TMSR: Baseball Fever

Here is the follow-up to my rant about Promsie U. This time I will be talking about a kids musical that I was in when I was ten. It is called Sermon on the Mound and it was the first musical I had done. And of all the musicals aimed at kids under age twelve, this was one of the better ones.
         Sermon was written by Celeste and David T. Clydesdale and centers around the Eagles baseball team. They are finishing up spring training and the regular season starts that afternoon. Commenting on the action are sports casters Dizzy Deano and Jackie Rawlings*. The new rookie is a young man named Mac Wire. He is thrilled to be on a professional baseball team, but struggles with his confidence. As the story progresses he learns about putting on the Armor of God and leaning on Christ as his "Head Coach", and that the ones God chooses for His team are the ones who know they cannot do it on their own.

Unlike Promise U, Sermon on the Mound does a much better job both story-wise and with what it intends to accomplish. There are four reasons why I say this.

1) The songs fit the theme better and are integrated a little bit more.
     I counted at least three story songs in Sermon and they feel like real encouragement and not just empty platitudes. Some like "Playing Right Field" are sung by the characters themselves, others are sung by the chorus. But they are much more integrated into the theme and aren't just preachy. "If the LORD is our Head Coach" is a declaration of trust and "The LORD's Prayer" is sung by both the chorus and the team. They feel like part of the story. "The LORD's Prayer" segues beautifully into the song "Home Run", which is probably the tensest song in the whole show.

2) The characters feel real.
    For example, Mac Wire is excited to be playing his first major season game, but is also dubious as to whether or not he can do it. His character is very well fleshed out and I find him relatable even after eighteen years. The hot dog vendor is the one who gets to sing "Playing Right Field". He is one of the sorts of characters I love to see in a story; the working-class guy at a low-paying job who is very wise and encouraging. We get a few one-off guys like a lady named Ruth Babe and Assistant Coach Goodman. But even there, they're not just throwing platitudes, they still sound like people.

3) Character conversions are treated with respect.
    "Casey Back at Bat" may be one of the most blatant pieces of fan-fiction ever written, but it is also one of the best depictions of a changed life in any of these kids musicals. We learn that Casey's pride was what caused him to strike out not just once but twice, and evidently  his career suffered after that. Eventually he decided enough was enough and accepted Christ, and now he's making a comeback with the Eagles. He's even seen helping his teammate out. This isn't just a case of everything is hunk-dory, but an example of a changed life. And when you're writing Christian musicals for kids, this is absolutely critical.

4) The overall message is well-handled.
    Sermon's main theme is spiritual warfare using the analogy of a baseball game. Sure, the baseball uniform, glove and bat may be curious stand-ins for the Armor of God, but as a visual aid, it's not bad. In fact, Sermon treats the issue of spiritual warfare with surprising respect, and gives us the lesson that the best players are those who know that they cannot do anything without God's help, and spend the most time with their 'Head Coach". 

So I've shown what makes a Christian kids musical good and what makes it bad. To sum it up, the ones that are good are the ones that treat the chosen topic with respect, have a good story and characters, and make make sure the songs fit. The ones that suck are ones that have little to no story (or turn it boring), lame characters, and are both preachy and disrespectful of the chosen topic. Sermon of the Mound will always be better than Promise U. Although you could just do what Sister Wynona Carr did and just make one song about it.

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 *I don't know if that is a reference to either Jackie Robinson or J.K. Rowling. 

**Something I myself have only come to understand within the past decade.

TMSR: Rewriting THE MAGIC FLUTE

The Magic Flute may be one of Mozart's greatest operas, but it is riddled with so many plot holes that it's hard to understand. The Masonic elements compound the problem even further. Seriously, how are we supposed to find something if we have no idea what it is we're looking for?

There is a lot of information that is not present. Why does Tamino immediately believe the guard's word that the Queen of the Night is a liar? This one can be solved rather easily. During the opening scene when Tamino is attacked, Sarastro can secretly be the one who kills the serpent while the Ladies think it is them. While the women are distracted by the handsome prince, Sarastro takes the monster's ears. Later at the Temple, the guard shows him the serpent's ears, proving that the Queen has not told the truth. Otherwise Tamino comes off as an easily led moron.

Sarastro needs to be more than just some blandly benevolent nonentity who hardly does anything.I talked before about a graphic novel version that suggested that Sarastro stole Pamina because he neglected the Queen and didn't want his daughter to suffer because his mistake. So what if this is a divorce situation being fueled by a lack of communication? What if Pamina is caught in the middle of their quarrel? What if the Queen wants to kill Sarastro because he has broken her heart? 
       There is also the business with Monostatos. Sarastro really needs to do more than just give the creep fifty lashes for attacking Pamina. Monostaos needs to be sent away completely or even executed. Is Sarastro loathe to take another person's life, even when his own or someone else's is in danger? Or is he just too soft-hearted?  

