La donna è mobile

It’s Saturday–which means, OPERA DAY! Today we are enjoying a performance of Rigoletto, one of those Clowns Who Laughs Though His Heart is Breaking. He is usually outfitted in a jester’s outfit AND he has a hump on his back (than which nothing was considered more humorous back in the dark ages).

STORY: It happens that–UNBEKNOWNST TO RIGOLETTO–his wicked boss, the Duke, is carrying on with the beauteous Gilda (=Rigoletto’s daughter). The Duke’s Henchmen KIDNAP Gilda, with the accidental help of–HER FATHER. Who doesn’t realize they have put a blindfold on him. Dark, rather, he thinks–but NO! It is a blindfold! Curses! So, after the Duke has his Way with Gilda, Rigoletto decides that he must wreak Vengeance. He hires an Assassin, who accidentally kills the wrong person. Rigoletto opens the sack: Heartbreak! it is GILDA. Not QUITE dead, they have time for an absolutely beautiful duet first.
The plot is idiotic, the music is rapturous.

Many years ago I made a little animation of this show, called Dogoletto, available here. Using Flash, which your machine will spurn–but go ahead and click ‘allow.’ It is quite harmless.

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EMERGENCY! EVERYBODY TO GET FROM STREET!

Last night the weather news was pretty DIRE: snow is ON THE WAY citizens, listen up, time to panic–do you have ENOUGH milk and toilet paper? So it was with a pleasurable anticipation of a day at home that I bade farewell to my colleagues yesterday. But this morning when I peeked out the curtains before the alarm went off–NOTHING! The street innocent and bare, not a flake to be seen. Sigh. So, when the alarm went off, I rose and washed, did the exercises, donned the clothes, made the bed, and snapped open the curtains.
To reveal a WINTER WONDERLAND.

I own to feeling a wee bit AGGRIEVED. Could it not have started 45 minutes sooner for all love? How cruel is fate, thus withholding the chance to sleep late.
HOWEVER, we are born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.
Well, well, I had breakfast and then logged into my work files. Travel expense reports, waivers, permissions.
The snow is lovely, though, and outside the children are sledding down the street!

I don’t want to be a laundress, I want to be famous!

Netflix kindly offered me Hairspray, that old chestnut, and I graciously agreed to the transaction. An amiable show, I thought, a cute fat girl and lots of fine dancing–except–wait, was that Christopher Walken as her dad? And surely that wasn’t Divine as her mom? Heavens, what WAS this show?
AH, it was a remake.
Netflix was not going to offer me the original for FREE. That show has value ($2.99!) Apparently the new show, not.
Well, Walken was fun as he always is, and Michelle Pfeiffer too–but John Travolta in drag, really, les bras m’en tombent. It’s hard to keep eyes on the screen, he is so oddly repellent, his voice wrong, his fat suit off kilter. Walken tries hard but can’t quite bring himself to embrace his frantically chewing-the-scenery wife. Though they do they manage a nice little tango.
Travolta had a kind of greasy charm in his youth, but really, the shade of Divine need not worry. That role of Edna Turnblad is hers forever.

At least we haven’t had an earthquake lately…

It is somewhat dispiriting to return from an expensive show (that did not charm me) to find a $100 speeding ticket waiting for me in the mail, souvenir of the drive to the previous expensive show (that also didn’t charm me).
Sigh.
ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.
Sigh.
This show was a ballet called Raise the Red Lantern, danced by the National Ballet of China. The story is based on Wives and Concubine (a 1990 novel by Su Tong, astonishingly bleak). There was a 1991 film which I saw but don’t remember. It was much admired.

The ballet is–very colorful.
There were red lanterns.
There were Chinese opera scenes, which possibly were correctly performed–most of us in the audience had no idea. Though, there were a lot of Chinese Americans there, drinking it all in. Maybe the Chinese opera bits were just the thing for them. Not so much for me, though it was very colorful, as I said.
There was a strident soprano making loud sounds in the background, which did not appear to me to always be exactly in tune, but then, I have no education in Chinese culture.
There was a lot of percussion and fairly uninteresting music–but again, I have no education in Chinese culture.
There was also a certain amount of ensemble dancing which could have used a little more rehearsal, perhaps. Still, very dramatic.
At least there was the program, always dependable for a laugh: “On the wedding night, despite her desperate resistance, the bride becomes overcome by her tragic destiny.” Which is to say, IS RAPED. And when the lovers are killed at the end:” “Feudalism strangles their young lives and beautiful love.” The story was set in the 1920’s.
Well, it ended eventually, and I drove home. On the way home, the last bit of Don Giovanni was on, a splendid opera.
And, not a bit out of tune.

