old1
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« on: 18:31:36, 21-12-2007 » |
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Has anyone seen this? Likewise Sweeney Todd? Saturday I'm off to Leeds for Pinocchio which sounds interesting.
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Ruth Elleson
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« Reply #1 on: 23:50:04, 21-12-2007 » |
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I haven't seen either of the films, though I intend to do so at some point... let us know what you think of Pinocchio though, I do like Dove's work, and although I haven't booked to see it in London I might yet do so  |
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Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf' entflossen,
Ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir
Den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen,
Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür!
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old1
Posts: 12
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« Reply #2 on: 09:20:04, 25-12-2007 » |
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Pinocchio is superb, I'm hoping to see it again on Saturday. There is a very good review on www.musicalcriticism.com Make sure your seat is fairly central. Difficult to single out any one performer as they were all so good. there's a sample of the music on the Opera North website. The dancers reminded me of an opera a long while back with sinuous wine waiters and copious amounts of sherry, I think it may have been "The nightingales to blame" but can anyone confirm this? |
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Ruth Elleson
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« Reply #3 on: 10:54:21, 31-12-2007 » |
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Ummmmm... I did see The Nightingale's to Blame (1999, Simon Holt) but I forget the details... The Times gave Pinocchio five stars. I must try and catch it when it's at Sadler's Wells. Silly old me, I assumed it wouldn't be something I wanted to go to (being for kids  ) so I didn't book it at the same time as my tickets for Peter Grimes and The Pilgrim's Progress, and have therefore missed out on a multiple booking discount on it. If the Sadler's Wells brochure had had a cast list I would have been interested from the start - it's got some fab singers (or should I say singing actors) in it! |
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Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf' entflossen,
Ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir
Den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen,
Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür!
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old1
Posts: 12
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« Reply #4 on: 11:47:57, 02-02-2008 » |
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Finally caught up with Magic Flute film. Thrilling and spectacular, Queen of the Night makes her entrance on top of a tank. Lots of good special effects leading me to thoughts of other operas that would look really good on film now. Better seen on screen than DVD, english Libretto and dialogue by Stephen Fry, is there any way I can read the translations after the opera? Many times I have wanted to do this after Opera North productions, particularly their recent Magic Flute.
Sweeney Todd was a bit more Tim Burton than Sondheim but intriguing for all that. It seemed to sacrifice some of the horror and humour in order to be creepy. I really missed the chorus. How about Assassins by the Coen brothers?
Opera North will be at Sadlers Wells soon with Peter Grimes and Pinocchio, both well worth seeing.
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Tam Pollard
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« Reply #5 on: 14:53:21, 10-02-2008 » |
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<quote>Sweeney Todd was a bit more Tim Burton than Sondheim but intriguing for all that. It seemed to sacrifice some of the horror and humour in order to be creepy. I really missed the chorus. How about Assassins by the Coen brothers?</quote>
Really? I haven't got to see it yet, but two people I know who are big (and very knowledgeable) Sondheim fans thought it was very faithful to the composer. Indeed, the orchestrator and conductor for the film have been long time collaborators of his and it seems clear that Sondheim was closely involved.
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Swan_Knight
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« Reply #6 on: 17:44:36, 10-02-2008 » |
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Am I the only person in the world who doesn't like Stephen Fry?
The fact that Die Zauberflote has been translated into English is enough to persuade me against seeing this film.
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...so flatterten lachend die Locken....
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #7 on: 17:50:01, 10-02-2008 » |
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Am I the only person in the world who doesn't like Stephen Fry?
I can cope with him, but he is very much overexposed, and not in the National Treasure category like Alan Bennett. He is the only man I know on record as saying he really enjoyed public school. Sounds a bit odd. |
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #8 on: 18:12:14, 10-02-2008 » |
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The fact that Die Zauberflote has been translated into English is enough to persuade me against seeing this film.
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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Swan_Knight
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« Reply #9 on: 18:55:38, 10-02-2008 » |
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I find his world-weary don act (and it is an act, I'm sure) wears very thin very quickly.
