Better late than never, says Opera Chic, as she feeds you some yummy bits from this past weekend's cache of leisure reading.
We got a kick out of La Repubblica's take on the current La Scala strike, appropriating the famous Scala wreath and shield (as OC did before Scala threatened legal action) in a humorous headline. And yes, the Italian papers are writing about the Scala strike ad nauseam, but it doesn't really churn our butter, so here's the best we found out of the boring lot:
We also found an article in 15-21 November issue of le nouvel Observateur on the lithe countertenor, Philippe Jaroussky. O hai here it is. If you can get past the egregious gushing ("Il a tous les talents, toutes les grâces. La jeunesse, le charme, la simplicité, la gentillesse,") it's not so bad, and gives a background of the rarely-heard religious opera, Il Sant'Alessio from 1632, by 17th century composer Stefano Landi. The opera may be familiar to American audiences as having last been heard a few weeks ago in NYC's Rose Theater (for Lincoln Center's Great Performers Series) in a semi-staged production with period-instrument orchestra, Les Arts Florissants. Opening tomorrow in Paris @ Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the travails of Sant'Alessio will be presented in a fully-staged version, featuring a cast of almost all countertenors (Jaroussky included) with a few falsetto thrown in, making an all-male cast. Mmmm salsiccia-fest!
We also got a titter out of the 15-21 Novembre edition of Tuttomilano, which made a Don Giovanni-inspired graphic out of Zerlina's "Vorrei e non vorrei". The copy barges on about Iskon, a Milan-based focus group for studying structural "systematic constellations", which they will discuss in a weekend workshop. I read their website in both Italian and English like 3x, and still can't quite figure out exactly what these psychotherapist hippies actually do. We're soooo not going.
Then we found this sweet article on Zubin Mehta in Sunday’s La Repubblica, titled “Bacchette magiche” (we're so stealing that from now on), where Mehta says he longs to return to his homeland, India, and wants to live in Bombay (maybe all the while retaining his Los Angeles mansion and Tuscan villa?), because he is a man who is 100% Indian (he says his family even speaks the same dialect and pronunciation as Gandhi did, la lingua gujarati). His says his favorite works to conduct are Beethoven’s Eroica, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Wagner’s Die Walküre. Then he started talking about his love of Israel, the time @ King David Hotel in Jerusalem where he was almost shot, more on India, and then about his marriages. We still +heart+ the maestro, and we especially warship his wife, but it was all kind of meh.
Then there was a beautiful, stark photograph of Vladimir Ashkenazy with accompanying words penned by the retired artist himself. The pianist wrote that he lives in a strange reality, because in his wildest dreams, he never could have imagined a life filled with such gorgeous music. He has small hands and short fingers, and when he was a teenager, he had tried to play Rachmaninov's Piano Concerti 2&3, but never thought that he would finish because there were too many notes, especially ones that would have taken bigger hands to play. Despite his physical limitations, he never wanted bigger hands (lies!). Then he spoke about the past, and said that his parents were very young in 1930s Russia when they were married (dad = 21, mom = 20). Life was so difficult for the newlyweds that when his mother became pregnant with him, his father wanted his mother to abort! Ahhh! Then he spoke about the first time he was ordered to conduct in a concert by Barenboim, which exited to tough criticism.
Finally, the November 17 edition of Io Donna ran a small piece on American tenor, John Osborn, who will be singing the role of Arnold in Rossini's Guillaume Tell, which will be presented in concert version under the magic wand (heh) of Antonio Pappano and the orchestra and chorus dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia later this week.
In all honestly, we did nothing other than skim the piece, noting roundly that Osborn bears a striking resemblance to devoted crush, Mario López’s A.C. Slater from the 80s sitcom "Saved By The Bell"…and we were reminded of Mr. López’s last public appearance this past Halloween 2007 as the hottest Roman, um, gladiator in the history of the universe. Pleasant dreams!
