Opera Chic

Düsseldorf Hosts a Fashionable Opera

(A scene from The Fashion, coming to an opera house [not] near you in January, '08)

Contemporary Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli -- who throughout the years has given us memorable hits such as Linzer Stahloper, Keplers Traum, Frau Frankenstein, and Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit -- is bracing for a world premiere of his latest operatic dabbling titled The Fashion. Raise your hand if you feel like there’s something amiss from the title.  Like "The fashion...WHAT WHAT"? The Fashion Addict, The Fashion Files, The Fashion Zone. o gawrd give me sumthing n e thing here...

Opening January 26, 2008 at the Düsseldorf opera house, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, The Fashion is being billed as "a black comedy, in a very British style, about the fashion industry", and promises a full submersion into the world of fashion, with teasers of dueling catwalk stars, feuding stylists, and gender benders. And then there’s this plot summary:

"[The Fashion is] shot through with eroticism and sexual ambiguities: the protagonist is a catwalk star, a model named Tarquin, who’s the toyboy of the stylist from Milan, Maria Maria (Jeanne Piland) and the attractive Mel’s rival, and who turns out to be a woman (Kristen Leich)!"

Awesome. The story has been penned British librettists Bob Goody and Dan Jemmett, and is directed by Michael Simon. Tenor hottie Steven Harrison will be singing one of the leads [as it is written on his website], already having collaborated with the crew in a prior Faust @ Düsseldorf earlier this year.

Conductor John Fiore will hopefully lead the Dusseldorf Symphony Orchestra to a wickedly fashionable victory! And as someone who owns 14 cheetah-print scarves from Roberto Cavalli's colletion for H&M, I think I know what "fashion" is. \(º_o)/

Now here is a good excuse to insert some pictures of shirtless tenor Steven Harrison as seen in director Michael Simon's take on Faust. Sorry guy, but you'll definitely have to shave ur chest for The Fashion. Enjoy the warmth now while u can, u silly little cub!

DANG THAT SYSTEM IS BOOMIN!: Steinway & Sons Rawks Out [For a Price]

We first heard about the anticipated Steinway & Sons sound system over the summer, when the buzz seemed like a hazy, xanax-induced dream, but it has incredibly come to fruition: Now the groveling, unworthy public can fork over $150,000.00 USD for their very own Steinway & Sons Model D Music System. The system is the collaboration between the historic piano crafters, Steinway & Sons, and Peter Lyngdorf, “Europe's preeminent developer of high-performance digital music systems."

Listen to me now as you are lounging on your Le Corbusier chaise lounges in your Steinway Black Tie Formal Wear collection, waiting for your supermodel boyfriends to come home from their Vogue Hommes photo shoots:

The sound system is the first of its kind to use a fully digital amplification technology. Designed with everything in mind, "no cost or effort has been spared." It also features a patented RoomPerfect system that can somehow read the dimensions and placement of the system within the room, and make audio adjustments accordingly. Each unit -- which comprises of a CD-player head unit & two loudspeakers that weigh 500 lbs apiece -- takes 170 of work, approximately 8 weeks to assemble by hand, and features a volume wheel made of gold-plated brass.

You can browse the 27-page brochure [@ their website here], and choose from almost 50 different lacquers if the default classic, glossy Steinway black clashes with your Kandinskys and Klees hanging on the wall.

GUYS IT PLAYS CDS!!!

I'd rather save 50K and get me some of that limited edition Karl Lagerfeld Steinway & Sons instead.

Get Better or GET OUT

"Montreal Symphony Orchestra music director Kent Nagano has told the members of the St. Lawrence Choir - the amateur heart of the MSO Chorus since 1986 - that they must improve their performance standards or he will reconstitute the chorus by resorting to an unspecified 'plan B'."

You can read more here.

omg nagano punish them. punish them with your flaming sword of 'plan b' justice. that's so hawt its insane.

