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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #30 on: 13:43:31, 02-01-2008 » |
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Well when I was at my Christian Brothers' school it was definitely The Circumcision for Jan 1 and The Epiphany for Jan 6 I assume these were feast-days rather than actual events..... I'll join the rush for the coats |
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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George Garnett
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« Reply #31 on: 13:51:13, 02-01-2008 » |
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Our Dear Queen, Gawd Bless 'Er, impressed me greatly this year by contriving to give her 50th televised Christmas Message on the 50th Anniversary of her first. She goes up in my estimation for managing to do that and beating the usual 'telegraph pole/telephone wire' conundrum.
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« Last Edit: 13:52:58, 02-01-2008 by George Garnett »
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #32 on: 14:18:54, 02-01-2008 » |
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Well when I was at my Christian Brothers' school it was definitely The Circumcision for Jan 1 and The Epiphany for Jan 6 (you'd have got a slap for saying Twelfth Night!) and we were encouraged to attend mass on both days. But the CBs were very fond of mass anyway.
Er, would you be of a certain age, HtoHe? It was the Circumcision in the Tridentine Missal, but after Vatican II it was re-named Mary, the Mother of God. In fact the texts for mass did not alter that much: the gospel is still the eighth day (yes, yes, seven days after) and the other texts always referred to Mary Absurd to my mine. Sunday already carries its own obligation (or have they changed that too?) so that means the concept of a holy day of obligation has been effectively scrapped, doesn't it? Sunday is still a day of obligation, although lots of RCs now fulfill the obligation on Saturday evening (the law of fasting from midnight before communion being relaxed.) The other days vary according to the country. If they fall on Monday or Sunday in England or Wales they are moved to Sunday. This is to avoid the muddle about which you celebrate on the common evening, I suspect. Epiphany, Corpus Christi and Ascension are moved to the Sunday. Epiphany this year happens to fall on a Sunday, but the other two are always on a Thursday. Well, I could understand that at midnight, but not at noon. A perfectly innocent explanation, of course, is the possibility that they ring the bells for a midday service every day and I just hadn't noticed before - I'm not often in town at that time.
Anglicans in Liverpool do not have a very finely developed liturgical sense. (Where there are lots of RCs - Ireland or Liverpool - Anglicans tend to be low church. Where there are lots of Real Protestants - Scotland, South Africa - they tend to be high church.) They are probably just moving the ringing from the appropriate time for pastoral reasons, just as RCs do with mass. Liverpool Anglican Cathedral does not have a service every weekday midday, and certainly not one worth ringing bells. |
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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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time_is_now
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« Reply #34 on: 19:18:09, 02-01-2008 » |
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A pedant writes:
Your true pedant writes 15ma. Abbreviation of alla quindicesima, the 15th equivalent of all'ottava. HELP!!!!!I'm really not doing well today. I tried to work out which of those three (8, 15, or 16) should be -ma, wondered if it was 16, decided that couldn't be right, then gave up, hoping that Ollie would spare my blushes. But somehow knowing he wouldn't really ...  What is this, Mr Sudden? A taste of my own medicine? My only excuse is that Italian is the weakest of my Romance languages (well, second weakest after Romanian ...). |
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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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Don Basilio
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« Reply #35 on: 21:25:29, 02-01-2008 » |
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My only excuse is that Italian is the weakest of my Romance languages (well, second weakest after Romanian ...).
Romanian does have b... case endings when you use the definite article. I have only got to Chapter 5 in Teach Yourself Romanian (Regular verbs and adjectival agreement. Mr Porter goes shopping. "I want half a kilo of rice, quarter a kilo of olives and a bottle of wine. What sort of wine? A dry red wine and a sweet white wine." Get a life, Mr P.) |
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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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oliver sudden
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« Reply #36 on: 23:14:38, 02-01-2008 » |
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C Dish
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« Reply #37 on: 23:35:37, 02-01-2008 » |
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Why don't you write it in morse code while you're at it?!   |
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inert fig here
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Ruth Elleson
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« Reply #38 on: 09:47:16, 03-01-2008 » |
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Annnnnnyway back on topic  I fear I will be obliged to decide NOT to go and pay Emilia a visit, on account of having finally contracted The Bug That's Going Round. I want the chance to have my voice relatively intact for Epiphany mass, and the chance to be restored to (relative) health by Monday on account of next week at work being one of the busiest I'm expecting to have in 2008. I suspect that a the lurgy will be banished most effectively by spending Saturday doing as little as possible  |
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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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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #39 on: 10:17:48, 03-01-2008 » |
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Bad luck, Ruth - I entirely sympathise since I've come down with a similar bug, and my speaking voice has dropped an octave or so today. I hope you make a quick recovery! Meantime, a question... do we think that anyone other than Brits finds the title of "Emilia di Liverpool" amusing in its unintentional bathos? I wonder if there are other operas whose titles sound wromantic to us, but comically absurd to local residents? Is it only familiarity that breeds contempt?  |
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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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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #40 on: 10:40:47, 03-01-2008 » |
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I've always felt that Liverpool is just an ugly word. I know a girl who didn't put it on her list of university choices for precisely that reason! It obviously didn't strike Donizetti that way.
