Time for a final fling with opera before we plunge into Advent and my annual Advent Calendar for the next few weeks! Today’s aria is a favourite of mine, because you can do so much with it, and because it contains so much potential for humour, pathos, and creepiness. This version contains all three of those aspects…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InAxtPyZVKI&w=420&h=315]
Welcome to a new week, and this morning’s lesson is: don’t cross the mezzo soprano.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPmGkDKhLlk&w=420&h=315] Continue reading
I have spent quite a lot of this weekend with a lurgy, and have thus been mooching around the internet looking for suitable fodder for the musical Advent Calendar that I plan to run during December. Alas, this evening’s explorations led me quite by chance into the world of smutty and scatalogical Elizabethan catches or rounds. It’s amazing how much is out there… and none of it is remotely suitable for Advent, strange to say!
I’m not even sure the following is suitable for this blog, which has until now stayed pretty clean. And I have to say, the lyrics do make me raise my eyebrows a bit. But in the end, there is just something irresistible about beautiful voices singing ‘so kiss my arse’ with perfect diction and tuning, with great emphasis and in the highest of style.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvmX12dRP7E&w=420&h=315]
I first encountered Kristin Chenoweth as the idealistic, Gilbert-and-Sullivan-loving, Republican lawyer on The West Wing. Edited to add: Oops, no I didn’t. She was on the West Wing, but she was actually Leo McGarry’s assistant. I had no idea she could sing…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBJn4BHtqqY&w=420&h=315]
… and particularly not in so many different styles and with such an impressive range. The song is composed by Jeanine Tesori (lyrics by Dick Scanlan), a composer I had never previously heard of, probably because she mostly composes for Broadway musicals and I don’t get out much (particularly to New York, of course…). I’ll have to keep an eye out for anything of hers that turns up in Melbourne, however, as she is clearly a clever, clever composer.
As for Kristin Chenoweth, what is there to say but wow. (Admittedly, part of my lack of commentary is because I’m really, really tired right now, but still…) She really is an amazingly talented woman.
And here, as a little bonus, is Ms Chenoweth having a bit of fun with Mozart’s Queen of the Night aria. Because you know you needed a bit more Queen of the Night in your life…
It’s the Monday after a choir Sunday, which means it’s time for church music again – and this church music has dragons in it!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BduDan1Gy6Y&w=420&h=315] Continue reading
As anyone who has looked at the front page of this blog recently will know, I’m singing the soprano solos for a Sing Your Own Messiah production in a couple of weeks. This is the first time I’ve sung a ‘set’ of solos for an oratorio or opera or anything really. It’s also the first time I will have sung in a production of the Messiah, so I’m pretty excited about it on a lot of levels.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGkn91ywbsU&w=420&h=315]
It’s possible, of course, that you have all seen this one already, but I do think this particular rendition of Carmina Burana, Flashmob-style, is rather gorgeous.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJNp5UKRtbQ&w=560&h=315] Continue reading
I was going to rain down death, despair and the vengeance of hell, soprano style, on you today, but that seemed like a bit much for a Monday morning. Instead, I’m going to give you the Queen of the Night’s other aria, in which she persuades and even seduces the young and extremely persuadable tenor, Tamino, to her cause. You can always go hunting for hell’s boiling vengeance later.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov1hRqPnm58&w=560&h=315]
I’ve been chatting about politics on and off all week with an online friend in England. Our conversation has been extremely polite and very careful, because we have almost no political opinions in common.
But we do both observe our minute’s silence on Remembrance Day.
Here’s some music for after the silence.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc4RUeKzddg&w=420&h=315]
Let’s have a change from church music, shall we? One of the girls in my singing performance class on Monday got up and sang this piece. She underlined the rather evil nature of the song by singing it very sweetly, and the class – all women, as it happens – was in tears of laughter. I went looking for a similar interpretation, and found a version sung by Julie Andrews…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bkTAKWyB38&w=560&h=315]