Well, I'm back! For those of you who might have noticed, I actually started this blog way back in March - and then had no time to tend it. So I deleted the old posts, gave it a new template, and am starting over. For those of you who have no knowledge of Yiddish (which I will assume will be mostly non-Americans, because Yiddish has so thoroughly penetrated American English), a yenta is someone, usually an old woman (not me, folks, I'm 35!) who talks, and talks, and talks, and just won't shut up! Usually spelled Yente, it actually used to be a pretty common Yiddish girl's name, probably from either the French gentille or the Italian gentile. Unfortunately, there was apparently there was one woman with the name who was such and energetic gossip that the name became forever associated with that quality. I very happily admit that I often won't shut up either. So I will spend lots of time here talking, and kvelling (gushing), and probably kvetching (complaining) a little, too, about things operatic.
But the one aspect of yenta you will not find here is that of the nasty, superficial gossip columnist. I notice many rabid opera fans - or rabid fans of anything, frankly - tend to love that stuff. Too many of them engage in behavior, especially online where they can hide behind pseudonyms, that is utterly insulting to the cats and female dogs it's named after. Now like any opera fan, I have very strong opinions, and yes, there are singers and people in the business I dislike, but I do my best not to engage in personal attacks against anyone. The only time it might possibly happen is if I'm defending someone, but again, I'll work very hard to avoid it. And certainly I won't make nasty cracks about singers' private lives - the only "divo/diva dish" you will see here will be recipes!
What can you expect from this blog? Hopefully reviews of just about every opera and classical music concert I go to, broadcast I listen to, or CD I hear, as well as theater, film, and possibly dance, and non-classical music. During the regular season, I stand at the Met roughly once every week, and try also to go to vocal recitals as well as New York City Opera several times a year. Hopefully I will also have more opportunties to go to the opera outside New York City. I am especially floored by the musical thrills (if not the stage productions) produced by Covent Garden under the directorship of its new maestro, Antonio "Tony the Genius" Pappano, and hope to actually hear him conduct an opera live, which I haven't done since his only previous Met appearances with Eugene Onegin in 1997. While several of his other projects next season look more than interesting, the essential is Tosca with my beloved Angela Gheorghiu. I am also making every effort to go see Angela with her equally splendid hubby Roberto Alagna in Los Angeles in Pagliacci, which will have the added bonus of Frederica von Stade and John Cheek (who I've actually sung with!) in La Grande-Duchesse du Gerolstein, and hopefully a trip to the theater to see Kate Mulgrew in her one-woman show about Katherine Hepburn, Tea at Five, which I didn't have the money to see while it was in New York.
I am also an amateur choral mezzo (actually, probably a true contralto) and will post reports of my own singing activities. I currently am involved with the Saint George's Choral Society, which rehearses and performs at Saint George's Church between 16th and 17th Streets about halfway between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, right across from Stuyvesant Park. We will be singing Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass in the fall (probably mid-November) and Rossini's Petite Messe Sollenelle in the spring (probably mid-April). I will also be reauditioning in the fall for The Rottenberg Chorale, a Jewish chorus I sang with a number of years ago. I also go and sing in the Berkshire Choral Festival whenever I can afford it (not this year, unfortunately) - that's where I sang with Mr. Cheek, back I believe in 1998, in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Not suprisingly considering the title of this blog, Judaism, cultural as well as religious, is extraordinarily important to me. My observance of my faith is progressive and postdenominational, and obviously that informs much of my thinking, but although I might post occasionally on Jewish topics, I'm not sure this is quite the spot for extensive divrei torah (literally "words of Torah", a biblical discourse or a sermon). Of course, whenever opera and Judaism coincide, I will definitely discuss it, i.e the "biblical" operas or possibly even Yiddish Gilbert and Sullivan (!), and I'm also preparing a post on how Rossini's Le Comte Ory relates to the prohibition on men wearing women's clothes, which I'll post when the appropriate parasha (weekly Torah portion) comes up. Actually, I am researching finding arias, songs, or other classical compositions to coincide with each parasha and will start posting when the cycle begins with Bereshit sometime in late October. I got the idea while listening to bits of a splendid new disc of Schubert sacred songs (the final volume in the Hyperion Schubert Edition), which not only has Schubert's only song in Hebrew, a setting of Psalm 92, but a song called Hagars Klage (Hagar's Lament)
My other great passion is science fiction and fantasy - reading it, watching it, and now attempting to write it! And of course, there are so many links between opera and SF/Fantasy - did you know that the entry on opera in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy is 11 pages? That's just a list - not an explanation, just a list - of operas with fantasy elements, which believe it or not includes Pagliacci because of the commedia dell'arte in the "play within a play". Obviously, so much of opera has its origin in myth and legend just like most great fantasy, and operas such as The Makropolous Case and Aniara are science fiction. And of course, it's not for nothing that sagas like Star Wars and Star Trek are called, well, space opera. You will probably also see book reviews, film reviews, maybe video game reviews, as well and comments on some of my favorite alternate universes (e.g. Star Trek - all five series, Doctor Who, Babylon 5, Harry Potter, etc) here, although I am tentatively planning a separate review blog for Star Trek tentatively titled Linear Existence.
I'll also post various miscellany as I see fit, although I'll try not to overload the blog with it.
Coming soon (within the next few days) : A review of the Public Theatre's Shakespeare-in-the-Park production of As You Like It and the New York Philharmonic's July 13 Central Park concert, some recent operatic encounters at the movies, comments on my latest operatic stash from EBay, possibly a review of the splendid BBC Proms Die Walküre I just listened to with the aforementioned Maestro Pappano, Placido Domingo, Bryn Terfel, Lisa Gasteen, Rosalind Plowright, and Eric Halvarson. Oh yes, and even the Ring would pale before a seven opera Harry Potter cycle, and I'll give you some ideas and possibly casting. And at some point I have to write a spoof song (otherwise known in SF fan circles as a "filksong") called "The Yenta of the Opera" to the tune of "The Phantom of the Opera" Readers are welcome to try this on their own ;-).
Alright already! Enjoy!
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