He's seriously over-exposed, because he's about as 'highbrow' as a dumbed-down nation can take at the moment; I suppose people of pedestrian intelligence who are amused by him feel flattered by the experience.
But he's not really anything, is he? Not an actor, not a comedian, not a writer, not a director: just a person who does a bit of everything, though none of it particularly well.
It's an indictment of the times we live in that he's as successful as he is. Personally, if I saw him walking down the street towards me, I'd definitely cross over to the other side.
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...so flatterten lachend die Locken....
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #10 on: 19:29:42, 10-02-2008 » |
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But he's not really anything, is he? Not an actor, not a comedian, not a writer, not a director: just a person who does a bit of everything, though none of it particularly well.
None of which is his fault, however. He is as erudite as the Producer will permit him to be. One word more complex than the average vocabulary of the Daily Mail, and the scene will be reshot without the "complex" words. One of my little sidelines is arranging tv-shoots in Russia for production crews - I've seen how they work. Very often the presenters are, in fact, charming and intelligent people off-camera... they're required to turn themselves into self-caricatures by an army of Phaedras, Cassandras, Julians and Benedicts, who knock-out the televisual equivalent of bog-roll for the masses, by the metre  I am not making any great claims for Fry as an aesthete or intellectual - but anyone slung behind a British tv-camera is being dumbed-down by a producer, so what we see is not the person, but the Producer's reinvention of the person to suit viewers in East Cheam. |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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time_is_now
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« Reply #11 on: 18:45:41, 11-02-2008 » |
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Am I the only person in the world who doesn't like Stephen Fry?
Most certainly not, SK! See a recent discussion between me and Mary Chambers on the subject (can't remember which thread I'm afraid). If I was as intelligent off-camera as Reiner suggests Stephen Fry may be then I'd be very careful never to let myself appear on-camera! And as for writing books called The Ode Less Travelled, well, I'm not even going to start. Actually, I will start. There is a sense in which style mediates and inflects content which means that any book pretending to convey taste and information while so signally failing to censor the lack of either in its own title is worse than worthless. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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martle
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« Reply #12 on: 18:51:20, 11-02-2008 » |
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I'm with the Fry-denyers I'm afryed afraid. Although I did admire the programme he made about bi-polarism (from which of course he suffers himself): I thought that was honest and illuminating, and he came across in a very different light.
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Green. Always green.
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time_is_now
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« Reply #13 on: 19:06:32, 11-02-2008 » |
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the programme he made about bi-polarism I didn't see it, although I think I'd want to talk to some more people with the disorder before deciding Stephen Fry's (or anyone else's for that matter) programme on the subject was wonderful. I did see one late-night interview with him [that candid half-hour interview slot that's on around midnight, interviewer maybe Melvyn Bragg??] in which I found him much more likeable, but I still think the onus is on him to know when to shut up if he doesn't want to provoke the reaction he does in me the rest of the time. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #14 on: 23:25:47, 11-02-2008 » |
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If I was as intelligent off-camera as Reiner suggests Stephen Fry may be
I wasn't quite saying that.... I was saying that mainstream tv in the UK requires tedious stereotypes, two-dimensional cut-outs and memetic mugging of the most awful kind. Whether or not you are intelligent, it will compel you to play the giddy aunt - or have your contract handed to you in 120 rough-torn strips. I have a personal friend (in a different sphere of the telly business) who did two series that got good ratings, but had been made into a monkey in the process - he finally told them where they could stuff it, and left. SECOND SIN: PRIDE. The Family are worried that Anna II is too unworldly to get a job earning money, but good news arrives by letter - she has got a job as a solo dancer, in a Revue. The audiences like her and her salary is raised. She offers the Management a new artistic dance she has devised by herself, but they refuse - they want Anna to dance striptease. Anna I warns her that there is no place for Pride if you want to earn a good living.
- THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS (Brecht/Weill) |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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