I am still hooked on my smartphone and listening to podcasts. Having finished "Rabbits" (see that post) from the wonderful Public Radio Alliance ... I am catching up on their earlier show "Tanis" which happily for me and my obsession has just started Season Four.
If Rabbitsgave me game-playing conspiracy with a hint of spook - then Tanis gives me horror, myth and murder set in the Pacific North West of America. It's "presented" by podcast host Nic Silver and is constructed as an investigation into the weirdness of Tanis. Which is what? A cult? An entity? Its dark goings-on are said to shift place every 400 years or so. But its current location is ... Yes indeed, Twin Peaks territory. Which does make an old Peaky comme moi very happy.
PRA has made a show full of gripping style: mysterious woods, dark beings, alternate spaces, conspiracy and serial murder. What an elegant shivery stew. PRA calls it: "what happens when science and fiction start to blur". (Sigh) I am just so hooked.
I'm a little old lady exploring the smartphone world. Of course I had listened to podcasts before ... on my pc ... but now I am bravely
entering the world of podcast apps and podcasts on my phone.
I
tried one app which seemed easy to use. But it immediately refused to play my
downloads if I wasn't connected to the internet...which didn't seem to be the point. And yes I did look under "settings". So I ditched that app and
got another - PodcastAddict - so far so good. It does what it says on
the tin: I download episodes and can listen to them anywhere. No more
sitting next to my wi-fi box.
And so I've just started listening to "Rabbits"- a US docudrama podcast produced by PRA. It's narrated by "a journalist
investigating the sudden disappearance of a friend" as she becomes aware of that friend's involvement in a
sinister, underground and ancient game known as the aforesaid "Rabbits"
(think burrows and maybe even Alice, although the last is my idea and may
be very wrong!!)
I admit that I can be a bit at sea in "Rabbits", being too old to have
dived into gaming which is very much the background to this thriller ... But hey,
I used to read William Gibson. I can cope.
Public Radio Alliance
likes to describe itself as "creating television for your ears". And
that sounds very fine to me. I shall be investigating their other
podcast series.
Oh! And I have discovered the joy of
falling to sleep to podcasts rather than audible books ... which is ... that when the episode
finishes, the broadcast stops. I don't have to trawl backwards through
the book to find my falling asleep spot! Though I expect there is an app
for that.
I love Verdi's "Otello" and was not going to miss this week's live broadcast with German tenor Jonas Kaufmann in the lead role. I enjoy both Kaufmann's singing and acting. He has emerged as one of the greats. Although doubtless somebody will disagree.
Verdi's opera is based on Shakespeare's tragedy "Othello" in which a Moorish general (Otello), who serves the Venetians, is maliciously played
upon by his aide (Iago) and led to believe that his new, young, Venetian wife (Desdemona) is unfaithful.
Iago is the driver - his jealousy, envy and
pathological psychology moving him to ruin and warp everything around him. Othello is the subject, the man played upon, whose passions are worked and driven so that all that follows is tragedy. And Desdemona's constant good faith pushes her relentlessly towards her fate. This drama has always summed up tragedy to me - a collision of people's psychology and the turns of fate which explode into a terrible outcome - and we the audience can see it coming.
Verdi's opera has the drama and psychology of the original play together with beautiful music and a vocally challenging lead role in Otello. Domingo has been one of the great Otellos. I never managed to see him singing it live. But this week I got to see the broadcast of Kaufmann's debut in the role. Of course it seals him into it. I was relieved that he was not "blacked up". (School age trauma caused by my class being taken to see the film of Sir Laurence Olivier's awful performance as Shakespeare's Othello, whom I expected to drop on one knee and sing a rousing chorus of "Mammy" by way of encore.)
This production's sets involve partial walls (they appear as towering, dark, wooden walls or screens) which move around to change the space. As such the set has been described as minimalist. But I don't think it is. I can cope with minimalist. If a production and music is wonderful who needs a box of tricks? But here it seems as if movements are made sometimes because they can. For instance why does Desdemona appear to rise up from the ground in one scene? As
does the Herald announcing the arrival of the Venetian delegation? Throughout, performers have been walking on and off as usual, so why are these two entrances singled out as "magical"? No good dramatic reason that I could see.
And there are glaring additions to the design's "minimalism". A huge statue of the Venetian Lion is hauled on by the visiting delegation and in the final scene it re-appears, "broken". OK, I'm not a fan of heavy symbolism if it is not handled well but poke it into a relatively severe set and it's impact is disproportionate.
