Yesterday, the radio opera was “The Pearl Fishers” by Bizet (who is more famous for “Carmen”). Carmen overshadows it, but it is performed occasionally. It contains an absolutely gorgeous duet for the tenor and the baritone which is frequently recorded and sung in concert, though. When the Met presented it on a Saturday with Matthew Polenzani (a tenor who is very popular and therefore had sung the duet a fair amount prior to playing the role) and the host asked him about the duet, he pointed out that until doing the full opera he had no idea that everything he was singing in it was a lie (and he is correct in that. But it’s still gorgeous.) The plot relies heavily on coincidence (not unusual in opera) and ends with massive destruction of property but no loss of life (both unusual in opera.) Not much of it rises to the standard of the duet, but it is still all very listenable. It’s also pretty short – barely two hours. I think I mentioned that my local station, which is public radio but not affiliated with NPR, couldn’t afford the second half of the summer broadcasts – especially after the federal funding loss – but what they decided to do was to play a recorded complete opera every week until the Met starts again. The announcer who owns a huge collection of recordings is not as old as I am, but is old enough that they may, like mine, all be on vinyl. Because The Pearl Fishers is short, when it was over and I went back to local, the opera he picked for today was still going – and I didn’t recognize it. Heck, I didn’t even recognize the language at first. My first guess was Russian, but I couldn’t exclude Czech – enough popular operas were written by Czech composers that it’s not all that unlikely. But as I heard more, I realized it was German and almost certainly Wagner; I thought I recognized the sword motif from the Ring Cycle. But when did a tenor have such a long monologue, followed by input from a bass and maybe a mezzo soprano? Maybe Lohengrin? And then I heard the tenor address the soprano as “Elsa.” Yup. It was Lohengrin. Sorry/not sorry about the “stream of consciousness” there. It seemed like a good opportunity to demonstrate that not only do I not know everything, I don’t even know as much as I think I know. The WFMT will be broadcasting Lohengrin from Bayreuth in three weeks, so I’ll get my chance to hear the whole thing (not for the first time either.)
I saved this from Democratic Underground for Sunday, so it’s not brand new. But it’s definitely good. I hope it catches on elsewhere.
This from The 19th is about a good response to a very bad situation. I’m sorry about the situation – but glad that at least something is being done.
This is from Wonkette Thursday, which I thought close enough to Sunday to hold. Even my Mom bought into the theory that if you tax rich people “too much” they’ll just move away. I guess this tax isn’t “too much” – whatever that means. (My feeling about that theory was always “Good riddance” anyway.)
Yes, four links. But can we ever have too much good news? This is from Wolves and Sheep and was written by Chris Bowers. It is neither complete not graven in stone, but as far as it goes, it looks good.
Marsh Family – “The Randy Duke of York”
