Funny in the rearview etc.

Yeah, sometimes I go back and read the blog I wrote. Sometimes I even laugh at the jokes. Narcissism: it's what the blogosphere is made of. Anyway I was reading this thing on traditional vs. nontraditional stagings and read this in comments from someone posting as "Ernani Involami"

You know, and I'm not just saying this because you made the Dada comment, but I really want to replace the "Giusto Ciel!" monologue in Adriana with sound poetry.

I had no idea how funny this was, because I was about 90% unfamiliar with Adriana at the time. This is very, very funny to imagine.

Other thing: people who know where to look for such things, you owe it to your crazy opera-loving self to track down Christine Goerke's recent Elektra from Madrid, and then you owe it to me to write crazy-ass letters to Peter Gelb telling him to cast her in the next revival. First I typed "her to cast him," which is slightly amusing to think about.

Anyway if my ears (and technology) do not deceived me, what she is, La Goerke, is perhaps the best Elektra of the last twenty years, like the best since Behrens let's say. The intensity of Polaski with easy Cs and perhaps a more distinctive timbre. Yekh, I hate scoring one singer off another, and I adore Polaski. I'm just trying to convey my excitement upon hearing this.

Riveting as the Foreign Princess in Rusalka, one of my 3-4 best nights at the Met, Goerke really should move off the cover section of the roster. This is prime time stuff.