General Tso and Tim Curry

Remember General Tso’s Chicken–that sweet and spicy staple of Chinese restaurants? The kids used to love it and I used to call it meat in jam sauce. Which it is, basically–but recently I found a recipe for it and have made it a few times. And what do you know, it’s really tasty. YES, a certain amount of work, but worth it. That dark spicy sauce, those crispy little nodules of chicken!
So yesterday was easeful Saturday and I thought I would ORDER OUT–something I do very rarely, but which the kids do all the time–and I bade Grubhub fetch me some of that tasty General Tso’s chicken from a local establishment. Alas, NOT a success. The restaurant version–or at least, the quotidian restaurant version–is indeed meat in jam sauce, an insipid sauce which is neither dark or spicy, but rather a sickly red syrup.
Well, I managed to choke it down, but have come to realize that either 1) I have to try this dish from some more distinguished restaurant, or 2) continue to make it myself. Or of course, 3) stick to the old curries and pasta standbys.
And, SPEAKING of General Tso’s chicken, remember that ghastly but irresistible movie called Legend, starring Tom Cruise as a wayward whimsical WOOD ELF kind of chappie, and Tim Curry as a spectacularly horrid Lord of Darkness? Tim Curry’s outfit had him glistening as if he were covered in red syrup–one couldn’t help but instantly picture him as a toothsome nugget in that delectable dish. This unfortunate image has persisted in my mind for over 35 years….

NOTE: There was also a UNICORN and a PRINCESS in the movie. It was exquisitely dreadful.

Pig in the Snow

Peppa Pig–a fairly innocuous if somewhat lame cartoon (“Peppa lives with her mummy and daddy and her little brother, George. Her adventures are fun”) has been embraced by the Chinese, and inspired a pleasing story: a loving dad in Inner Mongolia took his little broom and MADE A GIANT DRAWING OF PEPPA in the snow outside his daughter’s window. Such a thrill for the little girl! Youtube and Google are awash in images of his artwork.

As I contemplated this charming story I had TWO revelations.

1. Somehow my image of Mongolians has them drinking fermented mare’s milk and hunting with golden eagles. Stern warriors! But even stern warriors love their little girls, and let us not be so dismissive of other places and cultures for all love. Genghis Khan is long gone.
2. Dads are so wonderful, these big men with their tiny children. I see them at the ballet school, humbly struggling to put the ballet shoes on their wiggly little girls–at the supermarket in the cake mix aisle, bravely trying to make a birthday cake happen–on the road, biking so very slowly with the children whose training wheels have just come off.

Such good guys!
And I know that my grandsons’ daddies would totally draw pigs in the snow for them–well, if there were snow, and if it would make those little boys happy.

Au claire de la lune, mon ami Pierrot

Having prudently determined to save $6 by eschewing the outrageously priced Kennedy Center garage ($23!!) I bravely walked all the way from the $17 garage to the theater IN MY HIGH HEELS.

Women are so brave, don’t you think?

I regret to say that the show –Harlequinade by the ABT–was not worthy of this mighty effort. It’s a piece of antique fluff, lovingly brought back to life from what seems to me well deserved oblivion. Harlequin and Columbine and Pierrot and Pierrette–old fashioned in our grandparents’ time, remembered these days in British pantomimes perhaps, though no where else.
THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS were obviously spent on fabulous costumes–spangles! feathers!–and thousands of hours spent in grinding rehearsals. The story concerns a miserly father, whose servant Pierrot wears that white outfit so traditional to mimes and clowns (with sleeves extending beyond his hands, an odd look).

Mean dad won’t let his daughter Columbine marry her beloved Harlequin; there is an aged wealthy suitor–well, well, such stuff. You will not be amazed to hear that Harlequin wins his lady and all ends in celebration.

When I add that there was a huge group of children dancers, each laboriously outfitted in miniature versions of the grown up costumes, and all prancing about doing many many SO adorable dances, you will instantly perceive how truly saintly I am become–did I storm out of that place and go home? No, I did not.
Perhaps it was the high heels..
Though, there was some truly brilliant dancing–sparkling and crystalline, quite astonishing. Mostly it was bland sugary stuff–but every once in a while, those dancers filled the theater with joy.