Che manina gelida!

[tarigwaemir]

Ad Mundo Exteriore,

Ahahahahaha! Touya-kun is so cute! Just after he's had this huge argument with Shindo, he defends him with this earnest little expression on his face, saying, "Don't underestimate Shindo just because he's a beginner dan!" and the poor man to whom he's been speaking turns around with a confused expression and asks Ichikawa, "....weren't they fighting?" ^_^

I forgot to tell you all about Luhrmann's production of La Bohème. Firstly, please do not say, "Oh, isn't Rent based on that?" (You have no idea how many times I heard that from the people sitting around me, going, "Oh, yes, this is just like Rent." -_-) Yes, Rent, a most excellent musical, is based loosely on Puccini's opera. But the similarity is mostly superficial. What is the most essential part of an opera? Music, mood and characters. None of these have transferred over to Rent, which has only really modernized the plot and nothing else. Of course, there are also character counterparts, but don't tell me that the poetic and idealistic Rodolfo is anything like bitter and cynical Roger. Nor sweet, innocent, "alone in my room" Mimi of La Bohème anything like the flamboyant and bright Mimi. Schaunard does seem to have a similar personality as Angel sometimes, but with his deep baritone and sheer jolliness, the resemblance is fleeting. And Colline is simply not Collins. I'm sorry. He isn't. The only real parallel is Musetta with Maureen, both being fickle flirts and glorified mistresses/prostitutes, with tempers to match, but Joanne is hardly the pompous and utterly ridiculous Alcindoro. And sorry, Marcello isn't Mark. Marcello is bold, the real leader of the four Bohemians, and he is certainly cynical, but never depressed. I think the real difference is that Marcello isn't a tenor and sounds much more, well, macho. Not in a sporty or obnoxious kind of way, but...Marcello would never sing "The Tango Musetta" with Alcindoro, let me put it at that.

Furthermore, there's just the music: La Bohème is opera at its best, with soaring, lyrical arias sung in fluid and ever so melodramatic Italian. The music is a far cry from the modern beats and tones of Rent, which is certainly far from traditional even in the musical world. While La Bohème is the most accessible of operas to modern audiences, with the most convincing storyline and the most appealing characters, it is still very much the traditional opera, and the music reflects that. Mother thinks that La Bohème won't be too successful, considering the empty seats in the theater, and I think it's because no matter how amazing and brilliant Lurhmann's staging is (and no matter how young and beautiful the singers are), an opera is still an opera, and you can't go see La Bohème expecting a musical, not even a dramatic musical like Les Misérables, which some people call an opera. But Les Miz isn't an opera, I'm afraid, and even with all its epic drama, it does nothing to prepare you for Puccini. So give both Rent and La Bohème their full due. Rent is much more than a modern rendition of La Bohème, but a complete, original musical in its own right, with a bit of inspiration from Puccini. And La Bohème is something you should appreciate on its own merits as an opera, so don't go see it simply because you liked Rent. (You won't really enjoy or understand it on those terms, I'm afraid.)

The singing was a bit weak, though much better than expected. It's not Metropolitan Opera quality, not by a long shot. The singers have good tones (especially Rodolfo, who sounds exactly like the dreamer he is) and good potential, but their voices need to develop a little more. They sound off on some of the high notes, too uneven a performance. But oh...the staging! Wow! You need a movie director to think up scenes like that! Luhrmann was really arrogant: there were no curtains so we could see the stage crew do all the scene changes, including watching them fill the stage with smoke and sprinkle "snow" on the ground. Once they're finished, the chorus and singers walk on the stage, freeze in place, and there's this black-and-white (well, more in sepia tones, I guess) photograph scene, which looks incredibly real, although a little dull. But then! The lights come on, and the entire stage is lit up in color, blues and oranges and reds, against smoky black, and you have a rooftop apartment, the Latin Quartier at night, the customs booth at the French-Belgian border come to life! Hyperreal, if that's a word! It's amazing, like with a snap, the scene is transformed, even though nothing's really changed except the lights. The second scene was so awesome, and it felt like you really were in the middle of midcentury Paris, with its gaudy nightlife all around you (complete with prostitutes displaying themselves in windows). The Metropolitan Opera would never have the courage to create a scene like that. It was movie drama, anyway, not opera drama, but I think it was perfect. I loved the staging best, and the singers acted wonderfully, if their singing was a little under par. By the end, the singing weaknesses didn't matter, and I teared up as Rodolfo cried out, "Mimi!" and fell weeping onto poor Mimi's dead body. ;_;