If Mozart hadn't thrown in all that Masonic mysticism and ritual I think the story would be perfect. I can only take so much of the constant utterances of "Oh, we can't tell you yet," and "You're not good enough yet," before I want to punch Sarastro or one of the priests. Sarastro needs to be clear on what needs to be done from the get go.

There are many different ways to fix the story. These are just a few.

HOME ALONE: The Classic Christmas Farce

And Now For Something Totally Different.

Home Alone is a film that I was not expecting I would enjoy. I've seen clips before of the two villains getting their butts handed to them on a silver platter, but I never saw the whole thing.
     The story centers around eight-year-old Kevin McCallister who gets left behind by mistake when his family leaves on a Christmas vacation to France. While his mother frantically tries to get plane home, Kevin faces off against two thieves, Harry and Marv, who are trying to burglarize the McCallister house. The result is some of the most iconic mayhem in cinema history.     
The only real beef I have with it is at the very beginning when the whole family is treating Kevin like dirt; older brother Buzz in particular was completely unlikable. But this is easily overlooked once Kevin realizes he misses his absent family. To paraphrase Spike Jones, people always hurt the ones they care about. Kevin learns this lesson when he meets his misunderstood older neighbor in a church on Christmas Eve.

Kevin himself is a lot of fun to watch. His adventures are every child's wish-fulfillment fantasies about what it's like to have adult responsibilities and to defend yourself from people who want to hurt you. We feel his frustration with his family and his pain when he realizes how much he misses them. And we're cheering him on the whole time as he takes on Harry and Marv.

The best part of the movie, though, is of course Harry and Marv, known as The Wet Bandits for their habit of leaving the water running in the houses they rob. They are delightfully cocky and overconfident, like two live action versions of Wile E. Coyote from Looney Toons. And just like the cartoon canine, they get their fannies kicked at every turn, except with someone else's traps and not their own. 

And of course I cannot forget the score. John Williams' music for Home Alone may not be as easily recognizable as the music for Star Wars, Indiana Jones, E.T., Harry Potter, Superman, or Jaws, but it is nonetheless beautiful. I would almost call it underrated. Somewhere in My Memory is a magnificent tribute to what the family ought to be. It is a song full of longing, passion, and love. It is also the fourth song I know of that Maestro Williams has written for film.  

On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a 12. See it.

TMSR: YOU KNOW NOTHING, VAL DICTORIAN!

I am going to rant now about a musical that I was in when I was eleven-years-old. Most people will not have heard about this one because it is written for kids who are either in home-school groups or big church groups.

This musical was written by Kathie Hill and is titled Promise U. Ms. Hill's work tends to be okay at best (at least from my own experience), and at worst it is simply glurge. And Promise U falls hard into that second category. What a piece of drek! There are five reasons why I say this:

1) The plot does not exist.
    The setting is at a college called Promise University and the whole student body has gathered for a pep rally/study hall Cram n Jam. They are learning about "Precious Promises to Famous Followers of the Past 2,000 Years" or P2F2P2K. Leading the group is the cocky DJ Stan "The Man" and a sexy nerd of a cheer captain Valarie Dictorian. They go through seven so-called Famous Followers, do a cheer after every song and it all culminates in Stan becoming a Christian with everything all hunk-dory at the end. 
    That's it, there's no conflict or anything. All it is is just talking about various people from history and a promise that applies to them. There's no beginning, no middle, and no real end either.

2) The characters are shallow.
     They are little more than cartoony mouthpieces uttering platitudes in stained glass attitudes. A new character comes in every time another "Famous Follower" (oh, give me a break!) is introduced. These characters are not really given a personality so much as they are given a quirk, and these quirks get old really fast. For example, Dee Caffeinate's only trait is her coffee obsession, and Val Dictorian comes off as a condescending know-nothing-know-it-all. 

3) The evangelism is all too easy. 
    Stan admits he's in over his head at the end, but it comes out of nowhere and doesn't feel real. All he has seen and heard was what everyone else was chanting. His character is so flat that I do not believe his life has been changed after accepted Christ. No one talks about dying to yourself and giving up whatever idols are in your life, something that is essential to the Christian life.

4) THE Promise is left out.
    The "Precious Promises" are true, but no mention is made at all of the promise that was made in Genesis Chapter 3 and continues through the end of Revelation; the promise of Christ's sacrifice and resurrection and the hope of eternal life with Him in Heaven. The promises are reduced to cutesy sentimentalism that do not require sacrifice of anything. This is a big "No" when writing Christian pieces. 

5) The Followers were treated without respect.
     If you're going to do a case-study of various Christians throughout history, then the topic needs to be treated seriously. This is not the case in Promise U, instead the Followers are treated with more sentimentality than respect. This is particularly bad with the case of Pocahontas. I'm not going to knock her faith just because it sounded it like the writer was merely speculating. But if she was in fact a strong woman of faith, then she needs more respect than just the Christian version of a Disney Princess!

 In short, Promise U was garbage. It is disrespectful towards Christians of the past, is insulting to kids' intelligence, and it had nothing to offer but preachy nonsense. 