Never mind, I bicker ... because I can. The singing and acting of all the main roles is wonderful: Kaufmann (Otello); Maria Agresta (his wife Desdemona) and Marco Vratogna (Iago). It's a moving opera and a moving evening which we both did enjoy very much. And as usual The Old Man particularly looked forward to his interval ice cream.
Remember I posted about the squashed delights of watching The Opera via streaming it from the internet? On Mrs D's laptop?
Well The Old Man has stepped forward with an early birthday present for us ... me... er... Mrs D. He has stumped up for an extra monitor screen for the laptop... a nice 24inch little fella.
So now Mrs D can graphic away to her heart's content with her graphics tablet, laptop and monitor.... And we shall be able to sit in extra comfort to watch the opera... or the films... or whatever.
We is all happy.
... in which a pair of seniors do experiment with the Internet.
There are new ways to "go to the opera", I decide. We can try watching it via broadband. The Royal Opera House was streaming a live performance of "The Nose" by Shostakovich the other week (my word that do sound funny, put together like that) and The Old Man says: "Let's do it." ... Much to my surprise.
Rural, granite cottages are not very amenable to house-wide wi-fi. So it do mean that we have to watch the opera in the same room as the router... which is Mrs D's workroom (and feels like the coldest room in the house, except for the downstairs bathroom).... And on her laptop. Fortunately the laptop has a pair of additional speakers so we can listen quite nicely thank you... but sitting closely, side by side, peering at a laptop enthroned on an animating table, do make me long for ... opera glasses.
Never you mind, it was an enjoyable and, dare I say it, "exciting" if cramped experience in our sheltered life. We do only "buffer" twice!!
And the opera itself was a theatrical delight full of wonderful performances... though I would have liked it to have explored if possible even more of the plot's surreal absurdities caused by the flight of a civil servant's nose to live a life of high prospects and social success.
In fact our cramped viewing, despite its nature, proved so successful ... we have come up with an achievable technical solution ..... More of that later.
Autumn now. Nights getting cold. I grab a quick walk this morning, puff up the hill to look out over the bay where all kinds of weather are laid out: cloud, sun, squalls. I try to work out if the squalls will get me and decide to walk on a bit further then turn back for home. Rooks call. Goldfinches still chatter and sing. I get a bit wet.
Last night we go to the local cinema for a night at the opera. Covent Garden's new production of Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" being broadcast live - a modern setting tricked out with false moustaches and theatre flats and games. The Old Man do overhear a woman complaining (as he lurches for the ice-creams at the interval) that she just hates it. Not me.
There is nothing wrong with the singing... all's very well there ... though The Old Man doesn't quite agree. And of course I do like the acting and the production which smacks of pantomime and trickery and what else could you have for such a plot. (Let's just strike a wager with the boys that their girlfriends may or may not be unfaithful... and then do everything we can to make them so.) And if I may exercise my muscles and stretch a point ... I am thinking that all this playing around with people's loves and desires may prove a contemporary theme. How about "Les Liasons Dangereuses" by Laclos... published in the same decade as the premiere of Mozart's "Cosi"? Yeah. Yeah. Mischief makers. And the production did its best to make some bitter-sweet sense of the ending of this crazy plot. All in all a happy night out for me.
Last week The Old Man put on his best pony tail and braces ... well, OK, it is now my daily duty to do his hair as the mystery of constructing such a style is beyond him. Anyhoo... last week we both donned our Sunday Best and set off for the opera at Glyndebourne ( Berlioz's "Beatrice et Benedict") ... courtesy of a live broadcast at a local cinema, so sadly we did have no champagne on the grass.
Now I wasn't too sure I wanted to see this. Frankly, I was frightened by the lengthiness of his "Les Troyens" and so ... assumed that serious, lengthy works was what Berlioz did. But The Old Man wanted to go, so I gave a Gallic shrug and booked the tickets.
And I am glad that I did. With a story recounting the tricks practiced by friends and family in order to get verbal sparring partners and anti-lovers, Beatrice and Benedict, to recognise their love and to marry (based on Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing"), it turned out - in this production - to be a witty two-acter full of lovely tunes and not frightening at all.
