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And now for something different


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This duet won the ABC best loved song survey in Australia. Yeah I know not everyone loves opera, but you can just look at the bodies and admire the daring of the production for 3 minutes.

Go full screen, and turn up the sound.

http://<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/y3xyp54bZqs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

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I love The Pearl Fishers, it's my favorite opera. I have three recordings on CD: Nicolai Gedda, Ernest Blanc, Janine Micheau, and Jacques Mars in a performance by the Theatre National de l'Opera-Comique in 1960; Alfredo Kraus, Vincente Sardinero, Mariella Devia, and Giovanni Foiani in a performance by the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra in 1981; and Barbara Hendricks, John Aler, Gino Quilico, and Jean-Philippe Courtis in a performance by the Orchestre du Capitole de Touloouse in 1989. I've also seen two live performances at the San Francisco Opera.

My short story The Opera on Codey's World is based on The Pearl Fishers.

Hey, there's no reason a 22-year-old can't like opera. I also like Green Day, R.E.M., Blondie, Supertramp, Chumbawamba, Bruno Mars... well, you get the idea.

Colin :icon_geek:

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My goodness, The Pearl Fishers. The music department at my college produced that opera way back when, and it was a good choice because they had the voices for it that year. I was all about technical theater back then and had to build this rocky shore and create the hurricane (typhoon) during the performances. We rented four five foot in diameter fans for the blow and it nearly wrecked the set, but was most effective.

Someone got the brilliant idea to use makeup on the students bodies which ended up being made by the bucketful and covering every surface in the theater, what a mess. I borrowed a statue of the Buddha from a local shop to grace the entrance to our temple only to discover that it was worth ten grand and I had to get a quick insurance policy on the darn thing.

I am not an opera buff, but those performances were outstanding and so I enjoyed looking at the video Des posted. Thanks for the memories. :icon1:

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Colin, there is nothing wrong with diversity in musical tastes. I listened to Swan Lake one minute and The Beatles the next when I was 18. Like you I have many different versions of my favourites.

Chris that sounds like a very interesting production. It constantly amazes me that there is so much innovation in student productions that doesn't always travel successfully into commercial attempts to be 'different'.

Cole thanks for Delibes, so beautiful. Your'e right some opera is demanding, in more ways than one. It is an acquired taste. Someone once said no one is born liking opera...except Mozart, of course.

A friend of mine asked what he might do to help his new born twin boys to grow up with an appreciation of classical music. He had been deprived of such music until my partner and I took him to his first symphony concert where he was besotted and enthralled by Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony. So I told him to never force his sons, just play the music in the background, as if it was something that was normal. Both boys, now nearly 9 years old do their homework whilst listening to Holst's The Planets, Jupiter being their favourite. He recently took them to a symphony concert of film music mixed with classics. It's hard to know who enjoyed it more, the father or his twins. And yes they all show signs of growing a liking for opera, but we mustn't make a big song and dance about it, must we? It's important to let people discover music, to uncover its mysteries, to share the experience of one of the things that makes life bearable, tolerable and above all sublimely worthwhile - music.

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Colin, there is nothing wrong with diversity in musical tastes. I listened to Swan Lake one minute and The Beatles the next when I was 18. Like you I have many different versions of my favourites.

Chris that sounds like a very interesting production. It constantly amazes me that there is so much innovation in student productions that doesn't always travel successfully into commercial attempts to be 'different'.

Cole thanks for Delibes, so beautiful. Your'e right some opera is demanding, in more ways than one. It is an acquired taste. Someone once said no one is born liking opera...except Mozart, of course.

A friend of mine asked what he might do to help his new born twin boys to grow up with an appreciation of classical music. He had been deprived of such music until my partner and I took him to his first symphony concert where he was besotted and enthralled by Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony. So I told him to never force his sons, just play the music in the background, as if it was something that was normal. Both boys, now nearly 9 years old do their homework whilst listening to Holst's The Planets, Jupiter being their favourite. He recently took them to a symphony concert of film music mixed with classics. It's hard to know who enjoyed it more, the father or his twins. And yes they all show signs of growing a liking for opera, but we mustn't make a big song and dance about it, must we? It's important to let people discover music, to uncover its mysteries, to share the experience of one of the things that makes life bearable, tolerable and above all sublimely worthwhile - music.

Ah, you take me back. That's exactly what happened in my house while I was growing up. If there was music playing, it was classical. I heard a huge range of it, and developed my personal likes and dislikes. Classical music is amazingly diverse. Anyone who'd listen to Haydn and then Prokofiev would shake their heads in wonder. The music is being made by exactly the same instruments, yet they sound nothing like each other.

Tchaik 5 happens to be one of my favorites. But don't discount his 6th. It might well be the most melancholy peice of music ever written.

C

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And Colin, I just read your opera story. What a delight it was. Very clever and entertaining.

Des,

Thank you for the compliment.

Ash in my story The Opera was a real parrot that actually sang to that aria in The Pearl Fishers. The rest of the story came from my imagination. Sadly Ash passed 3 months ago and became (to quote an episode from the Monty Python's Flying Circus TV series) a former parrot. Ash was an African Gray who lived with friends of mine in Vallejo, California and who constantly entertained them and their friends.

Colin :icon_geek:

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Tchaik 5 happens to be one of my favorites. But don't discount his 6th. It might well be the most melancholy peice of music ever written.

C

He died a week after the first performance of his 6th Symphony, the Pathetique. He was in love with his nephew, known as Bob.

Pyotr Illych wrote music unique,

His last piece he named 'Pathetique'.

Inspired by his Bob

He completed the job

But the poor man was dead in a week.

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He had been deprived of such music until my partner and I took him to his first symphony concert where he was besotted and enthralled by Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony. So I told him to never force his sons, just play the music in the background, as if it was something that was normal. Both boys, now nearly 9 years old do their homework whilst listening to Holst's The Planets, Jupiter being their favourite.

I'm far from being a huge classical fan -- I'm much more of a 60s/70s pop/rock guy -- but I've listened to The Planets hundreds and hundreds of times, usually I think the Von Karajan performance. I think Jupiter and also Mars has influenced tons of movie soundtrack composers over the years -- you can hear those steals all the time in films.

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Imogen Holst, (his daughter) did not like her father's music being used or played other than as he intended it. If you can get a hold of the Japanese performer Tomita, he recorded a synthesiser version of The Planets, and dare I say, it is out of this world; you might like it.

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