Met Broadcasts

The Met Radio Season started last weekend but I didn't turn it on as it was Akhenaten Phillip Glass, and I like Glass' music about a much as I like the news Star Wars movies (i.e. not at all). So I will turn it on tomorrow, they'll be broadcasting The Queen of Spades, which I like. 

I have not been able to enjoy them as much as I used to because my two jobs require that I be at work on Saturdays. But I still love them a lot, just not when they play operas that I hate. 

 

The Mad Soprano Rants: Love In Vain/Despairing Songs

I Don't Know, But...has two recent blog posts about what he refers to as "evil songs". These include songs like "Sweet Dreams", "Owner of a Lonely Heart?", etc.. 

I am not surprised that these songs are described as evil, because quite frankly they are. The thesis of "Sweet Dreams" is that love is a lie and people are only looking to use and abuse people. The music is ghastly as are the lyrics. It sounds like someone has been so badly hurt by a luckless relationship that they have given up on ever knowing love. 
        "Owner of a Lonely Heart" is even more disturbing with the line "Better than the owner of a broken heart". If I may steal from the recent opera The Enchanted Island, hearts that love all will be broken. You cannot love without risking pain. C.S. Lewis once noted that the only place where you are safe from the pains of love is Hell. I myself have heard it said that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
         I have sung many songs about unrequited/spurned love, but they were more about how the narrator couldn't go on living without the beloved or dying on a kiss. They never crossed the line by saying that love was a lie or that it was better to never love at all. People need to know that they are loved, and it starts with one person making the decision to love someone. This is not limited to just romantic love, but to friendship and familial love as well. 

Granted one person hearing "Sweet Dreams" might say, "Right on," while another says, "I love a sad song." But it's still very sickening to hear such nasty and wicked lyrics oveer the radio. 
          

New Statue

He would have been fifty-seven today, had cancer not taken him in 2017. It still hurt to think about it. 

A statue of Dmitri Hvorostovsky was unveiled in Novodevichy Cemetery today. It's amazing how much of an icon he is over in Russia. But here in the U.S., he's hardly known at all unless you're a Russian immigrant or an opera geek. 
        I really have no words to describe just how much Dima meant to me, but it was through his performance over the radio of Eugene Onegin that I fell in love with opera to being with. With that dark velvety voice, that piercing dark eyes, and that white mane, what women wouldn't be swept off her feet by him? 

What makes his loss all the more painful is that he was fifty-five when he passed. Now that shouldn't be too unusual, but we all had the hope that Dima would sing until he was eighty. So it does feel like he went too soon.

Art Is Calling For Me

I really wish I could find a full synopsis of The Enchantress, because I want the context for this song. It was written in 1911 but the lyrics are such that I would swear it was written by the musical comedienne Anna Russel. 

The song is your typical "I Want More" piece sung by a young lady (Stellina) who has everything but is not satisfied. She wants to be the next Adelina Patti and sing on the stage. Lines such as "I hate society,/ I hate propriety!" highlight the lady's rebelliousness. As I do not know the story, I would say it is open to interpretation whether or not this is a woman with genuine talent who could conceivably make it on the stage, or else a wannabe who's just bored with high society. 
      As it was written in 1911, most of the references are to singers who were around at the time (Luisa Tetrazzini, Nellie Melba), and who are unfortunately not as well-known in our culture today unless you're an opera geek. 

The music is surprisingly easy—relatively speaking, of course—but it is also very high, going up to a high B-flat. But then this piece also allows for a lot of ornamentation. Given what this song is about, it works perfectly. In my own practice, I have ended the song on an E-flat about High C. I have heard other recordings of sopranos going into cadenzas. 

Art Is Calling For Me is fast becoming a favorite of mine, if for no other reason than it is fun. This is a song that I would recommend to other sopranos, and maybe even the daring mezzo.

Double Whammy 2

Two great opera singers died this past week, soprano Jessye Norman at 74, and tenor Marcello Giordani at 56. I had only seen Ms. Norman in a few clips of Die Walkure, but I remember seeing Signor Giordani in the encore simulcast of Verdi's Ernani in 2012. But they were both really awesome singers who were adored by opera lovers everywhere. 

They will be greatly missed.

 

Church Music

My church has two different kinds of services on Sunday. One does contemporary styles, the other is more traditional; while it does not have a choir, does do the older hymns that (mostly) everyone knows and loves. I prefer the more traditional service, and I have been singing for it for the past few months.

The reasons why I prefer the traditional style are as follows:
1) Being a soprano, I am most comfortable when I can use my range. Granted most hymns don't go higher than "E" Natural, but the hymns allow for more freedom of range than the more contemporary styles of music. The latter usually features sudden octave jumps that tax my upper register. When it's not that, it's taxing on my lower register.

2) I can hear the congregation singing in the traditional service. I don't get that in the contemporary one. The music for contemporary service is too overpowering for me, I can hardly hear myself during worship! But there is only one piano in the traditional one, plus whatever other instruments people on worship team bring (we've got our own brass quartet!). 

