10 January 2005

Operas today

The Brit bloggers are all a-buzz over the buzz over the recent broadcast of Jerry Springer: the Opera [Wikipedia] on the BBC. You can get a dose of the religious uproar in this Manchester News article. [A]bout 45,000 protesters contacted the BBC before the show was screened. And as if to create some meta-reference on decency vis-a-vis the media, to the right of the Manchester News article was a titillating ad for figleaves.com's Winter sale. Thongs only £7.

Some writers attempt to defend the opera on the grounds of artistic merit--as if that mattered to religious people. Some of the scene descriptions definitely sound like they're blasphemous. I would argue less that they're not blasphemous and more that you people have no right to suppress our art with your morality. Although I doubt I'll be purchasing this particular opera [Amazon], more power to ya for such an odd concept. You can go to their their Web site to listen to a good portion of it on streaming audio (image an Andrew Lloyd Webber chorus over the words I used to be a man and chick with a dick). Sounds humorous. I'll definitely try to go when it makes its way to Broadway.

[ via The Rambler ]

I've recently fixed some big parsing problems with RadioWave (NPR and KQED listings were scrambled pretty badly). I'm now trying to fix issues on the backend with recording certain stations. WNYC FM has some great shows. I got a good partial recording of its Sunday night New Sounds show. The best part was a section of the opera Facing Goya [Amazon] by Michael Nyman. In college, I had heard a favorable review of his operetta The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat [Amazon], based on the book [Amazon] by Oliver Sacks. It was in heavy rotation for a while, and now that my memory's been jogged expect to see it on Radio from the Ether next up. I was captivated by the Goya excerpt.

[ posted by sstrader on 10 January 2005 at 12:05:11 PM in Music ]