Mozart has gone postal

Missing at the post office, that is. Today's scheduled dopera, "Bastien und Bastienne" has not arrived yet.
A music mix of 80% Mozart will be substituted today. Enjoy.
What's Opera, Doc? airs every Tuesday at 10AM EST - 1PM EST or -500 GMT on WHFR.FM "the station making waves"
Clicking on the link and choosing "Listen Live will bring you right to my program.

Tuesdays opera - Mozarts Bastien und Bastienne, 10 AM-1PM WHFR on What's Opera, Doc?

Tuesdays opera - Mozarts Bastien und Bastienne, 10 AM-1PM WHFR on What's Opera, Doc?
Listen live by clicking the link to the right of this text that says "Listen Live!"

Bastien und Bastienne
Singspiel in one act

* Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, K. 50 / 46b
* Librettist: Friedrich Wilhelm Weiskern (translation of French source); additional verses probably by Johann Heinrich Friedrich Müller and recitatives by Johann Andreas Schachtner
* Source: Les Amours de Bastien et Bastienne, parody by Harny de Guerville and Charles-Simon Favart of Le Devin du Village, intermezzo by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
* First performance: Home of Dr. Anton Mesmer, Landstrasse, October? 1768
* Performance History
* Libretti:
o Libretti Homepage (ohne Dialog)

Dramatis Personæ

Bastienne, a shepherdess (soprano)
Bastien, a shepherd (tenor)
Colas, village soothsayer and shepherd (bass)

Setting:a village; time unspecified

And in other Linking news: Thanks to Blogs By Women for linking me, and to Jim of "Dammit, we can't have nice things!" for linking also...

By day, a web developer, by night...that voice in your ear.

I don't talk about my day job much, although I do pimp them to the right - and yes, SoundQue rocks. I am *primarily* the Project Manager there, but I am also the Lead Developer for websites like this. Or this.
2 words, fellow bloggers: 2 words. FLICKR SUCKS. It makes me crazy to go to other blogs and look at those nasty flashing, takes forever to load image thumbnails. Your blogs? love em and can't live without em. FLICKR?
A suck a thon.
ok, now back to the regularly scheduled programming.
** and for those of you who want to know why I use Blogger instead of pimping out my own domain - all in good time, all in good time...

Opera-singing toddler

Opera-singing toddler

It's a joke, ok? but still cute for those of you who are into that sort of thing.

Opera shoots itself in the foot - Tristan und Isolde in New York City only for the wealthy.

Opera don't let me down.
So says the New York City Opera fanatic, and rightly so!

Link to his article here:

Shame on Lincoln Center is reverberating throughout the operatic community...$500 for a ticket? $275 for the "cheap" seats?

(quote)
Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" is heading to an unusual venue — Manhattan's Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue.

Lincoln Center is presenting Peter Sellars' production at the unusual location in April and May 2007, and the cheapest ticket to view the entire opera will be $275.
(endquote)

Like my title says, opera shoots itself in the foot. And hey, how about that forced "donation"? Just because New York thinks of itself as the center of the opera world doesn't make it so. An art form developed by the Italians, and still popular in most European countries, only in the US can we manage to screw it up so phenomenally.

Where is Dennis Miller for a rant when we need him? If someone can explain to me how pricing tickets beyond the affordability of 90% of Americans is a smart marketing practice, especially if the ultimate goal is to ensure longevity of the art form, then WOD will happily step down form this soapbox.

Link to the original Armory press release/article on Yahoo.

Just kill me now, people, because this has wrong written all over it.

Tuesday's show - Mozart - La finta semplice, K 51 - Mozart Madness - opera #2

One man. 20 operas. On What's Opera, Doc? WHFR.FM

Opera #2:
Mozart - La finta semplice - the pretend simpleton. K 51.
Tuesday, 10am - 1pm, EST or -500 GMT on whfr.fm, 89.3 click to listen live.

Featuring: Hendricks, Blochwitz, Lorenz, D. Johnson, Lind, Schreier

This opera will be played in its entirety.

Link to libretto.

Operatic Recipe: Tenor à l'orange

Thanks to opera-l for this one!!

Recipe: Tenor à l'orange

INGREDIENTS:

At least 2 good-sized tenors
20 gallons of High-C Orange drink
Olive Oil
Garlic
6 boxes of Portamento (a tagliatelli-like noodle)

PREPARATION: If you announce you're going to serve
tenor, you'll attract a
big crowd, so prepare at least two! It used to be
difficult to catch more
than one tenor at a time, because they are by nature
nocturnal animals who
avoid others of their species. Lately, however, they
have changed their
habits, and they can usually be found in groups of
three.