3) The contemporary style makes worship feel less like worship and more like some popular concert, especially with the loud drums and emphasis on emotion. Making things worse is when worships leaders decide to to jazz up old hymns. Now that in itself is not bad, but the congregation has to be able to sing along. I remember getting so frustrated when the worship team did funky things to the notes and rhythm of a particular hymn that I shouted at them to leave the coloratura to Joyce DiDonato.
           With the traditional style, there is less noise to distract me. Maybe the occasional guy clapping on the off-beat, but that's only during the refrain of "Standing on the Promises" and that's only one guy.

In short, I find the traditional style of church music easier to sing. I know others will have differing opinions on this, and that's fine. I just find that contemporary music in worship gives me a major case of sensory overload, and that is not something I want in worship.

Shockers

I have taken my boyfriend to see three operas at Madison Opera and two of them really shocked him. These were Carmen (natch) and Rusalka.

Carmen is shocking by the very nature of the story. Carmen forces herself onto Jose never mind what consequences might follow. She is obsessed with power and revels in using other people to get it. In our day she's seen as some kind of champion for freedom, although I find that to be rather dubious. What kind of person goes out of her way to use people in order to maintain her "freedom"? 
          Although I had warned my boyfriend of this one, it still left him reeling; it took him two days to finally talk about it. I guess he could not believe that such a nasty person could exist. And Carmen is an enigma, both in and out of the story. The premiere caused a scandal, which only served to make it more famous. The music is iconic, and is Bizet's absolute best.

Rusalka is a tragic fairy tale where the water nymph tries and fails to win the love of a mortal prince and becomes a deadly siren. While not as famous as Carmen, it does have Song to the Moon, one of Dvořák's greatest musical masterpieces. 
          The ending made my boyfriend want to rewrite the ending of The Little Mermaid (which the opera is based off of). I for one did not find it a shocker, but the third act made me cry. It is painful watching a someone try so hard to achieve the goal only for it the evade them. And nothing is more painful than becoming a spirit of death.

 

Liberty Corrupted

Simon Keenlyside argued that Don Giovanni is thinking about liberty. Maybe. However, Giovanni's idea of liberty seems to be ruining the marriage prospects of as many women as he can. Freedom isn't freedom if you're going out of your way to hurt people.
          

Reviews

I need to do some reviews of productions of operas I have seen but never wrote about. I need to do that again.This Sunday I will do one of Don Giovanni, but this time I will not bother with a play-by-play like I did before. Because this was three years ago, I will instead focus on things that were said by various hosts and singers as it's clear that they said things that sound a little odd. But I will also look at whether or not the production itself worked. 

STAR WARS TRIVIAL PURSUIT DVD Is Cool But Shallow

I'm deviating from music to write a review of a board game I played with my boyfriend yesterday. Star Wars Trivial Pursuit DVD is another classic Tie-in version of a classic game, in this case Trivial Pursuit. 
     The idea is simple, you have the board and the various tokens, cards, and wedges. Whichever color spot you land on you have to answer a question in that category. If you land on one of the wedge spots, you get a wedge if you answer that category question correctly. And once you have all the wedges in the slots you move back to the starting point.
       This version includes as DVD which makes the game a little more tricky. It includes a time limit for how long you have to answer the question. Some of the questions aren't even questions, but visual puzzles. It uses such things pixelation, close-up shots, sound distortions, even some concept art to see if you can guess the character, vessel, or scene. Once you hit past a certain point for each category, you just use a card. Once you get back to the starting point after collecting all the wedges, you are given a final question to determine who wins.
    
On the one hand, it is a fun idea and it challenges you to think on your feet. At the same time, it does feel gimmicky. Of course it's nor so gimmicky you can't enjoy it, but it's still an issue. 
    Unfortunately, while the questions and puzzles on the DVD are very creative, the questions on the cards are very easy---especially for someone like me who knows the hexology by heart (Okay there were a few that were about nitpicky details that I could not remember, but still).
   
  I remember playing a plain version of Star Wars Trivial Pursuit when I was nineteen. This version may have had its own goofy gimmick---instead of rolling a die, you had an R2-D2 figure that gave you a random number between 1 and 6 when you pressed his dome---but the questions on the cards were more challenging. There were even cards dedicated to entire characters, planets, objects, etc.. I remember one card being entirely devoted to Oola, and all she gets in ROTJ is a swan song before being thrown into the rancor pit! I think it worked a lot better than the one with the DVD.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give this game a 6. It's a very creative idea and is a lot of fun to play. But it doesn't quite measure up to expectations. I think it wants to be both a board game and a video game at the same time. If so, then I would suggest instead of making it a physical board game with a DVD included, they should go the Mario Party route and make it a full-fledged video game that you play on a console. That way you can have the challenge of moving around the board while answering some very creative trivia questions.

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UPDATE: It's less shallow is you use the cards for the none-wedge squares and save the video questions for the wedge squares.