~*Fyred fRum tHa Ch0ir 4 bEIn 2 fAby0Lus*~ 

Fremont Opera Thinks They're The Royal Opera House

In light of the recent lameness concerning the (as yet not definitively substantiated but possible) singer discrimination against Hope Briggs and the SF Opera, an article about priorities within various judges' minds (while sitting on an audition panel for the Opera San Jose Irene Dalis Vocal Competition) shouldn't be shocking. But it is. ew. just: ew.

David and Barbara Sloss with the brand-new Fremont Opera are looking for a Mimi and a Rodolfo, major characters in the upcoming production of "La Boheme." The Slosses come back every year "because you'll often find someone surprisingly good," David Sloss says, quickly adding: "But it isn't often that someone will blow you away."

Finding the right singer for the right role is a complicated process, one helped by the Excel spreadsheet Sloss has open in his laptop. "Our Mimi has to look credible. She dies of TB, so she shouldn't be too hefty," he says, running down his checklist. "She requires a lyrical voice and musical sensibility, and has to also be a touching actress."

ok, we know that meanie that is Frengo did it to Violeta Urmana for the December 2006 Aida la prima, but that was a completely different story (we’re dealing with Frengo and his ego, not some scrappy second-rate conductor). Should this kind of discrimination be tolerated in a "semi-staged concert version" of La Bohème? What the hell? I guess David isn't too fond of this La Bohème then.

Vermont is Kind of Wack

The Green Mountain Opera Festival is looking for a child to play the role of Sorrow in its production of "Madama Butterfly" at the Barre Opera House on June 22 and 24. Sorrow is the son of Madama Butterfly, or Cio-Cio-San, and the American Lieutenant Pinkerton. He appears on stage for five minutes in the second act in a non-speaking, non-singing role. [...] The child could be either a girl or boy, from 4 to 6 years of age, relatively fair-skinned and under three feet tall.

I'll Try Anything As Long As I Look Good

Hay guys! Guess what? Classical music is kewl again. We are like the most relevant people in the whole world!!!11eleven!!111

Well...at least according to the fashionably cooltural élite behind NYC's Milk (ph: mAElk) Studios, who recently had the epiphany to begin a classical music series that, instead of catering to AARP-card holders and poor students, would instead lure models, fashion conspirators, and various actors/cling-ons.

No fair-weather scensters could be reached for comment at this time, still sleeping-off a post-party delirium from moshing and skanking to Vivaldi's Four Seasons (huh k). But sources close to Opera Chic indicate that scensters and their various sycophants are all jumping on the classical music scene bandwagon, because it suddendly got cool or something. "They are desperate to cling to any sort of identity while searching for social acceptance," said our local expert/party-crasher, "I've never heard of such a lame excuse for trying to appear cultured."

~~~

You can read about it in this Sunday's NYTimes Style pages.

Launched in February 2007, Milk Studios (Katie Ford, the chief executive of Ford Models is one of the founders) launched "Milk Salon", where four classical musicians have been invited throughout the year to act as moving, emoting background props at their parties. Violinist Janine Jansen just performed ("Summer" from The Four Seasons, that obscure work Milk Studios rescued from obliivion), and past guest pianist Yundi Li rocked the casbah a few months ago (holy $h1t! with an appearance by Terry "Yes, That Is Actually A Tranny" Richardson).

“'Our purpose is to expose these top-class artists to a new group of people who are more downtown — trendsetters, fashion people — in hopes of spreading classical music to a new generation,' said the dapper Mr. Rassi [a partner in Milk Studios], explaining the concept behind this quarterly classical-music recital series, titled Milk Salon."

(That is, if 'classical music' is composed entirely of totally b00tleg versions of Vivaldi and Mozart hits you would find on track listings of "The Best Classical Mix...Ever" or like “The Most Relaxing Classical Album in the World...Ever!”) They may as well just pipe-in Mouret's rondeau from "Symphonies and Fanfares for the King's Supper" and pretend they're on "Masterpiece Theatre".

Rawk on with your bad selves, Milk Salon...RAWK ON!