There has been some critical grumbling about the production: a set composed of stacked boxes and monochrome 50's style costume and makeup. But what do you know? I loved it, for sometimes I like a bit of a "stripped-down" production. Done well and consistently, such a thing can focus my attention on the music and performances. And I very much enjoyed Stephanie d'Oustrac with her fine singing and a performance full of suppressed fury as Beatrice. Paul Appleby, as her anti-beau Benedict, is also very good. And I loved the funny (satirical?) musical director Somarone, played with full farce and pointy-toed splendour by Belgian baritone Lionel Lhote.
A surprising and jolly evening. An extra surprise when the screen went blank ten minutes or so before the end of the opera. Apparently this was something to do with satellite time booked.. or not. The tiny audience was duly recompensed. (Yes... down here these things seem to be attended by few... and we is usually all... quite old.)
The Old Man and me sat ourselves down in our local cinema last week for the Royal Opera House broadcast of its new production of Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor".
I'm quite happy to see new interpretations of operas and this production has certainly caused controversy and do give a melodramatic deal of blood and savagery albeit perhaps not in the form anticipated. Director Katie Mitchell relocates it from Donizetti's Scotland of the 1700s to the mid-1800s by way of bringing the action closer to Donizetti's own era (she says in an interview on the ROH site) and
because she views Lucia not as a young "victim" but as a mature, cultured woman... and the mid-1800s was a period filled with "brilliant [unmarried]
women artists".
OK. But perhaps "pax" to earlier feminists such as Mary Wollstonecroft(1757-1797). Not to forget Wollstonecroft's daughter, Mary Shelley, who happened to beat the boys (Byron and husband Percy) at late-night horror stories by creating Frankenstein in 1816 and succeeded in publishing it, albeit anonymously, the year before Sir Walter Scott's own publication of his original "Bride of Lammermoor".
Mitchell's production has a split stage to enable a continuous line of action for Lucia. We see her dressing, reading letters, waking up in the morning, etc, regardless of whether she is part of the musical scenario, which takes place on the other half of the stage. Cinema-goers watching the live broadcast version with its close-ups and
different points of view may not have been exposed to the full
effect of this device. I do wonder if it
proved distracting for the theatre audience, certainly in the case of the silent masque murder-scene which traditionally takes place off-stage. And what also troubled me about this scene was that it seemed to depart so much from the traditional view of poor innocent Lucia that I couldn't really make it lie
down with the notion that she then proceeds to go mad...
tout suite. Though I did enjoy the addition of Donizetti's originally scored glass harp accompaniment to Lucia's hallucinatory insanity. Certainly Diana Damrau as Lucia earns her keep and sings pretty lovely as well and we were both impressed by the acting and singing of Charles Castronova as Edgardo.
I enjoyed my night out at the opera thoroughly. In retrospect the production is device-heavy and overthought in its details... which don't always hang together. (But then Donizetti's own scenario doesn't leave much room to "explain" the sudden descent of madness onto poor Lucia's head). But I enjoyed the performancesand if the director enabled some of these, then so be it. Ultimately, me and The Old Man were still arguing and discussing the whole thing
a couple of days later which many would say was a mark of a good, meaty
show. Or is it? Dunno ... but I'm glad I went.
We are taking advantage of the live broadcast from Covent Garden again... via our local cinema in Penzance. This time it is The Old Man who makes an agonisingly slow decision to have a go at "Cav & Pag" - more properly known as the pairing of two short operas: "Cavalleria Rusticana" by Mascagni and Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci".
In truth I don't know anything about the "Cav" bit and can only think of clips of numerous well-known tenors taking turns to be tragic in pierrot clown suits for the "Pag" offering. So... as with all things so familiar as to be parodied on a regular basis ... I am a bit reluctant to try them out. But a new production directed by Damiano Michieletto and a night away from the Telly means I say yes and off we will go. I tell you these live broadcasts be a lifesaver for those of us who fancy some big opera but live in ruralia far from the big theatres.
PS. I'd like to have found you a trailer but to be honest the Opera House trailer be like a short advert clip promoting tours of Italy. Oh my word... just thought... perhaps that was the intention? I do keep getting caught out by the possibilities of irony....
Oh. Wow. I enjoyed that "Mahagonny" at our local cinema. The rural me can now sample opera on a scale larger than a dvd/telly combo. Great.
Live broadcast via cinema screen is a hybrid beast of an experience. We're not sitting in our seats peering at a stage with a single viewpoint. Here we get edited and interposed shots... like a film.... close-ups, long shots, cuts. It is all very jolly. And we do get interviews and such during the Opera House interval.
