Well, dear readers, I must write these here notes in a hurry for she of the Evil Eye will be here all too soon and therefore I must be up at an early hour and waking up at an early hour after not enough sleep puts me in a foul mood or, at the very least, a fowl mood, and then I have to eat chicken and chaos ensues, but why chaos didn’t ensue when the word person who made up chaos threw in a completely unnecessary “h” in the word just to mess with our collective minds. Whilst I hurry through these notes, I am listening to the most recent album my Miss Ute Lemper, Rendevous with Marlene, her tribute to Miss Dietrich. I was a big fan of Miss Lemper from her early Decca albums, which I found fun, unique, and wonderful. Well, the Ute Lemper of now is certainly no longer the Ute Lemper of the Decca recordings. The voice is very husky and her attempts at riffing on many of these numbers simply doesn’t work. The arrangements are nice, and the mix is fine, but what isn’t fine is the mastering, which has been brick-walled to death as if this were a heavy metal record – there are no dynamics at all – it’s just loud all the time, which makes for a very wearying listening experience, ears-wise. Also, I would never advise any singer to self-produce their own album because they have not a jot of objectivity and have no feedback other than their own self. Not a good idea, and it’s one of the reasons this album simply doesn’t work. For me, a disappointment, certainly. But thankfully, just prior to that I heard a wonderful album by Mr. Engelbert Humperdinck – no, not the singer, the composer – an orchestral album that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was hardly a one-hit wonder – the music is beautiful and well-performed – it’s called Fairy-tale Music and it’s on Virgin Classics. I just loved it. Certainly, I loved it more than the opera Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti. It’s simply not music that I really respond to, but I did recognize several of its tunes. The recording no Decca with Sutherland and Pavarotti on Decca, a two-CD set with Blu-ray Audio disc, is great. Always glad to hear stuff I don’t know, though, but not one I’ll return to. But what I listened to after that I’ll be returning to today because I was totally smitten with it. Dear reader elmore has been recommending this to me for weeks so I finally found a cheap, used copy and it arrived and I played it – Joromir Weinberger’s Schwanda. From the first ten seconds of the long orchestral opening, I knew I would love it, and love it I did it. It’s a tuneful delight, beautifully orchestrated, and I can’t imagine a better performance of it than this Sony Opera CD with Lucia Popp and Hermann Prey. Great orchestra, great conductor, and all the singers are great. The recording itself sounds amazing and I was entranced throughout. Highly recommended by elmore to me and me to you. I also found some Weinberger on the Tube of You and listened to some of that and it was equally good. He, too, was deemed a one-hit wonder, but he’s virtually forgotten today – he escaped from Czechoslovakia and the Nazis, came to America, and had no success and even Schwanda, which was hugely popular when it came out, was almost never performed. Maybe some opera company will do it and then everyone can jump on that bandwagon.
Yesterday was a fine day, sorta kinda. I did get eight hours of sleep, I answered e-mails and did a few things on the computer, then I picked up a couple of packages, went to Gelson’s and got a chicken Caesar salad and a little square of noodle kugel for food, came home, and ate it. Then I sent project two where it needed to be sent. Then I got ready for our Zoom session. This time all were in attendance and we read through project one and I could not have been happier. While I can’t reveal any more about it at this time, I will just say I think it has the possibility to be something very special and the three people who are involved in it are just perfection. It was very exciting.
After that, I did a few more things on the computer, went back to Gelson’s and got some popcorn to microwave, came home, made the popcorn with some butter, and ate that for my evening snack. I buy the “light” kind, which is very calorie friendly. Then I began my listening and that took up the rest of the evening.
Today, I’ll be up by eight-thirty, then I’ll go somewhere and get something for a breakfast that I can eat in the car – the easiest is pasta papa, but I’ve been craving eggs benedict – I’m just not sure how I’d negotiate that in the car, whereas pasta papa is easy/breezy. Then I’ll mosey on over to the mail place and pick whatever’s there, then I’ll stop at Gelson’s and get something light for later in the evening – perhaps a frozen dinner, or perhaps something from their deli, either hot or cold. Then I’ll watch, listen, and relax. I’ll hopefully hear about project two, although I’d sent it to a friend prior to sending it where it needed to go, and the friend’s reaction was actually great, so that was heartening.
Tomorrow is a ME day and I’ll catch up with viewing and listening and then we’re into Christmas vacation and I’m taking it easy, save for making notes on what I hope will be a new novel, and Tuesday we’re doing one more Zoom session for project one, after which, right after Christmas, we’ll begin work on. I should have the final two orchestrations by Monday. And since we can’t do the annual Christmas Eve Do or any Do due to the crazy world (first time we’ll have missed doing it in thirty-two YEARS), we’ll have to have a partay here at haineshisway.com. The undecided decision is whether I’ll make a small thing of spaghetti and tuna pasta salad – that remains an unknown at this time.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eight-thirty, eat a light breakfast, hopefully pick up packages, get something at Gelson’s for a later snack, hopefully hear about project two, and then I’ll watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite films of Miss Marlene Dietrich? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have schwung with Schwanda.