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| la traviata [message #17908] |
Mon, 06 July 2009 21:56  |
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 Black Bear
Messages: 3216
Registered: September 2008
Location: Indianapolis, IN USA |
Senior Member
[Moderator] |
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La Traviata is here.
"The time is always right to do what's right."--MLK Jr.
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| Re: la traviata [message #17914 is a reply to message #17908 ] |
Mon, 06 July 2009 22:50  |
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Julia
Messages: 531
Registered: October 2008
Location: Library School |
Senior Member |
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Eeeeek! Aaaah! Yaaay! [those are ALL meant to sound exuberant, not frightened. Just to be clear]
Oh Well Done. I'm so thrilled for you. Fleming. La Trav. Yes.
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The return of the horse and buggy? . . . I could go for that
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You know what? Me too.
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The fellow on my left was obviously doing a Peter. He was there because his wife was an opera nut. I almost said ‘I have one of you at home’ and decided this could be misinterpreted.
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heehee
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^^ The thing I’m not drivelling on about is that the ME turned around and bit me again this morning. I was out hurtling hellhounds and quite suddenly, as often happens, between one stride and the next, I wanted to lie down and not move for several days. I compromised. I took taxis both ways between Waterloo and the ROH.
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double well done you, then. Boo, ME.
Oh, and one more thing.
You are wonderful.
[I am aware that you will attempt to refute this, as you do every time I mention it. Or simply will pretend puzzlement and concern for my sanity. But it is true, and I haven't reminded you in a while.]
[p.s. Everyone else here is wonderful too. I try to make a habit of reminding people of this every so often... I'm not being creepy, I promise.]
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| Re: la traviata [message #17915 is a reply to message #17908 ] |
Tue, 07 July 2009 01:44 |
zerlina
Messages: 98
Registered: May 2009
Location: Invercargill, New Zealand |
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I haven't seen Renee Fleming live, but I have seen her in Manon on DVD (Opera National de Paris). I wasn't impressed, and know exactly what you mean about the heartless flirt, because her Manon certainly is one. However, I think she was excellent in Eugene Onegin (Met), and I didn't expect her to be. Georghiu is excellent, too, as Violetta (Royal Opera 1994). She a singer I would rather watch than just listen to. Fleming I can listen to, without seeing.
I must google the tenor.
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| Re: la traviata [message #17920 is a reply to message #17908 ] |
Tue, 07 July 2009 03:18 |
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Diane in MN
Messages: 2731
Registered: October 2008
Location: Twin Cities, MN, USA |
Senior Member |
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How splendid that you got there, and even more that it was a terrific performance. One in the eye for the ME, YESSS! I don't always like Fleming's performances--I don't think she has a Puccini voice--but the things she does well, she does very well indeed. I have heard Calleja--he sang Edgardo in Lucia here a few years ago--and he is very good. Hampson has been very good for a long time. Lucky you!
I saw a La Trav not all that long ago where Violetta spends the last act in bed, where she belongs, and the critics were complaining that it made the drama too static.
This is how it was staged in the Traviata done here a few years ago, and it was very effective. The complaining critics were way off the mark if they were looking for a lot of unnecessary stage action.
It is one of those inexplicable laws of the snob class media that they don’t tell you about shows that are going to sell out until they have sold out. The latest Lloyd Webber is advertised for years in advance. Bryn Terfel in the Flying Dutchman you hear about on opening night.
But now you have bought a ticket and should be on the mailing list, which will enable them to send you lots of information about future performances and invitations to (a) become a subscriber and (b) donate money.
Good luck with the plumber-may he be immediately successful in finding and fixing the problem--and with the computer men.
"The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough . . . " Louise Erdrich
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| Re: la traviata [message #17922 is a reply to message #17908 ] |
Tue, 07 July 2009 07:13 |
NotLonely
Messages: 164
Registered: October 2008
Location: SA |
Senior Member |
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I saw the title and went, Oooh! La Trav! And then saw *who* was singing. There's very little chance that any of those artists will visit South Africa, or that I'd be able to afford tickets, but what I hear on the radio often sends me off into raptures of dreaming.
Sigh. Sometimes the gods of coincidence beam upon us. I'm glad they beamed on you. Hopefully, those opera management folk will have managed to beat against the tide long enough to actually *whisper* put you on a mailing list so you will know what's happening.
I offer no defense of the plot, which is about a woman being repeatedly and cumulatively victimised by men.
