Yesterday, the radio opera was an “opera-ballet” from the 18th century by Jean Philippe Rameau called “Les Fêtes d’Hébé.” The series has a more dignified translation, but I just call it “Hebe’s Parties.” Hebe, the goddess of youth, finds the gods “insincere” (which I assume is code for “too old” – sounds like the DNC) and comes to earth to seek more fun among humans. The three acts are unrelated episodes, though each symbolizes a different “lyric art”, and comprises both singing and dancing. Rameau had quite the sense of humor and was also apparently not afraid of anyone – one of his operas which Virgil and I saw in Santa Fe (yeah, it’s been a minute) is called “Platée” and features a female swamp creature who thinks she is a femme fatale, so when Jupiter, looking to set up an elaborate joke to take Juno’s mind off of his infidelities, proposes to her, she is sucked in, and the joke works – Juno, who comes to the “wedding” to catch him, sees the “bride” and cracks up laughing. The reason I share this as an example of Rameau’s fearlessness is that he wrote it for a royal wedding, in which the actual bride, though highly aristocratic, was known for her lack of good looks. And he got away with it. Today’s feature is not daring, it’s just for fun, and was staged by the Opera Comique because the conductor, a Baroque specialist, wanted to conduct it to celebrate his 80th birthday. (Conductors do tend to live long and prosper – one theory as to why is that the upper body exercise, although not terribly strenuous, is sufficient to strengthen the heart. Of course it doesn’t work for everyone. But it does for many.) Anyway, the music was lovely. There is a 59-second clip on YouTube which shows snippets of a variety of scenes while playing just the main theme which shows up in the prologue and every act.
This story is unsourced other than the DU member who posted it – but it is good news and I think we can all agree with the point made at the end.
This is exciting to me. I suspect it may not replace implants, because hearing loss at older ages may not be genetic (I’m pretty sure it wasn’t genetic in my mother abd grandmother, because I don’t have it, and for bothe of them the onset was at 10 years minimum younger than I am.) But for eople as young as those in this story it could well be genetic, and I would expect gene therapy to be a lot less invasive than implants.
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