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[Jrand74]

Thanks DR ARNOLDMBROCKMAN.

Thanks DR JOSE - if it was my debut - I would wear the black tie.....

Yes, DR DAW....in THE PIT!!!  LOL

[Jrand74]

Page Five Annette....Bossa Nova!

How did she get into that Thunderbird?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaHFf9Xdgi8

[JMK]

There is a lovelier than lovely interview with Liz Callaway in the current [Jan/Feb '10] issue of Cabaret Scenes magazine.  Alas, the interview is not online.

I knew if you looked hard enough, you would be able to find the one thing that is not online!   

[Jane]

I have been beseiged with much anecdotal musings about kidney stones over the past few days.  I feel like I'm in a very exclusive club.  Not.    I did pick up some Cranberry juice mixes (I can't stand cranberries, so I need to have the flavor masked with something else).  I'm currently having some cranberry-raspberry concoction that isn't half bad.  Unfortunately, it isn't half good either.

and probably isn't strong enough to do ane good.  there are capsules, i have some from jarrow.

[Jrand74]

Tap tap tap.

Still waiting for the Smothers Brothers story.

[Jane]

Alas... No Ragtime for me. 

sorry

[DAW]

Tap tap tap.

Isn't it "twice on the pipe" if the answer is 'no'?         

[DAW]

Alas... No Ragtime for me. 

sorry

Me, too!!!     

[JoseSPiano]

Alas... No Ragtime for me. 

sorry

Me, too!!!     

Aw, Thank You, DRs Jane and DAW.  But, as I mentioned earlier, I'm glad I was able to catch up with some of my friends before their matinee.  -And I also ended up standing next to another DC friend who had also signed up for the ticket lottery.  Not a bad way to spend about 30 minutes in the cold.

[JoseSPiano]

DR JOSESPIANO mentioned Tabitha's Salon Takeover - I was watching it last night, too - but had to turn it off.  Tabitha was visiting a salon in Chicago's Boys' Town....and the guys working there were mostly unskilled and I wouldn't let any of them cut my hair - and I don't even have much.

All in all, it really wasn't as great - or "fabulous" - an episode that I thought it was going to be, that it could have been. The owner definitely seemed to be butching it up for the cameras, and he had obviously had just had his hair color touched-up, as well a teeth-whitening treatment.

<meow>

[Jane]

Alas... No Ragtime for me. 

sorry

Me, too!!!     

Aw, Thank You, DRs Jane and DAW.  But, as I mentioned earlier, I'm glad I was able to catch up with some of my friends before their matinee.  -And I also ended up standing next to another DC friend who had also signed up for the ticket lottery.  Not a bad way to spend about 30 minutes in the cold.

not bad, still it would have been nice to see the show.  maybe a miracle will happen & the show will be extended.

[JoseSPiano]

Yes, MR BK - I remember your musings on The Brothers Smothers....this new book is most interesting.  And as the years have gone by.....and even at the time - I had the boys mixed up and thought that it was Dick who was causing all the trouble....turned out to be the older brother Tom - who played the younger brother in the boys' act....  Tom's dealings with CBS were most interesting, and the network really did try to work with them, until Tom decided he was bigger than CBS....  He wasn't.

That reminds me of the old joke - which can be applied to most any profession:

Q: What the difference between a sound designer and God?

A: God doesn't think he's a sound designer.

[JoseSPiano]

Well, time to take a couple of minutes to re-pack my bags.

Laters...