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Ruth Elleson
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« Reply #41 on: 10:47:43, 03-01-2008 » |
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Also, native English speakers have to live with the connotation of the word "Liverpool" spoken in a Scouse accent - surely the antidote to open Italian operatic vowels...
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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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HtoHe
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« Reply #42 on: 11:15:59, 03-01-2008 » |
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I fear I will be obliged to decide NOT to go and pay Emilia a visit, on account of having finally contracted The Bug That's Going Round.
I hope you recover in time for your singing duties, Ruth. Don't forget Gdansk on 19/20 Jan! The programme says E di L is going to Bremen. too; but I can't find any mention of it through operabase. The Liverpool one doesn't seem to be on operabase either but that doesn't surprise me, given the trouble you had getting details of how to buy tickets even using the websites of the 08 festival and the opera company. Meantime, a question... do we think that anyone other than Brits finds the title of "Emilia di Liverpool" amusing in its unintentional bathos? I think that, before the recent rash of Aleeshas etc, the idea that anyone from Liverpool would be called Claudio or Emilia would have seemed intrinsically silly, Reiner. Gianni di Calais must strike any locals who have heard of it as similarly incongruous. Mind you, both works do come from the same source as Maria Stuarda and Anna Bolena. I've always felt that Liverpool is just an ugly word.
It doesn't strike me that way, Mary. I've always found 'Liv'pewl' an ugly noise; but 'The leaving of Liverpool' and even 'Liverpool Lou' sound mellifluous enough to me. Does any place name sound as ugly as 'The Mtsensk District'? |
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David_Underdown
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« Reply #43 on: 14:57:36, 03-01-2008 » |
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On the bell ringing issue, many ringers of my acquaintance see it as rather a pain that the objects of their desire are for the most part rather inconveniently bound up with churches when they would rather be free to play with them with no inconvenient clergy trying to boss them around (rather like organists and singers in that respect). A little poking around leads me to http://www.campanophile.co.uk/show.aspx?Code=60238 which shows that the peal was rung to mark the start of Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture. Liverpool Anglican Cathedral rather appeals to the trainspotting instinct in the average bellringer as it is the heaviest peal of bells (hung for change-ringing) in the world. Remarkably the same band also seems to have rung a peal at St Nick's, Pierhead on the same day (for a grand total of 8 hours ringing). Morepractically I suspect the ringing took place on this day because the holiday season made it easier to assemble the band from all over the country. |
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« Last Edit: 16:49:19, 03-01-2008 by David_Underdown »
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--
David
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #44 on: 16:11:26, 03-01-2008 » |
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Does any place name sound as ugly as 'The Mtsensk District'?
I think Nikolai Leskov - author of the novella "Lady Macbeth of The Mtsensk District" - contrived purposely at that banality. The book is quite a lot more bloody than the opera, and more deeply critical of Katerina as a grasping would-be social climber with airs and graces "above her station". The word "Lady" isn't translated, but left in the original English - there's a clear element of sneering at her stuck-up ways by using a term for an English aristocrat about a girl from the back of beyond. Leskov certainly wanted to explain his title clearly, and did so not in a Prologue or Introduction, but in the opening paragraph of the novella itself:
LADY MACBETH OF THE MTSENSK DISTRICT
an essay
Occasionally around our area characters turn up who - even though many years have gone past without mention of them - can't be remembered without an involuntary shiver of the soul. Among the list of these characters is the merchant's wife Katerina L'vovna Izmailova - the figure at the centre of an appalling drama, who was ever after known in colloquial circles of the local gentry as Lady Macbeth Of The Mtsensk District.It's worth noting that Leskov's novella appeared in 1865! And remained in print as a "Russian classic" throughout the period in which Shostakovich's opera was banned. In fact the copy I've got appears in the imprint of "Essential Literature For Schools"  |
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« Last Edit: 16:17:10, 03-01-2008 by Reiner Torheit »
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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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