Good morning, all! I'm happy everything is going so well, BK! On the reed's ad lib sections, I give you carte blanche to be the editor on what he's doing under the vocals.
I have a crazy day today: Toyland this morning, and then I'd like to catch the runthrough of Act One of FINIAN'S RAINBOW from 1-5. At 7, I'm seing the premiere of our DR Julie's film CLEAR BLUE TUESDAY, which - truth be told - I'd rather not, since I don't deal with 9/11 too well. Still, I have a friend in the cast, i love DR Julie, and I want the film to be a huge success so I'm going. And taking a box of Kleenex.
BK, the Elixir of Love is indeed the title; it's funny, but - like most of Donizetti, I don't think it's funny enough. I remember seeing a City Opera prodction of Rossini's The Italian Girl in Algiers that was so funny I thought I was going to die with parodies of the Yeston musical THE TITANIC, an Italian family that was so un-PC it was criminal, and a leading lady who thought she was doing a 1960s Fellini film in her toreador pants and sunglasses.
Given your penchant for fantasy and short stories, I think you'd like Offenbach's TALES OF HOFFMANN very much, and I wish you'd caught the LA Opera's spring production this year of Braunfels' DIE VOGEL, which got wonderful reviews. Braunfels in the 1920s was Trude Rittman's teacher at the Cologne Conservatory, and his lush untra-romantic score for DIE VOGEL reminds me of Korngold's film work.