Well of course the moment I go and get all gossipy about the jaw-dropping final tableau of John Doyle's Peter Grimes to a couple of bloggers at ACB's successful and enjoyable* birthday event, it seems they have edited it out. In comments and elsewhere I have had a few conversations to the effect of "what are you talking about" with an implied "and what are you smoking?" So in case you're seeing it now, I will ruin the surprise that isn't there anymore. As originally staged on opening night, the big wooden set that had been shifting around all night like a teenager in a tux finally, in the last moments of the opera, flung wide. And what did it reveal? This sort of...scaffolding, I guess, with people in modern dress striking various voguish poses, as if the whole thing had been some really long ad for herring-scented cologne. And on dit (though this is fourth-hand, one of those hands is that of La Cieca so I think we can assume it's as trustworthy as the World Almanac) that it had something, for real, to do with the LGBT youth of today, and (I'm using the word "and" a lot here, because the hilarity is just kind of endless) the little kid A.D. Griffey was all but mopping the floor with is up there too, because I guess Peter Grimes gayed him. I believe the word you're looking for is "WHAT?", or I hope it is. So anyway that's gone and now what is revealed when the Fish Palace swings away is just the radiant white light of heaven, and though there may still be some fags and dykes there, they're off watching Project Runway. I'm actually kind of sorry nobody else gets to see it.
*not to comment on a charity event, as that doesn't seem sporting, but did we remember from whatever year's auditions that John Michael Moore was quite that good (even in the dreadful soliloquy from Carousel) or that he was, well, quite that hot? We did not.
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- Maury D'annato
- Maury D'Annato lives in New York and writes about opera, because you wouldn't want to hear about his day job.
7 comments:
I'm saying "WHAT"?, but more in incomprehension. I fail to understand the meaning of these words, and doubt that this is a grammatical sentence:
"that it had something, for real, to do with the LGBT youth of today, and . . . [parens elided] . . . the little kid A.D. Griffey was all but mopping the floor with is up there too, because I guess Peter Grimes gayed him.
Well, stylistically it's over-long, because that's sort of one of my tics, but...I guess you're welcome to point out the grammatical mistake and I'll correct it. I'm not seeing it.
Nothing wrong with the grammar. Plenty wrong with the production though, or so I would seem.
I'm going to snipe at something else though. I am congenitally incapable of hearing that last phrase 'I'll go out and make it, or steal it, or TAAAAKE it... or DIIIIE' without blubbing like some kind of homosexual.
To further pedants: I'm referring to maury's PS about Carousel, there. Although that lyric's a decent synopsis for Grimes, if you think about it.
That's 'so 'it' would seem' in para one of my post.
So embarrassing to make a typo in a conversation about pedantry.
Amer: I don't know what it is that rubs me so wrong about the soliloquy. I think it never finds me in the mood for quaintsy, enthusiastic back-slapping about old-school gender roles. Yes, it brings out the shrill PC cop in me. Also I find it just rambles so.
Maury--I would argue that the Soliloquy is a good piece, but it is usually very badly performed, and it's a terrible recital/audition piece: it brings out what is most arch and goofy about classically trained American singers. This it shares with "The Impossible Dream"--which is, in fact, putrid.
Maven: maybe that's it, then, what it brings out in singers. There's plenty of recital material I think conjures up lousy qualities in singers, perhaps American, perhaps not. Actually another piece that was on the program is a prime example: Ives' "Two Little Flowers," which seems to automatically occasion a precious, insulin-coma-inducing delivery (though I don't recall it being poured forth thusly in the concert in question.) Yekh.
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