Highs and lows
I've just returned from singing at the funeral of the doyenne of the choir - a 75-year-old alto who was a great character, to say the least. There were a couple of difficult moments for me, largely (I think) because this was the first funeral since my father's which I have attended for someone I knew, even if not hugely well.
On a more positive note, I've sorted out holidays for the next few months, very much along similar lines to last year: a trip to Jersey in early July almost immediately followed by a trip to London and France for my mother's birthday. She's also coming to visit in mid-June, prompted by Scottish Opera's performance of Lucia di Lammermoor. We'll also be fitting in a dîner français (at which I'm serving just French food and all conversation is required to be in that language) and an open-air performance of The life of Jesus Christ at Dundas Castle, all in the space of five days.
In the meantime, work continues with its peaks and troughs of activity. It's one of the latter at the moment, as you might have gathered: last up, we were dealing with tickets for the end-of-Festival fireworks ballot. Next up is, well, twiddling our thumbs for a bit ...
ADDENDUM (12:14, 02/06/2007) I forgot to mention the degree of consternation precipitated in my colleagues by the revelation that I'm going on holiday to Jersey with a woman. And no, it isn't my mother!
On a more positive note, I've sorted out holidays for the next few months, very much along similar lines to last year: a trip to Jersey in early July almost immediately followed by a trip to London and France for my mother's birthday. She's also coming to visit in mid-June, prompted by Scottish Opera's performance of Lucia di Lammermoor. We'll also be fitting in a dîner français (at which I'm serving just French food and all conversation is required to be in that language) and an open-air performance of The life of Jesus Christ at Dundas Castle, all in the space of five days.
In the meantime, work continues with its peaks and troughs of activity. It's one of the latter at the moment, as you might have gathered: last up, we were dealing with tickets for the end-of-Festival fireworks ballot. Next up is, well, twiddling our thumbs for a bit ...
ADDENDUM (12:14, 02/06/2007) I forgot to mention the degree of consternation precipitated in my colleagues by the revelation that I'm going on holiday to Jersey with a woman. And no, it isn't my mother!
posted by Anthony at
15:49
4 Comments:
I'm curious: what do people in Scotland think of Lucia di Lammermoor?
By
Andy, at 30/5/07 00:20
I don't actually know, but I'm sure I can find out on the evening! In the meantime, I'm going to hazard a guess and suggest the vast majority of its Scottish audiences probably haven't read the Walter Scott on which it's based so aren't in the best position to criticise.
By
Anthony, at 31/5/07 13:42
I ask because I made my professional debut in Puccini's La Fanciulla del West, which takes place in a mining camp during the California Gold Rush of the 1850s. The very premise seems preposterously incongruous: dirt-poor, rough and tumble California prospectors, frontiersmen, Indians, Mexican bandits and sheriffs singing -- in Italian -- Puccini's glorious, soaring melodies. It's often written off as a corny cowboy opera, a musical Spaghetti Western, if you will, but it really is a dramatic and musical masterpiece.
I was lucky to do it at a summer festival high in the Colorado Rockies -- in an actual former gold rush town, so the very setting helped. (Though learning to sing at 8,500 feet takes some adjustment.) Also we did it in an extraordinarily skilled English translation (I'm generally not in favor of translation). This helped get around Puccini's insistent setting of "hello" as "HELL-o" instead of "hell-OH," among other oddities.
Anyway, I was just wondering Donizetti's Scotland felt as bizarre as Puccini's California.
By
Andy, at 1/6/07 21:55
The record label Chandos does a series of opera recordings in English which includes Lucia - - so if your local library is enterprising (assuming American libraries lend CDs as well as books), you could do a comparison between David Parry's translation and the original text. (And that's before considering the French version, as recorded with Natalie Dessay in the title role.) Hopefully the singers don't all adopt dubious Scottish accents!
There's another post arising from this ...
By
Anthony, at 2/6/07 11:33
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