Annals of Pop Culture Opera Reference

night of the living dead

If the protest outside attracts a Who's Who of the Empire State's own Political Graveyard, then surely goings on inside must be worth checking out. And since the Met seems to have caved to censorship demands on the SiriusXM front as well as the HDcast, La Cieca has posted audio of the 1991 premiere of The Death of Klinghoffer. Check it out here, and the libretto here, if you are so inclined. Or don't, if you are not. Your choice.

*well, okay, David Paterson is now chair of the Democratic Machine Party in NY, but I'm not sure that's much of a status change.

ftƿ!

It is reported by an anonymous source within the campaign that Romney's speech in London will address the "special relationship" between the Geats and the Spear-Danes, and at the planned fundraiser among US bankers in London, there will be a giving out of many rings, and the drinking of muchel mead in the golden hall, with a session of vaunting to follow. After that they will all be eaten by Grendel.

flogging

I wasn't going to post about this, in hopes that it would go away, but then the ante was upped.

Syntax is everything, editors:

"NEW YORK, July 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- EMI Classics has released 50 Shades of Classical Music, a digital compilation containing 50 pieces of classical music inspired by the bestselling 'Fifty Shades of Grey' novels..."
 
What pieces would those be, one wonders?

Read the rest here, and do visit the website, it's all about the Dark Side of Classical Music™. Evidently. Which is to say, a lot of baroque standards (= evil) and not every opera aria cliché imaginable, but certainly the ones ad agencies love the most.

And yes, apparently O mio babbino caro is the Dark Side. In your face, Rob Zombie.

Oh but wait, now you'll have to take my word for it, because some force of Market or the Law (50 Shades of ©) is at work, like the Nothing, making it all vanish before our eyes. Oh well. It was fun watching Thomas Tallis, that Monster of the Id, shoot up the charts.

Everything old is the same only more so

Barry Crimmins, who once said of Strom Thurmond "He should have snakes for hair!", addresses Anti-War Rally...that's, um, the first Gulf War. And the Assad he mentions...that was the first one. And the George Bush he mentions...uh, that was the first one too. Henry Kissinger, though...well, there can be only one.



Now Mr Crimmins is issuing forth from his mountain fastness and descending on NYC. It's a rare opportunity to lyao at all the things people are currently camped out in protest of across the planet, so I'd take it.

A thumbnail history of Americanistan

This is a good thumbnail, but of course there are things they had to leave out, like when ET told Moses to found the NRA.  Also when the Haitians, influenced by the Americanistanian Dust-Up of Libertarianization, liberated themselves from Napoleon III or Whatever by making a pact with Rupert Murdoch.   Man, I love this history sh*t.