[DAW]

~~~SAFE & EASY TRAVEL VIBES~~~

FOR DR JOSESPIANO!!!!!!!!

[JoseSPiano]

And while I'm re-packing my bags, here's some reading material for you.  I would link to it, but then you would have to register for the site, so... It's sort of a lengthy review, but it's lengthy for a reason.

Disaster at the Vienna Staatsoper
By Larry L. Lash
MusicalAmerica.com
December 21, 2009


VIENNA -- There are disasters, and then there are disasters. The Titanic was a mere drop in the bucket compared to Vera Nemirova’s new production of “Macbeth,” which premiered at Wiener Staatsoper on Dec. 7, just in time for Pearl Harbor Day. The booing, yelling and unmitigated outrage from the audience that began five minutes into the performance, rising in a deafening crescendo when the provacateuse and her design team took their bow, was unprecedented in my eight years in Vienna.

Did no one in the company’s artistic administration take a peek in the rehearsal hall?

Where was in-name-only Music Director Seiji Ozawa to ask, “Who is this unknown conductor, Guillermo Garcia Calvo (called upon to replace Daniele Gatti who withdrew for health reasons, as did the conductor of the last Staatsoper premiere, Kirill Petrenko), who doesn’t know the score or how to communicate with the pit or the stage, and certainly not how to coordinate them? Who are these singers who are totally unequipped to perform Verdi’s music?”

Where were the company dramaturges Andreas Láng and Oliver Láng to say, “Whoa! This has nothing to do with the intentions of Verdi or Shakespeare or librettists Francesco Maria Piave and Andrea Maffei. This is not a ‘Monty Python’ sketch.”

Most notably, where was lame duck Intendant Ioan Holender to say, “How dare you put this pile of excrement on the stage of one of the world’s greatest opera houses, further tarnishing its reputation as well as what’s left of mine?”

Nemirova, a pupil of and assistant to Regietheater gods Ruth Berghaus and Peter Konwitschny, has pulled stunts like this before, most notably with the operetta “Gräfin Mariza” at Volksoper Wien in 2002 which provoked such a scandal it made national front-page news. At her Staatsoper debut, Tchaikovsky’s “Pique Dame” in September 2007, audiences expecting the worst were startled by her well-thought-through, coherent, compelling, memorable production. She had, it seemed, grown up.

No such luck. Nemirova set “Macbeth” in a burnt-out forest (blackened tree trunks courtesy of Johannes Leiacker) on which was set a small, flimsy proscenium like you might see at a summer camp. A few set pieces – Duncan’s bier and coffin, Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth’s bathroom – rose and fell on a central elevator.

The witches seemed to be a cult of rich dames, all dolled up in black evening gowns, gathered in the forest to watch a piece of performance art featuring a canvas stretched on the ground onto which nude women slathered in paint rolled around. (Cue the first boos.)

Things really got ugly when fat King Duncan (Peter Leutgöb) and his kilt-clad retinue entered in a sort of three-steps-forward-two-steps-backward prance, aping the Pythons’ immortal “Department of Silly Walks.” The king then took a bubble bath, blowing foam into the air, followed by a nap on the Macbeths’ bed.

Screwing his courage to the sticking place, Simon Keenlyside, who at 50 still has his Billy Budd body, stripped off his shirt and tie for Macbeth’s blood-soaked murder of Duncan, and was then made to take a shower onstage joined by his wife, both of them clothed.

Banqo’s murderers wore trench coats, white gloves and red clown noses and carried red helium-filled balloons. Banquo’s ghost appeared at the banquet with a balloon. Included for the first time at Staatsoper was the rarely-performed ballet music for the witches’ frolic in the third act. During this farrago, the ladies’ club donned white terrycloth bathrobes and wrapped their heads in bath towels. Booing occasionally drowned out or postponed the music.

The bearing of children’s corpses by the chorus men during Macduff’s lament to his country made a striking image, but how to get them offstage? For the duration of a small eternity, they rose in silence and slowly backed upstage, garnering outright guffaws from the audience. They reappeared at the opera’s end bearing small pine trees, as Birnam Wood to Dunsinane Hill did come.

The first post-performance boos were for Stefan Kocán, a Slovak basso with a tendency to sing flat, utterly lacking the depth and style required for Banquo. Considerably more vehemence greeted debutant Erika Sunnegardh, who sounded more like a provincial soubrette than a Lady Macbeth, her voice tiny, screechy, unable to meet Verdi’s demands for fioratura, and totally blowing the climactic high D-flat at the end of her Sleepwalking Scene, so poorly sung it drew both laughter and booing.

Garcia Calvo, too, received his share of contempt in exchange for his consistent incompetence in the pit. New York native Dimitri Pittas, another debutant, was given a hearty welcome, very possibly because he wasn’t awful. He cut a handsome, sympathetic figure as Macduff and sang his big aria quite well, even if his sizeable tenor comes across steely, lacking Italianate warmth and beauty.