Who Knew Coloratura Could Be So Easy

Don't get me wrong, coloratura singing requires a lot skill and technique, and is not for everyone. Some of these pieces require a skilled virtuoso who has had a successful singing career for the past two and half decades at least. But, on the other hand, some of them are actually quite easy, so long as you know what you're doing.

I have found that many coloratura arias are easier to sing than some others that don't have as much vocal decoration. I find it actually a bit tougher to sing arias that have many long sustained notes, because it requires more vibrato and breath support to keep from going flat (I'm looking at you, "Im abendroth"!). 
      With arias that have more moving notes with long ascending and descending passages, suddenly I have more freedom of movement in my voice. Suddenly I don't need to hold onto a single note for more than two beats. Now I move more freely vocal wise. 

Yes, part of it is practice. The other part is just making sure you've got everything in place. And the rest of it whether or not you can keep you breath going. 

The Opera That I Both Love And Hate

Mozart's opera Die Zauberflöte---more commonly known by it's English title The Magic Flute---is both one of my favorites and one of my least favorites at the same time. The opera is best described as an enchanting mess as it has amazing music but the story and most of the characters are nonsensical.

First, the cons:
I know I'll get some flak for this, but Sarastro is the lowest part of the opera. He is uninteresting and his arias are not memorable in my opinion. They're supposed to noble-sounding and gentle, but they are not Mozart's best work in my opinion. And Sarastro himself is twenty flavors of boring. He has no real character beyond that of platitude-spewing generic benevolent guy who doesn't really do anything. He has no trouble kicking out the Queen and her cohorts at the end. And he doesn't really have a motive for stealing Pamina other than her mother is evil, which unfortunately makes him come off as a total jerk. 
      Now, I remember there being a graphic novel adaptation of the opera. While it amounted to little more than just another generic fantasy story, it did try to make Sarastro a more believable character. Sarastro says at one point that the Queen was in fact his own wife whom he neglected and hence why she turned evil. So you could make the argument that in the opera he is motivated by regret. But Mozart doesn't provide enough info. 

As for Tamino and Pamina, they are pretty generic. Their music is decent, I guess. "Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön" is a pretty song about falling in love a portrait, and as whiny as "Ach, ich fühl's" sounds in the text, it is pretty in its own way. But Tamino switches sides without any questions and has no trouble getting through the ordeals. While many sopranos have argued that Pamina is a strong character for taking action and "rescuing herself" (they have to if they're trying to play the role), she doesn't have a personality. And when the two are married at the end, it feels like filler, without any of the heartwarming elements present in Papageno and Papagena's duet. 

The story itself is full of Masonic ritual and symbolism which I think brings the story down considerably. The whole business of "We can't tell you until you've been initiated properly," is very counter-intuitive; how are you supposed to find the truth when you have no idea what it's supposed to be? Now if there was far less cryptic mysticism and much clearer reasons for why the characters need to do the things they need to do, it would work a lot better.

Now to the pros:
The best music in The Magic Flute---heck the best moments of the opera itself---belong to Papageno and the Queen of the Night. Papageno is a bird-catcher with two magnificent arias and even the most beautiful love duet in opera. He owns every scene he's in, whether it's when he brags about killing the serpent or when he's about to hang himself in despair. His two arias "Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja" ,and "Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen" are some of the most memorable pieces that Mozart has ever written. He is meant to be the comic relief and a foil for Tamino, but considering that Papageno has the harder challenge, I think he is the real protagonist. He is much more real than all the other characters. And when he finally gets his Papagena in the end, I feel like I'm truly happy for them. They sing about how happy they are to be together at last and the children they want---not to mention all the chicken-like chanting of "Pa-Pa-Papageno!"---is what really sells it for me.
         Also Tamino and Pamina's best moments are with Papageno; Pamina when Papageno comes to tell her of Tamino and help her escape, and Tamino when they first meet and when they are undergoing the Ordeal of Silence. The way Papageno plays off the other characters is amazing.

The Queen of the Night does not get much screen time (twelve minutes in total), but she has two unforgettable arias, these being "O Zittre Nicht" and "Der Hölle Rache". Allthough she send Prince Tamino off to rescue her daughter, she is supposed to be the villain. But she is not on stage long enough for there to be much info about her character. She hates Sarastro for getting her husband's money and taking her daughter (whom she abandons out of spite when Pamina will not kill Sarastro), other than that there isn't much to her. However, her music is so awesome I don't really care about her flat character. Forget her motivation, enjoy the vocal fireworks!

So yes, I love Die Zauberflöte and I hate it at the same time. While I can't stand Sarastro and the young lovers are one-dimensional, the music is good and Papageno and the Queen of the Night make it worth going to see. Just ignore the confusing symbolism and listen to the Bird-Catcher and his bride making out.

Practicing at Home

One of the most annoying things about trying to practice at home is that I tense up so darn easily.  At my lesson I'm more relaxed, but trying to be my own judge of sound is a pain and I push too much.  This is especially true if I have the music right in front of me.  Maybe I just overthink the issue to easily.

