Yesterday, I was able to hear the radio opera from my laptop. Even set up to the max, the volume was low, and I hope I won’t need to do it again. Faure was one of the Impressionists like Debussy and Ravel, but is much less known. His best known work is probably the Dolly Suite, written for a little girl nicknamed Dolly. This opera, Pénélope, based on the last part of Homer’s Odyssey (when Odysseus finally gets home), doesn’t sound much like the Dolly suite, but it is attractive. Why it’s not performed more than it is is mostly bad luck. It wasn’t a huge hit in the provinces, but when it made its Paris premier, it was well received by the audience and the critics. But within two months another premier at the same theater stole all the oxygen from everything else – it was a little ballet called “Le sacre du printemps,” or in English, “The Rite of Spring.” It actually caused riots, in which people were physically hurt. And it’s not pretty – but it is a masterpiece. But I digress. It has been so long since I read the Odyssey I had almost forgotten about the lack of trust which was normal back when there were no certain ways to establish one’s identity. Odysseus arrives in disguise, and when recognized, orders the person not to reveal him – because all the dudes waiting around for up to 20 years to try to marry his wife would have killed him (instead, he kills them.) When he does reveal his identity to Penelope, she tests him with a fib about having replaced the bed in the master bedroom (not really possible, because the bed was a four-poster and one of the posts was a living tree, and the room was built around it and the bed), and of course he freaks because he knows that, which establishes he really is Odysseus. Off to see Virgil now – will check in.
You are welcome to argue with me about whether this from The Root is good news – since it’s mostly not new, but history. But I maintain the news part is that someone whose name should have been in people’s mouths along with the names of Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and many others is finally getting recognition – at least from the black community, and it should be from us also. It’s not exactly anyone’s fault it’s coming late. Photographers speak with the images they create, not with their mouths, and images are not physically attached to them, so its too easy to forget the people behind those images.
This was apparently a federal charge; I assume that because it was tried in a federal court house and at the Times there is an implication that the prosecution was by a U.S. Attorney. But it’s good news at any level.
There is a lot of good news in this from Wonkette, and it’s from Thursday, so you may have seen some of it. But probably not all of it.