The sole triumph of the evening was Keenlyside’s brave performance. Save for a few dramatic moments where a sympathetic conductor might have worked with him rather than make him force, his was a masterful, elegantly-sung Macbeth, his big, burnished gold baritone flooding the house with true Verdian style. That he made it through the production without any sacrifice of dignity (when a pram containing an Uzi pushed onstage by Lady Macbeth kept rolling, Keenlyside kicked it far upstage, earning applause) was a further testament to the artistry that makes him one of the most intelligent and fascinating singers of our time.

Adding insult to injury, Nemirova took repeated bows as if she enjoyed being the center of the hatred of 2,000 people, perhaps with the foresight that she will not likely be on a stage in Vienna again anytime soon. This was no Scottish tragedy but merely a puerile farce.

Masochists and fans of Keenlyside may wish to attend performances this week (Dec. 21 and 26) or five more in May 2010.

www.wiener-staatsoper.at

[JMK]

Tap tap tap.

Still waiting for the Smothers Brothers story.

Sorry--I thought I had told it before.  I opened for them at a charity fundraiser in Seattle.  I was arranger and Music Director for a sort of neomodern "Andrews Sisters" group (not siblings, but three women who did my close harmony arrangements).  The Brothers soundchecked on a folksong, can't remember which, but Dick just lit into Tom for not knowing his harmonies, and they both got rather nasty with each other with me, my band and vocalists just standing there twiddling our thumbs.  I found Dick a little nicer than Tom, but they were both kind of dismissive, even when I told them I knew Mason Williams.

[JMK]

And while I'm re-packing my bags, here's some reading material for you.  I would link to it, but then you would have to register for the site, so... It's sort of a lengthy review, but it's lengthy for a reason.

Disaster at the Vienna Staatsoper
By Larry L. Lash
MusicalAmerica.com
December 21, 2009


VIENNA -- There are disasters, and then there are disasters. The Titanic was a mere drop in the bucket compared to Vera Nemirova’s new production of “Macbeth,” which premiered at Wiener Staatsoper on Dec. 7, just in time for Pearl Harbor Day. The booing, yelling and unmitigated outrage from the audience that began five minutes into the performance, rising in a deafening crescendo when the provacateuse and her design team took their bow, was unprecedented in my eight years in Vienna.

Did no one in the company’s artistic administration take a peek in the rehearsal hall?

Where was in-name-only Music Director Seiji Ozawa to ask, “Who is this unknown conductor, Guillermo Garcia Calvo (called upon to replace Daniele Gatti who withdrew for health reasons, as did the conductor of the last Staatsoper premiere, Kirill Petrenko), who doesn’t know the score or how to communicate with the pit or the stage, and certainly not how to coordinate them? Who are these singers who are totally unequipped to perform Verdi’s music?”

Where were the company dramaturges Andreas Láng and Oliver Láng to say, “Whoa! This has nothing to do with the intentions of Verdi or Shakespeare or librettists Francesco Maria Piave and Andrea Maffei. This is not a ‘Monty Python’ sketch.”

Most notably, where was lame duck Intendant Ioan Holender to say, “How dare you put this pile of excrement on the stage of one of the world’s greatest opera houses, further tarnishing its reputation as well as what’s left of mine?”

Nemirova, a pupil of and assistant to Regietheater gods Ruth Berghaus and Peter Konwitschny, has pulled stunts like this before, most notably with the operetta “Gräfin Mariza” at Volksoper Wien in 2002 which provoked such a scandal it made national front-page news. At her Staatsoper debut, Tchaikovsky’s “Pique Dame” in September 2007, audiences expecting the worst were startled by her well-thought-through, coherent, compelling, memorable production. She had, it seemed, grown up.

No such luck. Nemirova set “Macbeth” in a burnt-out forest (blackened tree trunks courtesy of Johannes Leiacker) on which was set a small, flimsy proscenium like you might see at a summer camp. A few set pieces – Duncan’s bier and coffin, Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth’s bathroom – rose and fell on a central elevator.

The witches seemed to be a cult of rich dames, all dolled up in black evening gowns, gathered in the forest to watch a piece of performance art featuring a canvas stretched on the ground onto which nude women slathered in paint rolled around. (Cue the first boos.)

Things really got ugly when fat King Duncan (Peter Leutgöb) and his kilt-clad retinue entered in a sort of three-steps-forward-two-steps-backward prance, aping the Pythons’ immortal “Department of Silly Walks.” The king then took a bubble bath, blowing foam into the air, followed by a nap on the Macbeths’ bed.

Screwing his courage to the sticking place, Simon Keenlyside, who at 50 still has his Billy Budd body, stripped off his shirt and tie for Macbeth’s blood-soaked murder of Duncan, and was then made to take a shower onstage joined by his wife, both of them clothed.