New Lessons

I have ended my time at Prairie Music and Arts in Sun Prairie and have moved my business to Mavin Vocal Arts in Madison.  While PMA was fun, I am also twenty eight-years-old and can handle Bellini and Donzetti fairly well.  PMA is primarily for children, so it feels awkward at recitals to be singing "O Mio Babbino Caro" whole the other students perform simple stuff by Nancy Faber.  I have also moved my lesson time to Monday mornings as I need Thursday evenings open for work.

Rarely do I blog about my own musical stuff, not even last year when I did a solo recital.  Part of it has to do with being distracted, the other part has to do with being in a creative funk with this blog.  But since I didn't want it to just sit there unused, I will be making an attempt to blog about the stuff I'm doing music-wise.  There will of course be some other things as well, but I'll try to keep it about music as much as possible. 

Norman, Coordinate!

I get that the folks at Madison Opera in their production of Rusalka were trying to imply that the heroine was dangerous from the get-go by showing her during the prelude as a jilted woman drowning herself, but all that seems to do is make a plot-hole.  Why does she suddenly want to become human again?  She is described the Water Gnome's daughter.  There was nothing in the libretto that suggested that she was originally a suicide.  Can someone please give an explanation?  

Also, why does Ježibaba take the shoes?  I get that the knife is mentioned later, but does she just take the shoes as trophies?  It makes no sense. 

THE LEGO MOVIE 2 Outshines The First One

Oh man, where to begin with this movie!  this film was just superb.  This review does contain spoilers, so watch out.  

When I heard that the film featured characters inspired by the mini-figures from the girly LEGO Friends and "Elves" toylines, I was so sure that they were going to blow it and go down one of those lame, overdone, phony-baloney  "Ideal Beauty vs. Regular People" plot lines.  But they didn't and for that I am thankful. 

At the end of the first film, creatures from Duplo appear and with them some girly UFOs.  Emmet offers the heart of friendship and the Duplo creature eats it, sparking a conflict that lasts five years destroying Bricksburg and creating a post-apocalyptic wasteland.  Emmet is still as upbeat and perky as always, but is troubled by visions of a cataclysm called "Armomageddon". 
       In the real world Finn's younger sister Bianca has been taking some of his toys out of the basement into her own room (hence the post apocalyptic setting).  In the LEGO world a general from the Systar System comes in and kidnaps Emmet's friends Lucy, Batman, and Unikitty and also takes the pirate Metalbeard and a spaceman named Benny.  Once inside the Systar System, the five are greeted by the shape-shifting Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi who's a subtle as a brick and no one can tell if she is evil or not.  She wants to marry Batman.
     Emmet builds a ship and goes to rescue his friends but gets stuck in an asteroid field on the other side of a dimensional gate.  He is nearly smashed when he is saved by the tough-as-nails Rex Dangervest.  He agrees to help Emmet get to the Systar System.  And time is running out our heroes as Armamageddon is getting closer.  

The only downside this film has is that it was pretty predictable where the plot was going; something happens that triggers Armamageddon and the inhabitants of Duplo and the rest of the Systarians were never were evil at all, they were just very bad at communication (kids usually are).  Armamageddon is---of course---the mother punishing her squabbling children by confiscating their toys. And of course we can all see the two kids finally putting their differences aside and coming together.  

But the sheer predictability of the plot was outweighed by the good stuff in the film.  The first movie touched on the idea of Following the Instructions vs. Building Whatever You Want.  While it was a good film, the love triangle and the overdone message weighed the movie down.  Here, the story was about siblings learning how to play with each other.  And it pulled it off magnificently.  Finn is a young teenager in this film and his sister Bianca looks like she is in the second grade.  Finn wants to go for more dark and gritty "mature" stuff, Bianca likes pretty stuff.  this is represented by Apocolypseburg and the Systar System respectively.  
       The inhabitants of Apocolysburg are your stereotypical hardened gruff guys with the gruff taken up to eleven, with even the animals acting like over-the-top tough guys from a Bruce Willis movie.  The Systarians are very girly, even the men, much like characters from chick flicks (one guy is a parody of a Twilight vampire with glittery hair and a love of wearing women's jeans).  The Systerians may seem tough and unfriendly at first, but it is later revealed that they didn't fully understand the Apocolyseburgians' tough and brooding attitudes.  Just before the climax, they are finally able to understand each other. 
   
The other big theme is the difference between growing up and growing hardened.  And this is explored through the character of Rex Dangervest.  This guy appears to be an expy of Owen Grady from Jurassic World with a little bit of Dash Rendar from the Star Wars Expanded Universe for good measure.  He encourages Emmet to "toughen up" but an unfortunate side effect is that he becomes a big jerk in the process.  I was taken aback, though, when it was revealed that not only was he the villain, but he is also an evil version of Emmet from the future (and thus has disrupted the time-space continuum something awful*).  He was abandoned under a washing machine and wants to trigger Armamageddon on purpose just to get revenge.  And the climax occurs when Emmet destroys the temple cake (Finn in real life punching down Bianca's LEGO creation).  But Emmet comes to his senses and defeats his wicked alter ego.  
        