What's really cool is that I first watched La Bohème in a televised broadcast of the Australian Opera's production (way back in 1990, though I think I saw it a little later, like 1993), and Luhrmann directed that too. (That wasn't so amazing in terms of staging, but the singers were all young and beautiful and top-class singers. It's hard to get all three, you know, they're usually fat with wonderful voices or thin and gorgeous with not-quite-so-wonderful voices. But the Australian production was all three, and I sobbed at the end, romantic cynic though I was, even at the tender age of seven or eight.)

Blame durberville, since I got all these quizzes from her.


You are EGYPT. Cunning and Intelligent, you are extremely resourceful and you excel in the arts. You are feared for your strictness, yet beloved for your fairness.

Which Empire Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Actually, I got the Soviet Union the first time, but I clicked on a wrong choice for one of the questions.


Midnight - You are a deep thinker, always searching for answers and never quite at home. You are very contemplative, and enjoy being alone with your thoughts.

When are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


Arial - You're pretty normal. That's certainly not a bad thing, as a lot of people like you.

What Font Are You? (Standard Fonts)
brought to you by Quizilla

Er, wait. I'm normal, and then now I'm a sick sadist? Huh?!

You're a sick sadist. You need help. Please report to the nearest rubber room at your earliest convienence. We have cookies.

What kind of sadist are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

All right...I admit, the first time around I used Tari as my name, and I got an Irid. But then I put in Hana (my RL name, I might as well announce it >_>), and I got an Irord, which looks a lot cuter. Call me shallow, if you will. ::sticks tongue out::

Hana's Battle Imp is

Irord

Backstabbing: 4 Dodgin': 6 Guts: 5 Magic Mojo: 9 Smackdown: 10

</td> Will your battle imp beat Hana's? Enter your name and fight.

I mean, look at it, it's such a pretty shade of green, and it has these little gargoyle wings. Isn't it adorable? ^_^ And it has a lot of Magic Mojo too, whatever that means...Eaems look pretty cute too, like little gremlins.

Thank goodness I've never started playing Neopets.

...Tari

Post-script: Two more notes. One thing I didn't like about La Bohème on Broadway is the loose translation. I mean, I understand they want to make it modern and accessible, but when the soprano is clearly singing, "Grazie," you have to be pretty stupid not to realize that it means, "Thank you," not "Maybe," or whatever useless word they put in there. I mean, "Maybe" made sense in context, because Mimi was sort of acting coy in a shy way, but honestly, she sings out very clearly and audible, "Grazie," not whatever the Italian word for "maybe" is. It wouldn't have killed them to be literal.

Also, Mother and I rented Bridget Jones' Diary from the library yesterday, because I knew she liked romantic comedies. It wasn't so bad, but Mother missed most of the jokes because they spoke too fast in an unfamiliar accent. But what really struck me was that the entire plot of the movie was Pride and Prejudice, and not just because it had Colin Firth playing a character named Darcy of all names. You have Bridget Jones harboring a secret crush on her boss, Daniel Cleaver, who is really a very sleazy and slimy sort just like Wickham. Mark Darcy and she however do not get along at first, just like Lizzy Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy. (That's putting it mildly, they really don't like each other at all.) Then Darcy starts to see Jones' charm, while she gets embroiled in an affair with Cleaver, who tells her all sorts of lies about Darcy (again just like Wickham). Cleaver dumps Jones, Darcy confesses, then Cleaver comes back, huge fight between the two rivals, Jones rebukes Darcy, she dumps Cleaver and finds out the truth, and then after a few more mishaps, Jones and Darcy are happily reunited once more. Isn't that a complete Pride and Prejudice ripoff?