Banqo’s murderers wore trench coats, white gloves and red clown noses and carried red helium-filled balloons. Banquo’s ghost appeared at the banquet with a balloon. Included for the first time at Staatsoper was the rarely-performed ballet music for the witches’ frolic in the third act. During this farrago, the ladies’ club donned white terrycloth bathrobes and wrapped their heads in bath towels. Booing occasionally drowned out or postponed the music.

The bearing of children’s corpses by the chorus men during Macduff’s lament to his country made a striking image, but how to get them offstage? For the duration of a small eternity, they rose in silence and slowly backed upstage, garnering outright guffaws from the audience. They reappeared at the opera’s end bearing small pine trees, as Birnam Wood to Dunsinane Hill did come.

The first post-performance boos were for Stefan Kocán, a Slovak basso with a tendency to sing flat, utterly lacking the depth and style required for Banquo. Considerably more vehemence greeted debutant Erika Sunnegardh, who sounded more like a provincial soubrette than a Lady Macbeth, her voice tiny, screechy, unable to meet Verdi’s demands for fioratura, and totally blowing the climactic high D-flat at the end of her Sleepwalking Scene, so poorly sung it drew both laughter and booing.

Garcia Calvo, too, received his share of contempt in exchange for his consistent incompetence in the pit. New York native Dimitri Pittas, another debutant, was given a hearty welcome, very possibly because he wasn’t awful. He cut a handsome, sympathetic figure as Macduff and sang his big aria quite well, even if his sizeable tenor comes across steely, lacking Italianate warmth and beauty.

The sole triumph of the evening was Keenlyside’s brave performance. Save for a few dramatic moments where a sympathetic conductor might have worked with him rather than make him force, his was a masterful, elegantly-sung Macbeth, his big, burnished gold baritone flooding the house with true Verdian style. That he made it through the production without any sacrifice of dignity (when a pram containing an Uzi pushed onstage by Lady Macbeth kept rolling, Keenlyside kicked it far upstage, earning applause) was a further testament to the artistry that makes him one of the most intelligent and fascinating singers of our time.

Adding insult to injury, Nemirova took repeated bows as if she enjoyed being the center of the hatred of 2,000 people, perhaps with the foresight that she will not likely be on a stage in Vienna again anytime soon. This was no Scottish tragedy but merely a puerile farce.

Masochists and fans of Keenlyside may wish to attend performances this week (Dec. 21 and 26) or five more in May 2010.

www.wiener-staatsoper.at

It was a disaster when it premiered, too.   

[JMK]

Page Five Annette....Bossa Nova!

How did she get into that Thunderbird?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaHFf9Xdgi8

How did she get into that black swimsuit I think is the better question.   

[DAW]

Waited all day for the Bosch dishwasher repairman, who just left.

Apparently, there was a service recall on our dishwasher.  They tend to catch fire sometimes.  Bosch knew about this in January.  They just mailed a letter about it to us a few weeks ago.     

[George]

Happy Conducting Debut for DAS Joshie!!

Ditto!!

[George]

Glad to be home, actually, but didn't want to come back.  The two weeks just zoomed by.

Welcome home, Ron!

[Jennifer]

DR Jose I just clicked on your list of words that people spell incorrectly. For some reason i thought it would be difficult words, and not just the basics.  But still interesting.

Funny, i expected little misspelled words such as "the".

I guess it just depends what you were expecting.  IMO what they listed would be for someone in grade 7.

[George]

<----------    Milestone!!!!

Congrats, JRand!

[Jrand74]

Thanks DR GEORGE.

I am intrigued by the Weiner Macbeth.

[Jrand74]

Interesting photos and other reviews of said production here:

http://www.simonkeenlyside.info/Articles/Perform/Macbeth/2009MacbethVienna.html

One reviewer found little to praise but the "prompt starting time."

[DAW]

"Phenomenon" spelled backwards is "Nonemonehp."

[Matt H.]

Why is HERE'S LUCY Season Two already available, but we still only have season one of THE LUCY SHOW? 

Aren't they put out by different studios?

[Matt H.]

DR JOSESPIANO mentioned Tabitha's Salon Takeover - I was watching it last night, too - but had to turn it off.  Tabitha was visiting a salon in Chicago's Boys' Town....and the guys working there were mostly unskilled and I wouldn't let any of them cut my hair - and I don't even have much.

Yes, MR BK - I remember your musings on The Brothers Smothers....this new book is most interesting.  And as the years have gone by.....and even at the time - I had the boys mixed up and thought that it was Dick who was causing all the trouble....turned out to be the older brother Tom - who played the younger brother in the boys' act....  Tom's dealings with CBS were most interesting, and the network really did try to work with them, until Tom decided he was bigger than CBS....  He wasn't.

Tommy played the younger brother in the act? I didn't remember that.

[Cillaliz]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAKOTACELT!

[Matt H.]

I had a lengthy phone call, so I didn't qutie as much watched this afternoon as I thought I would get to. Still got some fun things watched for my day off thus far.