{"id":133,"date":"2008-11-15T11:43:15","date_gmt":"2008-11-15T18:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.whitefly.com\/?p=133"},"modified":"2008-11-15T16:03:46","modified_gmt":"2008-11-15T23:03:46","slug":"some-musicology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whitefly.com\/?p=133","title":{"rendered":"Some Musicology?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I attended Opera at the Grand<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Grand, by the way, is a super-cool theatre.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s obviously from the 30s and very art-deco, despite the fact that it is relatively small. It comes from a time when people cared about the appearance of such things beyond is it “clean” and is it “functional.”\u00c2\u00a0 I still need to take that Art Deco Los Angeles Tour<\/a> one of these Saturdays.\u00c2\u00a0 If only it didn’t require me to go… downtown on a non-work-day.\u00c2\u00a0 Ugh.<\/p>\n

Moving on. . . I went to see an old friend sing.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, she’d laugh at that.\u00c2\u00a0 I went to see a friend sing.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve known her a long time, relatively speaking — almost 13 years.\u00c2\u00a0 For someone who’s 29, thats a goodly chunk of life.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Not a great picture I took there, eh?\u00c2\u00a0 She’s on the left being dramatic.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh well, she was phenominal — not that I’m any real judge of operatic talent.\u00c2\u00a0 Either way, I was impressed and the little I do know tells me that she was a more powerful singer than all of the other participants.\u00c2\u00a0 And, call me partial, but the mezzos tend to have richer voices than anyone but a seriously solid baritone.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it’s just the vocal range in that register of the throat (given one’s natural range as male or female).<\/p>\n

Anyway, she sung the Flower Duet<\/a> from Lakme<\/a> by Leo Delibes<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 I was blown away.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometime in 2001 or 2002 was the last time I heard that.\u00c2\u00a0 I used to own a CD called The Best Opera Album in the World . . . Ever!<\/a> that included this and many other songs.\u00c2\u00a0 The CD was given to me by the friend who I went to see (and hear) sing.\u00c2\u00a0 Somewhere along the line we both lost that CD.\u00c2\u00a0 So, I went and found it again.\u00c2\u00a0 Spending a whopping $2.98 on a CD was rough, but I got it a few days ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Here it is:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To it’s credit, it is a pretty great opera album.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s sort of a “greatest hits” from all the big names plus a few no-names that have some excellent songs, like Leo Delibes.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I was impressed with my friend.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s performing this weekend at the Metropolitan Opera’s<\/a> Regional Auditions<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 She talks it down (to keep herself from getting too nervous), but I know it’s a big deal for her to even be in it.\u00c2\u00a0 It’d be an even bigger deal if she makes it.<\/p>\n

I hope she does well.\u00c2\u00a0 Somehow, make it or not, I know she will.<\/p>\n

In other news, there was a small reception afterward.\u00c2\u00a0 It was nice to see her, but it was also depressing to me to see these small paintings in this gallery.\u00c2\u00a0 I sat and stared at a few for quite a while.\u00c2\u00a0 For personal reasons, several were quite depressing.\u00c2\u00a0 This one in particular:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Jonathan","author_link":"https:\/\/www.whitefly.com\/?author=1"},"uagb_comment_info":20,"uagb_excerpt":"[…]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitefly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}