The shape-shifting Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi is the most curious character I have ever seen in a film.  She is delightfully unsubtle, with her hammy little song about how she is So-Not-An-Evil-Queen.  The crazy part is that she is absolutely right!  It's just that she really sucks at communication.  Despite the writers throwing in some ambiguity (her evil laughter devolving into real laughter when her talking banana friend keeps tripping on his own peel), her interactions with Batman made it pretty clear that there was some real affection there.  What surprised me, though was that she turns out the VERY SAME HEART THAT EMMET GAVE THE DUPLO ALIENS!  Okay, I knew that she was secretly good all along, but being the very heart that Emmet made in the first place?  That caused my brain to explode. 

The other characters were fun too.  Lucy a.k.a. Wildstyle has the biggest journey, learning the hard way that you may think you'd wish for someone to be tougher, but it may not be what you truly want, or even what is best.  Lucy tries to resist the glittery cheer of Systar, and in particular the demands of the mini-doll Sweet Mayhem.  Mayhem herself is forty seven flavors of delightful in this movie, acting as the right-hand gal of Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi.  Lucy and Mayhem fight before the climax, and it's afterwards that the truth comes out.  And seeing Lucy finally able to show more of her softer side was pure gold. It was also lovely seeing Mayhem bond with Benny the Spaceman (she is a spacegal after all).  Mayhem also has a little spaceship that bears a mild resemblance to the one from 3, 2, 1, Penguins!. 
      Unikitty had less of a role in this film than she did in the first movie.  But that doesn't stop her form owning every scene she's in.  Batman gets to soften up a lot in this movie; seeing the gruff, brooding Gotham superhero enjoying a back massage or even willingly proposing to Watevra was so awesome.  You have the usual array of cameos (Gandalf, Justice League, historical figures, etc.), and it doesn't feel out of place.

Definitely a 10/10 score on this film!  The plot is mildly predictable, but that ends up being insignificant.  It teaches an invaluable lesson about understanding and communicating, and that being tough and being mature are not the same thing.  The characters were likeable, bringing back characters from the previous film along with introducing some brand new ones.  

Highly recommended. 
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*Stolen from the Nodwick adventure It's a Wonderful Afterlife! by Aaron Williams.

Shattered Brain

 

  

My mind has been officially blown. 

In Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment (The Daughter of the Regiment) Marie is an orphan girl who was raised from infancy by a French army regiment.  She is what is known as a vivandière, a woman who is attached to the regiment doing such things as taking care of the mess.  Having been raised by soldiers, Marie is pretty rough around the edges.  She falls in love with the Tyrolian peasant Tonio, who joins the regiment in hopes of being with her.  But the Marquise de Berkenfield, claiming to be the girl's long-lost aunt, takes Maire away.  Of course everything is resolved with a comical plot twist worthy of Gilbert and Sullivan.  

 Why do I have two different sopranos pictured here?  Well, because Pretty Yende, the lady sang Marie in today's performance, is really giving Natalie Dessay a run for her money.  I don't know why, but Yende's Marie came off a bit more on the sassy side than Dessay did, though I can't quite put my finger on why.  Now there really is no comparing these two formidable women.  But I'm just going to say that Yende is probably the only woman who match Dessay in the role of Marie. 

REBECCA: A Surreal Story Of High Society And Dark Secrets

Someone gave me a copy of Daphne du Maurier's Gothic novel Rebecca many years ago, but I only just got around to reading it last week.  I finished it yesterday and boy, is it ever an intense read!  

The heroine is an unnamed woman in her early twenties who is working as a lady's companion for an overbearing woman when she meets the wealthy widower Maxim de Winter.  They marry after knowing each other only two weeks, but their marriage gets off to a very rough start to say the least.  Even before they get started, the second Mrs. de Winter finds herself in the shadow of Maxim's first wife, Rebecca, who was reported to have died the previous year in a boating accident.  Making things worse is the fact that the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, has turned the whole of Manderley into a shrine to Rebecca.  The young bride becomes determined to find out who her late predecessor was and what  secrets were kept from the public. The tension comes to a head at the annual ball and on the beach.

Rebecca can be described as a ghost story without the paranormal.  There may not be anything supernatural going on, but the lingering presence of the dead Rebecca qualifies Manderley as a haunted house.  This adds a level of surrealism to the story, with memories of Rebecca popping out of every nook and cranny.  The morning room and her bedroom have been kept the way she left them.  Mrs. Danvers not shuts up about Rebecca.  People make comments to the bride about how she is not like Rebecca, leading the shy and naive woman to think that she is being judged and can never live up to their expectations.  The very memory of Rebecca interferes with the bride's relationship with Maxim, causing the new Mrs. de Winter thinks her husband does not love her at all.  

I don't really have a quibble with the book, but it's not for the faint of heart.  The climactic scenes at the ball and the beach and are very shocking to say the least, and the suspense can be too much at times, especially if you're a sensitive type.  But I would still say give it a read.  In fact, I would highly recommend Rebecca to anyone who loves romance and suspense. 



