Re: [F_MINOR] OT: Valkyrie biker chicks wail Wagner at Glastonbury Festival

[Elmer_Elevator <bobmer.javanet@RCN.COM>]

RE: [F_MINOR] OT: Valkyrie biker chicks wail Wagner at Glastonbur
yFestivalEverybody in the Glastonbury Valkyries is fully clothed. The
naughty bits are the biker outfits and stage business in which one Valkyrie
is viciously yanking on the gag of a tied-up male biker (a minor Teutonic
god named Larry, I'm guessing) a la S&M dominatrix stuff. I did get lucky
with some video links on the right side of this BBC page

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3843901.stm

and what I saw and heard isn't scary or salacious, more like an enthusiastic
adult Halloween party.

But the singing and orchestra are outstanding, the electricity survives even
being squeezed through the Internet. And the BBC reporter said the rock
festival crowd was thrilled and gave the Valkyries a thunderous applause.
And this rather shocked and thrilled the opry warblers, who hinted in
interviews that they had braced themselves for a thunderous yawn.

They should have had more faith in Wagner. I have my issues with the guy,
but no one ever accused him of boring anybody or failing to deliver a
multimedia punch and kick. If your ears don't prick up when you hear the
Valkyries riding in your direction, you're clinically dead.

Somebody at the English National Opera is clearly on an outreach kick. For
them what can get to London nine nights from now,

==========

ENO and O2, supported by ENO Season sponsors Sky & Artsworld, present
Puccini's lastingly popular opera La Bohème in its entirety, live in
Trafalgar Square on Wednesday 7 July 2004 at 7.30 pm.

==========

We very rarely discuss the social or mechanical side of classical music --
Where will the next generation of classical music lovers come from in this
blatantly hostile MTV age? Dope peddlars certainly know how to encourage a
new and young clientelle, but in general classical music lovers behave as if
they were hostile to wanting new customers and future repeat business. It's
a foot-shooting attitude. Orchestras and opera companies are expensive, and
when their fewer and fewer corporate Sugar Daddies smell that fewer and
fewer young people care about this kind of music anymore, they make the
natural business decision to divert their culture subsidies elsewhere. Last
year's Mobil Opera now subsidizes a NASCAR racing team.

I don't think great music sounds better in an atmosphere of
edge-of-extinction elitism. In that context, Glenn Gould was outstanding in
the way he reached out, even after his hermit-like withdrawal from live
performance, to spread his music to new audiences. He never compromised his
artistic standards, but the subtext of his career is so clearly: "This is
exciting, this is thrilling, listen to this."

The late actor Tony Randall made a second career of infecting unwary,
unprepared children with a lifetime enjoyment of opera. You folks know how
the Salzburg Marionettes enthrall me, and when I was lucky enough to get to
Prague last summer, New Free Prague is now infested with marionette operas
and theater; shills leap at you on the sidewalk pressing leaflets in your
hands; souvenir stores sell enchanting, almost-affordable marionettes by the
thousands. (I schlepped the dancing daughter of Emperor Charles back to the
USA -- only one spike of the princess' crown broken, and a dab of superglue
fixed that.)

Are these efforts at rock festivals and downtown monuments, these puppet
shows tacky, kitschy, Disneyesque, Barnumesque, unworthy of Mozart and great
music? Do they demean the faith of True Acolytes like us?

No. They are, at worst, the carnival pony ride that turns a child into an
Olympic equestrian. But I think they're the spontaneous reflection of not
just love of this music, but the desire to keep a beloved thing alive and
healthy into the next generation, the desire to infect the young with it,
the desire (in a cruel capitalist world) to keep it on a paying,
ticket-buying basis.

I was in Old Enslaved Prague, and despite heavy Socialist Hero government
culture subsidies, this was one moribund artistic and musical city. The list
of banned composers -- nearly the entire 20th century repertoire -- was
vast. New Free Prague is an explosion of all culture, music and art, and an
explosion of all the kinds of naughtiness that go with truly vibrant and
free cities. If capitalism is cruel to great music, art and literature,
communism was much worse.

Save great music! Drag a kid to an opera today! Drag an opera to a rock
festival today!

Elmer

----- Original Message -----
From: Cline, Eric
To: F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 11:07 AM
Subject: Re: [F_MINOR] OT: Valkyrie biker chicks wail Wagner at Glastonbury
Festival

I seem to also remember reading in the same article that someone else at the
festival cast the players in Mozart's "Serail" in body suits to "appear"
nude and then had them wear cardboard pieces representing their, shall we
say delicately, anatomy. IIRC this drew big laughs from the crowd. The more
I read the more it seems that the set directors in some of these modern
productions are trying to take center stage instead of the composer. It is
like when the picture frame is dominates over the picture.
Eric Cline

-----Original Message-----
From: lstanwyk [mailto:lstanwyk@ryerson.ca]
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 11:02 AM
To: Cline, Eric
Cc: F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU
Subject: Re: [F_MINOR] OT: Valkyrie biker chicks wail Wagner at Glastonbur
yFestival
A nude production?  How silly LoL  Don't think it really mattered how
good the singing/orchestra was.
> "Cline, Eric" wrote:
>
> Was this done by the same crowd that was responsible for the all nude
> production of Mozart's "Idomeneo" done last year at Salzburg? It was
> so strange that many in the crowd booed and left early. No word on the
> quality of the singing or playing though.
>
> I am being a bit facetious but this production actually happened.
>
> Eric Cline

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