her with flowers to celebrate spring, but they don't seem to care too much that their mistress is not being a good wife. They all seem to be too concerned with romances and pleasure, and they are all distrustful of Francesca's husband.
Amazing opera, good music, this one just needs the bookends.
A second grade teacher asks her students where their fathers do for a living. One child says, "My daddy is a doctor." Another kid says, "My daddy is a firefighter." One young boy in the class says, "My daddy plays piano in a whore house." Dead silence. The teacher goes over to the phone and calls the boy's father. "Your son just said that you play piano in a whore house," she says indignantly. "Well," says the boy's father, "I'm really a lawyer, but I figured that would be too embarrassing."
My older brother showed me clips from an old children's TV show that went off the air when I was little. The show was called Square One, and it was a Sesame Street-esque show about teaching children the value and pleasures of math (which I utterly suck at). The clips in question were about a recurring sketch called Mathman; think of it as Pac Man and Number Munchers put together. Mathman must eat all the right numbers or else a sentient tornado named Mr. Glitch will eat him if he's wrong.
There was only one scene from the show that I remembered and that was a scene from a hospital showing a doctor in an operating room cutting a square into two smaller ones. It turned out the scene was from the General Mathpital sketch (a parody of the soap opera General Hospital). The doctor needed to make two squares of the same size from one large square. They got it done (after some confusion I might add).
I have only one question: Would you really trust a doctor with the name Mal Practice? I know it's supposed to be a Punny Name and all that, but still, it sounds weird.
I both love and hate new productions of operas. I love new productions when they do three things: Number 1, they have to fit the story (i.e. the new production of Rigoletto that updates it to 1960's Las Vegas). Number 2, they have to be creative with the sets (The Tyrolean mountains shaped out of huge maps, for example). Number 3, they have to look good. They can simple and abstract, or they can be brilliant and fanciful, but they have to look nice.
I hate new productions that have hideous looking costumes.
And I'm not just expressing a personal preference. I have seen costumes that just looked awful. Dmitri Hvorostovsky did a music video of a song called "Toi et Moi" by contemporary composer Igor Krutoy. The music was good, but Dima's costume made him look like a fangirl version of a Death Eater.
And it looked like just an excuse for him to be shirtless. What's with that? I have also heard of productions that did not fit the story at all. There was a guy in Germany who tried making Mozart's lighthearted romantic comedy The Abduction fro the Seraglio into a blood, guts, and sex squickfest. That doesn't fit at all. And I have also seen sets that are not very creative. I can't name any right off the top of my head right now, but I've seen them.
I'm writing this because the Metropolitan Opera just announced what will be shown next season, and I want to know that the new productions actually work.