To add to the surreal quality of last night's relay broadcast.... Covent Garden had been hit by the electrical fire in Holborn. Fortunately the stage and auditorium were powered from another source.... so we got our show... but the punters at The Garden were in darkness elsewhere in the theatre, I believe. Bottles of water their only interval drinks. No nice bar snacks. In Penzance, popcorn and ice-cream be still in plentiful supply.
The production (and I had been a little uncertain before seeing it) is successful. Brilliant video projection on a great cargo-container set. (For do we not live in a Mahagonnesque world with people smuggled in cargo containers, slaving in cargo containers and living in cargo containers?) And wonderful performances. The great Willard White. Kurt Streit who as Jimmy McIntyre does a powerful job (both voice and acting) in a role which becomes very grueling by the end. And Christine Rice is no slouch in the theatricals either. The Old Man do say... she needs to match Streit's Jimmy McIntyre punch for punch.... and she does. I also greatly like Peter Hoare's performance as chain-smoking, money-man, Fatty. The production is much more powerful than my listening of the radio broadcast led me to believe. A dark, stark, ironic piece anyway, this version emphasises its timely link to a world where money and consumption are prerequisite values.... and ... an Easter equation for Jimmy's trial and martyrdom. I just don't think that poor Jimmy will be making a re-appearing act soon.
So. Opera at the local picture-house has been sampled and considered a success in this household. Trouble is.... The Old Man have noticed that Rossini's "Guillaume Tell" will be on offer as well. It's four hours long!
And me, I am not a Rossini fan. I had a frightening encounter with "Comte Ory" once that led me to extreme self-brutalising in order to stave off coma. And I had to ditch The Old Man in the interval and run off home...... Oh surely he cannot be serious.
So next Saturday (April 20th 2013) the Live from the Met broadcast on BBC Radio 3will be "Siegfried"... and if you want a taster of what I mean by a Lepage production you can see the Met's clip in the next post. Yes... I know... not much to see on a postage stamp blog post...
So bear with me over the next post or two whilst I recount my admiration of Robert Lepage's work.
You see I am a set-tilting, smoke and mirrors kinda girl when it comes to theatre.
Today we do walk up the hill. As you can see it is misty.
I do have a rather martyred weekend in terms of evening entertainment.... First there is the weekly BBC Radio 3's Opera on 3 - "Live from the Met" broadcast... which do be Wagner's "Die Walkure." And I be no fan of Wagner.... but The Old Man is.... so I do grit my teeth and bear nearly all of it.
Then I be hijacked because The Old Man announces that he be giving the BBC's paltry allotment of "The Masters" Golf Tournament priority over my Scandi-crime...Much to my chagrin...
(He have better recorded my "Arne Dahl".) These are the disagreements of the elder kind as we both insist he said, he didn't, and so on. I be not in good humour.
....Until I do some research on the Met production. Because it is by Robert Lepage... who be a bit of a theatrical must for me. Which cause me to look at some clips online at the Met site and to talk to The Old Man about it.... which do prompt the usual Old Man lecture... which one may or may not find informative. This lecture continues during our hilly walk. Here you can see some goats momentarily enthralled by the concept of opera production of the Wagnerian kind.
So there it is. For those of us in the UK who watched the last episodes of "The Killing III" last night.
Blimey! I do not see that ending coming. They do always manage to surprise me, that team. And yes I do admit to being rather on the edge of my seat and chewing my nails and shouting at The Old Man not to talk so much cos I is reading the sub-titles. The Old Man huffs and says they could've wrapped it up previous episode....
I did complain a bit, I admit, at the US spin-off series of The Killing but by second season I do get the hang of it and do think it pretty good and rather grittier... and rainier.... than a lot of US cop series. And by grittier I do mean that the actors do not appear to have been botoxed and buffed to Alcatraz and back. So then they do announce that they be cancelling it! Typical I do say to myself. Now it is possible that they are un-cancelling it! Or hang on a minute. Stop Press! May be cancelling it again? I give up....
The very estimable broadcaster Mark Lawson is to be doing a series of short programmes on BBC Radio4. As of Mon Oct 22 at 1.45pm they will broadcast daily for 15 episodes. The series is called "Foreign Bodies" in which... and I quote.... "Mark Lawson shows how crimes reflect Europe's times" by taking a look at some of the most celebrated detectives in European crime fiction.
I and Mrs D will be followin' it all closely: on the radio, recorded, or from the BBC website. We shall be there.