I'm always torn between "mutter mutter women are people too, you know" and wondering how much leeway to give the composer/librettist for being a product of their time. Is it reasonable to expect them to conform to my 21st C expectations? How much of it was an unwritten understanding, and how much conforming to the standard of the day.
Modern artists, on the other hand, get no slack cut from me. One of the reasons I watch almost no TV and very few movies. Ugh.
people dying of consumption are not that lively. Nor that beautiful.
TB is a huge problem here, partly because no-one's found out how to treat it more quickly. I don't understand why the concept of sick people having no energy is so difficult to understand. Surely the slightest bit of research - or even thought - is enough? And if you can afford top-notch artists you can afford a little time to think.
Or am I being overly optimistic?
I trust you slept well, the ME *waves magic wand* decided to go away and best of luck with the plumber. Here's to Hot Water!
[Updated on: Tue, 07 July 2009 07:18]
Life always, always finds a way.
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| Re: la traviata [message #17923 is a reply to message #17908 ] |
Tue, 07 July 2009 07:44 |
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Oh yaaaay! I'm so glad you made it, and whoa, names I've heard before! (Okay, I've known about La Trav; it was one of those music memory things from my childhood I've told you about.)
*glitterconfetti* I'm so pleased for you! Especially that it was lovely, in spite of the spunky near dead woman. :)
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I thought ten years ago that all trains would have outlets and internet connections by now
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No kidding. I'm still upset about our lack of flying cars and vacations on the moon.
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I almost said ‘I have one of you at home’ and decided this could be misinterpreted.
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Hee. Yes. Well, one of the nice things about a blog is you can report all the funny things you almost said. That is, if you can remember them. (Sometimes I have to write down conversations that actually took place, just so I can remember them later. The funny things in my head are usually gone for good.)
Smooshes!
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| Re: la traviata [message #17926 is a reply to message #17908 ] |
Tue, 07 July 2009 10:57 |
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only my favourite opera since I first heard it a few years ago... *sigh*
I have to say that Fleming isn't my favourite for that role, though. She's a wonderful Contessa and I love her as Rusalka, but not Violetta... I would've loved to have seen her just the same! when I was in NYC last October they were doing the Zefirelli (sp) production at the Met with a WONDERFUL soprano called Anja Harteros. she was a great Violetta, IMO. she also did the role in a concert production over here in Israel a few years ago and I was lucky enough to sing in the choir.
Love Thomas Hampson. must also look up this Tenor if you say he's that good an Alfredo. I have to agree with you about Alfredo's character... pretty wimpy.
I'd give a lot to see Bryn Terfel live in anything... (Wagner included, though it would be hard for me, lol).
but YAY for Trav!
"they say that absence makes the heart grow fungus".
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| Re: la traviata [message #17928 is a reply to message #17923 ] |
Tue, 07 July 2009 12:34 |
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Renee Fleming! GASP!
I actually did gasp aloud when I read this post, though on cabdriver/intimidating performance goer scale of opera knowledge, I fear that I likely fall closer to the cabbie-in my defense,I love opera, but have spent far too many years as a perennially broke graduate student too busy scrounging for beer money to contemplate opera tickets- to be well informed even about the local productions-anything on the scale of Glyndebourne or the Met has been nothing but a happy, stratospherically distant fantasy. Congrats on the lucky ticket!
| jmeadows wrote on Tue, 07 July 2009 07:44 |
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I thought ten years ago that all trains would have outlets and internet connections by now
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No kidding. I'm still upset about our lack of flying cars and vacations on the moon.
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I'm in total agreement! I am absolutely sure that the Jetsons, not to mention innumerable futuristic movies, quite explicitly promised us flying cars and robot maids by the year 2000. Here it is 2009 and whadda we got? Laptops and Blackberries and cell phones, etc.-ten thousand gadgets and gizmos to pressure us into doing more work and create the expectation of constant availability-pffft, I say! Maybe I could settle for a return to the horse and buggy in lieu of the flying cars, especially if it came with the return of the concept of being 'out of the office', but where's my robot maid?! (in this day and age I would expect and prefer that it was an a non-gendered robot housecleaning device, of course, rather than the cartoon culmination of the dehumanizing effects of sexism, but still-make with the maid!)
