#the magic flute
Them:Ugh I hate opera.
Me: But Hamilton is an opera and I know you like that.
Them:
Me:
Them:Wait what
Them: No I mean operatic singing opera. Not a musical in which the entire production is sung opera.
Me:Oh okay that’s different then. Why?
Them: Because I can’t understand any of it.
Me: Are you under the impression that you’re supposed to understand opera?
Them:Then why do you watch it?
Me: It’s like extreme sports you can vibe to.
Them:…
Them:What?
Them: There’s no way that opera can be that impressive or difficult.
Me:
Them: Holy sh*t
Opera is super physical!
I’ve yet to have the fortune of costuming one, but one thing I learned in school is opera requires lots of special design/construction considerations. You need to accommodate the movement of extremely large, flexible, and powerful chests!
I’ve heard stories about ladies busting the seams of steel boned corsets with the sheer force of their expanding lungs.
MOZART’S “QUEEN OF THE NIGHT”
Following yesterday’s Lacrimosa I thought of posting a different sound culled from the treasure chest of Mozart’s genius. Here’s Diana Damrau singing Mozart’s “Queen of the Night” aria from his opera The Magic Flute.
As one of the comments attached to the video says: “I don’t know which is more amazing, that a human being could conceive of and write this, or that any other human being could perform it.”
if you’re wondering what she is saying, here are the here are the lyrics in German:
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen,
Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!
Fühlt nicht durch dich Sarastro
Todesschmerzen,
So bist du meine Tochter nimmermehr.
Verstossen sei auf ewig,
Verlassen sei auf ewig,
Zertrümmert sei'n auf ewig
Alle Bande der Natur
Wenn nicht durch dich!
Sarastro wird erblassen!
Hört, Rachegötter,
Hört der Mutter Schwur!
And here they are in English:
The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart,
Death and despair flame about me!
If Sarastro does not through you feel
The pain of death,
Then you will be my daughter nevermore.
Disowned may you be forever,
Abandoned may you be forever,
Destroyed be forever
All the bonds of nature,
If not through you
Sarastro becomes pale!
Hear, Gods of Revenge,
Hear a mother’s oath!
To give some context to her anger, the aria comes at a moment in the opera when the Queen’s power and position is threatened by the sorcerer Sarastro, whose brotherhood her daughter Pamina is thinking about joining.
Karl Friedrich Schinkel - The Queen of the Night, set design for Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’, 1815
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The Piper
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Commissions are open:)
“We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic.”
~ E. Merrill Root
[Papagena and Papageno, Emanuele Luzzati]
• In 1920 E. Merrill Root became an English professor at Earlham, a Quaker institution, and remained there until retiring in 1960. He was a traditional poet who usually worked in rhyme and standard metrical patterns. He demonstrated particular skill with the sonnet form. Root was a student of Robert Frost’s, and Frost was an admirer of his work. More: https://www.buckeyemuse.com/upon-the-gallows-tree-e-merrill-roots-poem-witchcraft/
• As a stage director, Emanuele Luzzati (1921-2007), had mounted a lavish 1963 full-scale production of the opera and fell in love with the music and the story. His animated The Magic Flute, made fifteen years later, was met with glowing reviews and multiple awards. More: http://stalkingthebelleepoque.blogspot.com/2010/12/friday-fun-emanuele-luzzatis-magic.html
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Band camp is hell, the only way to describe it honeslty
Beverly Sills as The Queen of The Night in “The Magic Flute”, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1964.
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