miscellaneous noms
a space opera… in the year 2000
what do you imagine going to the opera will be like in the year 2000? what about people in the 1800s, what did they imagine what going to the opera would be like in the year 2000? furthermore, what do you imagine that people in the 1800s imagined what you would imagine that they would imagine what going to the opera 9 years ago would be like? before we sink into an infinite abyss, let us observe this 1882 illustration from the hyper-cool paleo future blog (which has several more pictures of this series) where lithographer albert robida conceptualises his 2nd millennium operatic vision. consider:
your elegant monocle and tender moustache and the bevy of fly honeys in paisley petticoats that you assist in boarding your flying yellow dolphin while kaiser wilhem patrols the perimeter in a solo spaceship (sword at the ready), and 100 feet below you, some dandy ushers boobsy mcgee out of her wooly overcoat. it’s almost as if steampunk scene happened last year.
and to think only a few years before this lithograph was published, nietzsche (in die geburt der tragödie) went on a 54 paragraph tirade about how much opera blows chunks. look who’s eating a corvine delmonico now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(answer: friedrich wilhelm nietzsche!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
hyperbole is an understatment -or- what will metacritique say about this?
perhaps in your sixth grade production of all aboard the gastrointestinal tract, you earned high praise and many kudos in your school’s newspaper for your absorbing portrayal of a wincing ileocecal valve. but was that review as bombastic or as tumid as the following one (dated may 30, 1784) from an irish newspaper which describes a performance by sarah siddons (the most popular tragedienne of the 1700s):
On Saturday, Mrs. Siddons, about whom all the world had been talking, exposed her beautiful, adamantine, soft, and lovely person, for the first time, at Smock-Alley Theatre, in the bewitching, melting, and all-tearful character of ” Isabella.”
She was nature itself! She was the most exquisite work of art! She was the very daisy, primrose, tuberose, sweet-brier, furze-blossom, gilliflower, wallflower, cauliflower, auricula, and rosemary ! In short, she was the bouquet of Parnassus. Where expectation was raised so high, it was thought she would be injured by her appearance; but it was the audience who were injured : several fainted before the curtain drew up! When she came to the scene of parting with her wedding-ring, ah ! what a sight was there ! the very fiddlers in the orchestra, albeit unused to the melting mood, blubbered like hungry children crying for their bread and butter; and when the bell rang for music between the acts, the tears ran from the bassoon-player’s eyes in such plentiful showers that they choked the finger-stops, and, making a spout of the instrument, poured in such torrents on the first fiddler’s book, that, not seeing the overture was in two sharps, the leader of the band actually played in one flat. But the sobs and sighs of the groaning audience, and the noise of corks drawn from the smelling-bottles, prevented the mistake between flats and sharps being discovered.
One hundred and nine ladies fainted, forty-six went into fits, and ninety-five had strong hysterics ! The world will scarcely credit the truth when they are told that fourteen children, five old women, one hundred tailors, and six common-councilmen were actually drowned in the inundation of tears that flowed from the galleries, the slips, and the boxes to increase the briny pond in the pit; the water was three feet deep; and the people were obliged to stand upon the benches, and were in that position up to their ankles in tears! An act of Parliament against her playing any more will certainly pass.
there comes a point in hyperbole, just as there comes a point in a hyperbola, when things start reversing themselves and your well-intended praise quickly plunges towards unrelenting contempt.
when the dust jacket of a novel informs you that miss x is “the new jane austen,” you instantly know that her book is full of bitchy remarks, and any novel written “in the style of virginia woolf,” obviously has no plot. similarly theatre criticism can be understood once the technical terms used by the modern critic are decoded.
x: would you like a cup of tea?
y: no.
x: oh yes you would.
y: oh no i wouldn’t.
x: oh yes you would.
y: oh no i wouldn’t…etc.
these amusing interpretations are from bluff your way in british theatre (1986). as it was written by fidelis morgan and his first name begins with an f, i figure that all of the words (and not just feminist) are f-words thus satisfying my weekly obligation to present them.
another peculiar holiday tradition: m’aider!
ever since i was really really little, my mom would barge into my room at 6:30 a.m. every may 1st blasting the appended song (vanessa redgrave singing the lusty month of may from the musical, camelot) on a portable boombox. she continues this tradition via phone EVERY year. i post this audio° not so much for your benefit but out of annual pavlovian conditioning.
thornton gone wilder
i don’t want to get all gary vanderchunk on you, but this article in the hudson review is worth a look-see in the hopes that it might convince you that thornton wilder (and his works) are worthy of a longer look-see:
He was born in 1897, the same year as William Faulkner, a year after F. Scott Fitzgerald, and two years before Hemingway; he published his first novel in 1926, the same year as Soldiers’ Pay and The Sun Also Rises, a year after The Great Gatsby and Arrowsmith, and a year before Elmer Gantry, and was immediately hailed as one of the best writers of his generation. He went on to write several more novels, almost all of them critically acclaimed bestsellers, and to win three Pulitzer Prizes, one for fiction and two for drama (he is still the only writer to have won Pulitzers in both categories). One of his novels was among the twentieth century’s great publishing sensations; one of his plays is the most performed American theatrical work of all time; yet another of his stage efforts was the basis for one of the most successful Broadway musicals in history. Some consider him the equal or superior of Hemingway and Fitzgerald as a novelist, and some place him alongside—or above—Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams in the pantheon of American drama.
Why, then, can it seem as if Thornton Wilder has fallen between the cracks?
an impersonal passion: thornton wilder by bruce bawer. in the hudson review (autumn 2008)