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| Re: la traviata [message #17929 is a reply to message #17908 ] |
Tue, 07 July 2009 16:18 |
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AJLR
Messages: 2566
Registered: September 2008
Location: England, UK |
Senior Member
[Moderator] |
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And here’s a pettest pet peeve: Halfway through the last act or so Violetta tells Annina to take half her remaining money and give it to the poor. What about Annina, you dumb schmuck? What about your faithful maid who has followed you into poverty and exile, and who is about to be out of a job when you piss on out of this life??
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Perhaps Annina is so (secretly) relieved at the thought of soon being able to leave this advantage-taking professional victim, when she goes to the great can-can in the sky, that she really doesn't mind giving some of it away? She will, after all, soon be able to get a really well-paid job with someone who will also not expect such 24-hour devotion...
I'm glad you had such a good time and hope that the ME has retreated enough today for you to chivvy, energetically, the plumber and Computer Men into getting your various systems up and running well again.
"Never let a computer know you're in a hurry."
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| Re: la traviata [message #17933 is a reply to message #17917 ] |
Tue, 07 July 2009 18:59 |
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Robin
Messages: 6005
Registered: September 2008
Location: England |
Senior Member
[Hellgoddess] |
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| zerlina wrote on Tue, 07 July 2009 02:36 |
I agree. Plots usually are the worst thing, especially for women. Verdi's heroines are soppy, on the whole (exceptions the women in Falstaff, but they belong to Shakespeare). Puccini's are worse. Butterfly is so wet. Most of the women in Mozart have a bit of spark, though. (And Traviata is based on a true story - same one as the Lady of the Camellias).
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Well . . . no. I don't agree. Deluded, but not necessarily soppy. A lot of them it seems to me are astonishingly brave. Often misguidedly so--like Gilda letting herself be killed to save the Duke she *knows* is an utter villain--or Aida creeping into the tomb to die with Rhadames. Given Aida's choices at that point that seems to me a pretty good one really, but it sure takes courage. Butterfly is NOT wet. Jeez. She's TERRIBLY brave. What *choice* did she ever have? Her samurai family has no money; she's saving them as well as herseslf by marrying this joker, even if she's getting herself written off in the process. And then, having been rejected by her family . . . she soldiers on. Un bel di, for all its terminal overdoneness--if it hasn't been used to sell loo rolls I'd be surprised--is still breathtakingly tragic--and I think it is as *sad* as it is because you hear that *Butterfly* knows it's a delusion too. But she's a samurai's daughter. And behaves accordingly.
And La Trav is SORT of based on a true story. Have you ever tried to read Dumas' Lady of the Camellias? Speaking of grotesque male filters on female experience. Give me Verdi any day.
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| Re: la traviata [message #17935 is a reply to message #17922 ] |
Tue, 07 July 2009 19:20 |
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Robin
Messages: 6005
Registered: September 2008
Location: England |
Senior Member
[Hellgoddess] |
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[quote title=NotLonely wrote on Tue, 07 July 2009 07:13][size=2]
I'm always torn between "mutter mutter women are people too, you know" and wondering how much leeway to give the composer/librettist for being a product of their time. Is it reasonable to expect them to conform to my 21st C expectations? How much of it was an unwritten understanding, and how much conforming to the standard of the day.
Modern artists, on the other hand, get no slack cut from me. One of the reasons I watch almost no TV and very few movies. Ugh.
people dying of consumption are not that lively. Nor that beautiful.
TB is a huge problem here, partly because no-one's found out how to treat it more quickly. I don't understand why the concept of sick people having no energy is so difficult to understand. Surely the slightest bit of research - or even thought - is enough? And if you can afford top-notch artists you can afford a little time to think.
Or am I being overly optimistic?
********** The product of their time thing is always a problem. I grew up adoring LOTR which has *no* women in it--and Merry kills the lord of the Nazgul, not Eowyn. Tolkien couldn't even give the only woman in all of LOTR who DOES anything that much. I was just defending Puccini's Butterfly--but I've seen her played as a simpering little teenage twit--in fact I walked *out* of an ENO performance because wasting my money was less painful than watching some fat middle-aged moron mangling the role. I suppose what bothers me worse than that so many operatic heroines are 'weak' is that they NEVER HAD ANY CHOICES. Lucia breaks her promise to her lover . . . but her brother had stolen all his letters so she believed he'd already broken faith with her . . . and WHAT CHOICE DOES SHE HAVE? She doesn't have any money or autonomy; her brother controls her. Going mad and killing the husband she never wanted again seems like a pretty good choice, given her LACK of choice. Why didn't it ever occur to any of these *men* who clearly have some *sympathy* with their dead-by-the-third-act heroines to take it a step FURTHER and give them some OTHER CHOICE? You can still kill her off if you insist--lots of men died of TB too--but she could have, you know, DONE something first.