   
      
 

THE MEG Can't Tell A Story Worth Beans

This film cannot make up its mind what it wants to be.  Is it a black comedy, is it a thriller, is it a horror movie, what in blazes is it? 

The plot is as follows: Scientists working at a remote research facility off the coast of China discover an unknown region below a gas cloud at a depth below that of the Mariana Trench, and soon get attacked by a mysterious creature Miocene and Pliocene Epochs.  Disgraced diver Jonas Taylor (Statham) comes out of hiding and goes down to rescue the team and finds out that the creature is Megalodon, a giant predatory shark that lived between 23 to 2.6 million years ago and died out before the last Ice Age.  Spoiler Alert, the shark begins attacking and eating people and racks up a fairly sizable body count before it is finally defeated.  

Now I have to give credit where it is due, the shark is shown at closer to its natural size than other films have done in the past (see here for more on that topic).  Even when one appears that's seventy five feet long rather than sixty, it still looks more natural and less like a photo-shopped Great White. The So-Bad-It's-Good movie Shark Attack 3: Megalodon had it so huge that it could swallow a good-sized life raft in one go.  Here, it's just large enough to tangle with a giant squid. 
   The fights with the shark itself are pretty thrilling and awesome--in a stupid kind of way.  The climatic scene, for example, features Taylor chasing the shark through through rocky tunnels before stabbing it in the eye.  That was very well done.  And it was unnerving seeing a diver in a shark cage get stuck in the animal's maw (yeesh!).  The humor is also good at times, with the best moments being references to Shark Week. 
        
However, that's where my praise for this movie ends.  The movie's problems are as follows: The humor may be good, but the shark kills unintentionally fall into this category, being treated as a punchline rather than horrifying.  This is not helped by the fact that the film glosses the deaths over for the most part. 
        Making things worse is the surprising lack of gore.  This may seem strange coming from  someone who doesn't like gratuitous amounts of blood and guts in a movie, but I found that to be a disappointment.   I enjoyed Jaws despite all the blood and guts, but then again there's bound to be blood whenever a shark attacks someone.  Apparently it was originally planned to be an R-rated bloodbath of a movie, but there was some major executive meddling and it got demoted to PG-13.  If they had stuck with the original idea, I think they would have had something truly terrifying.  
       The Meg's biggest problem is the characters.  They are a huge part of the reason the movie seems to be unable to make up its mind about what it is.  With the possible exception of Statham, most of the actors don't seem to know what they're supposed to be doing exactly, and just walk around with wide-eyed expressions of confused nervousness.  But the worst offenders are Jonas ex-wife Lori (Jessica McNamee) and his girlfriend Suyin (Li Binging)  Lori has little to no facial expressions beyond Stone-Faced Zombie and Stepford Wife Smiling even when she takes a screwdriver to midriff; and Suyin goes around looking like she's scared of everything.
       And Neither Lori nor Suyin had any depth at all.  This movie is based off of a novel, and in the novel Jonas' ex-wife is a power-mad woman seeking publicity.  In the film, she's blandly amiable.  There's mention that Jonas and Lori were bad couple, but hwy is never explained.  The writers wasted a perfectly good opportunity for some good drama.  
       I saw this film with my boyfriend and he wanted Suyin to just die, for which I do not blame him.  Suyin is the worst love interest I have ever seen in a story.  There's no chemistry between her or Jonas; their love scenes are little more than shy glances with no real emotion behind them.  She's a terrible mother as well.  She lets her daughter Meiying (Sophie Cai) have free run of the research station, and doesn't seem to discipline her when she should (do you really want your eight-year-old to be saying the word "a-hole"?).  And she's just plain dumb, trying to shark dive with the Megalodon, in a cylindrical cage.  Sorry, but Nigel Marven's design was better. 

Overall rating: 4 1/2 out 10.  Fun action, bad characters.  Goofy humor, sloppy story. 

LA TRAVIATA Production

Yes, this is a few weeks late, but I must say this anyway because I have let this blog just sit forever and three days.  I won't do a usual review, but say whether or not the production works. 

The Met's new production of La Traviata uses the Four Seasons set up to tell the story.  Act 1 takes place in spring, Act 2 in summer, Act 3 in autumn, and Act 4 in winter.  Using musical cues in the prelude, Micheal Meyers decided to start with Violetta's death bed and have the action be a whirl of memories flashing before her very eyes.  

Does this work?  Yes, it does.  It has a slightly surreal quality to it.  There is a moment at the beginning of Act 4 when Alfredo's sister walks across the stage clad as a happy bride.  That little bit of action feels like a flash in Violetta's mind.  And it gives the feeling that this takes place over quite a long period of time.  
       The ballet sequence on Act 3 was the biggest highlight of the production.  The pary Violetta's friend Flora throws has a Spanish theme to it, and the ballet outfits have a Day of the Dead vibe to them.  Granted there needed to be a bit more Torero with the second half of it, but it's still awesome.

So yes, it works.