The NYT's ace scribe Bernard "Scoop" Holland breathlessly spills his latest discoveries about that newfangled entertainment called "opera" today. Didja know, for example, that a lot of opera is long and boring, but there's this one opera called Cavalleria rusticana that's not as long as most (" it’s the only opera I know that may be too short")?
Cav, which Mr. Holland types "acts like a single, sweeping transitive verb," has a lot in common with Pagliacci, if you overlook that elusive transitive quality. "Both pieces," Holland confides, "concern triangular adultery. . . . Both leave behind a sufficient number of dead bodies."
Trifles, really. "Indeed, if these pieces can lay any claim to deep thinking, it is that they are at once celebrations of tabloid brutality and of a bygone theatrical artifice since supplanted by machines, the wonders of electricity and the lessened imaginations of spectators."
Holland then rips the lid off the secret of "famous" Franco Zeffirelli's success as a stage designer ("upscale tastes"), though he is maybe a little disappointed at Zeffirelli's "tame" set for this double bill. Alas, the original designs for gold and marble slums paved in mother-of-pearl cobblestones must have got lost in the mail.
Oh, there were some singers too. Holland lavishes an adjective each on the leads.
23 October 2006
BREAKING: Opera Enjoyed by All
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7 comments:
Sarcasim isn't becoming, Dear.
Hilarious -- and thanks for the link! : )
hay hook... the days of the editor and proof reader would seem to be over at most publishing companies - newspapaper, magazine, books. The only proofing most articles seem to get is SpellCheck and we all know how accurate it is!
Hay Hook: As a copy editor I wholeheartedly agree with your comments -- SpellCheck indeed! And I'm still waiting for an opera to be characterized as a "protubrant antonym." Oh, wait - that could be "Falstaff."
Paul - didn't mean to offend - I spent two years as copy editor of an English language newspaper in Central Europe under an old school American Publisher and an older school British Editor. Point I was attempting to make was that as a cost cutting measure things like copy editing seem to be the first to go. And, if Mr Holland's review is the benchmark, the second thing to go is a strong editor with a large black pencil.
Rereading Mr. Holland's essay, he seems to be shocked to find that play plots involve triangular adulteries and dead bodies on the stage. I thought that kind of stuff has been packing them into theatres for the last couple thousand years. Where has this fellow been keeping himself? And did he ever take a theatre class?
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