And yes. Dying people are generally *kind of low energy.* A good director/producer could WORK with this.
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| Re: la traviata [message #17939 is a reply to message #17934 ] |
Tue, 07 July 2009 19:27 |
NotLonely
Messages: 164
Registered: October 2008
Location: SA |
Senior Member |
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| Robin wrote on Wed, 08 July 2009 01:03 |
To be USEFULLY on their mailing list you have to become a 'Friend'. I'm a 'Friend' of the ENO, which for a quarterly mag and a fortnight's lead before tickets go on general sale I find a trifle expensive . . . but to become a 'Friend' of the Royal is **eighty frelling quid.** I think I may have to go on missing things. (And yes, I am now enough on their mailing list that they want me to give them money just for *laughs*, not only for performances. gah.)
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*furiously translates pounds to rands*
*faints*
Eighty pounds. That's... half a month's groceries... gah indeed. and feh. Thanks, but I like to eat. And *that* is the reason I know very little about opera. Oh, I studied music for cough several cough years, but the closest I got to opera was the orchestra pit.
You really don't get much action, plot or even voice when you're sitting under the stage, facing the audience.
On the other hand, I do (guiltily) know how much it costs to keep an orchestra or choir running. Even discounting the book taxes we have to pay, it's scary. I pity art managers/directors.
Life always, always finds a way.
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| Re: la traviata [message #17947 is a reply to message #17908 ] |
Wed, 08 July 2009 00:40 |
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So this is the "middle opera" you were being coy about a couple weeks ago. Well done to nab the ticket (in spite of technology) and to get there, ME or not! Every now and then these chances come along, and it's up to us to carpe that old diem.
The last chance I had to do this was a couple of years ago when I heard on the radio, just by chance, that the dance troupe Pilobolus would be nearby for a one-night engagement. I snatched at a $45 ticket, and it was magical. I last saw them when I was a grad student in NYC, when they were a very new group, thirty years ago. I was afraid they might have lost their vision or verve, but happily not so.
Abigail
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| Re: la traviata [message #17953 is a reply to message #17933 ] |
Wed, 08 July 2009 03:41 |
zerlina
Messages: 98
Registered: May 2009
Location: Invercargill, New Zealand |
Member |
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| Robin wrote on Wed, 08 July 2009 10:59 |
Well . . . no. I don't agree. Deluded, but not necessarily soppy. A lot of them it seems to me are astonishingly brave. Often misguidedly so--like Gilda letting herself be killed to save the Duke she *knows* is an utter villain--or Aida creeping into the tomb to die with Rhadames. Given Aida's choices at that point that seems to me a pretty good one really, but it sure takes courage. Butterfly is NOT wet. Jeez. She's TERRIBLY brave. What *choice* did she ever have? Her samurai family has no money; she's saving them as well as herseslf by marrying this joker, even if she's getting herself written off in the process. And then, having been rejected by her family . . . she soldiers on. Un bel di, for all its terminal overdoneness--if it hasn't been used to sell loo rolls I'd be surprised--is still breathtakingly tragic--and I think it is as *sad* as it is because you hear that *Butterfly* knows it's a delusion too. But she's a samurai's daughter. And behaves accordingly.
And La Trav is SORT of based on a true story. Have you ever tried to read Dumas' Lady of the Camellias? Speaking of grotesque male filters on female experience. Give me Verdi any day.
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I admit, I haven't seen Butterfly yet. The most recent NZ production (five or six years ago) was set in a brothel, with Butterfly as a prostitute, so I didn't go, even though I could have. Doesn't she have enough indignities without that as well? Anyway, I suspect the setting was devised with logic along the line of "all women are wither virgins or whores. Butterfly is not a virgin, therefore she must be..." I am on the lookout for a good DVD.
Gilda irritates the heck out of me. I think she is stupid rather than brave. Co-dependent, perhaps?
The men in these operas do have a lot to answer for. If Alfredo and Pinkerton had a shred of decency, or if Rigoletto had educated his daughter instead of wittering on about how pure she was, the outcomes for the women might have been much better. Would the operas have been as good?
Yes, I have read "Lady of the Camellias." It is awful, even allowing for time and place.
I'm glad the hot water is sorted out. I hate cold baths, and have been suffering with you.
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