They are easiest to capture in the summer, when they
can be found
frequenting outdoor stadiums. Less well-known examples
can be captured by
using vocal students or fans as bait. (Females are
usually best, but there
are cases where males work better).

Once the tenor has been caught, carefully rinse off
all sweat from the last
aria. Remove the stomach, which is full of
ill-digested phrases and
swallowed consonants and would make the casserole lid
impossible to shut
anyway. Pull the recording contract out of his
clenched fist (you may have
to cut the hand off). In rare cases, the recording
contract may be tattooed
on his chest. If the tenor is German, remove the
throat, which is so tied up
in knots as to be indigestible.

The major danger in cooking tenor is that the head,
which is empty, will
collapse. Stuff it with a mixture of parsley and paper
money. American
dollars work best, but Euros and English Pounds are
acceptable too.

Marinate overnight in olive oil and garlic. (Only in
the case of the
American or Northern European variety; with the
Mediterranean variety, this
step can be skipped.)

In a big casserole put a layer of portamento, a kind
of thin spaghetti, with
little balls referred to as "nodes" on either end. Lay
the tenor on top of
portamenti. Be careful - there is a new variety of
tenor, often French,
which turns sour in contact with portamento. Cover
with High C Orange drink,
and bake at highest heat in the oven.

When the High-C boils, it fills up the lung capacity
of the tenor, who then
lets out a strangled cry which sounds somewhat like
"All'armi!" This means
the tenor is done to perfection, and can be served.

Buon appetito.

A Great Operatic Resource

It doesn't get much better than this.
Unless you go here.
Who'd a thunk it?
BTW - there is a rumor rampant that John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles is going to be revived.
THIS IS A WONDERFUL THING.
Ghosts of Versailles was the first opera I ever saw in its entirety. Friends of mine had heard I was going to design my first opera, and I had never seen one. So we watched it on video, and I distinctly remember then telling me that "all operas aren't like this". Well, I LOVED it. And immediately thought Teresa Stratas and Hakan Hakengaard were IT. (What is Hakengaard doing now, anyway?)
~wod~
PS - Feel better Ms. Horne.
Oh? The first opera I designed? Le Nozze di Figaro.

Hosting a radio show - Part 2

Or more correctly - a tip from a radio host:
The top of the hour (ANY HOUR) is when we do our ID = 2-2-2.
ID? That's the station ID - W*** (if you're east of the Mississippi) or K*** (if you're west)
2 = 2 station promos. Promotional annoucements about the station - this can be as simple as the tagline. (Ours is "the station making waves") or as complex as a 2 minute message about a new show, event or programming change.

2 = 2 outside promos. The are often health-related in nature, for some reason. We often get ours from the Ad Council.

And the final 2? Those are 2 promos promoting something at the college, since we are a college radio station.

The first one? The ID? Mandated by the FCC, folks. we have to say it, EVEN IF IT INTERRUPTS SOMETHING YOU LIKE. All hosts do their best to program well and build in their breaks nice and even.

What does this mean to you? It means we are what is called on "live mic". So we can't ANSWER THE PHONE, OR THE DOOR, or anything else.

Why do I bring this up? If you are a host at the station who has *supposedly* gone through your training, why did you not only burst into the studio just as I was potting up the mic, and why did you blurt out some very bad news seconds before I had to go on the air?

Just asking for a friend, y'know. Didn't bother me a bit. Pardon me while I go lay down for a while, I think my head is going to explode.

***If the above sarcasm isn't quite reaching out of the monitor at you, believe me, it's there.

Post #100 - Mozart Madness - Week One starts Jan. 17th - featuring Apollo et Hyacinth Tuesday, January 17th 2006

UPDATE: Thanks for listening - no CD issues this week, although my on-air patter was quite off - nothing like getting an annoucement that an acquaintance has had a heart attack JUST AS I WAS POTTING UP THE MICROPHONE to speak.

NEXT WEEK: La Finta Semplice.

What better way to mark a centenary post than with Mozart?
Just a reminder that What's Opera, Doc starts its all-Mozart programming this week.
All the operas.
Thats right - ALL of them.
In the order they were written.
Listen LIVE every Tuesday from 10AM-1PM EST or -500 GMT.

Mark your calendars - Mozart Madness - Week One starts Jan. 17th - featuring Apollo et Hyacinth Tuesday, January 17th 2006 marks the first week of some adventurous programming on What's Opera, Doc?.
I will be playing all of Mozart's operas in the order they were written to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the year of his birth.
The first selection will be Apollo et Hyacinth, which Mozart wrote when he was 11 years old.Apollo and Hyacinth, or the Metamorphosis of Hyacinth.

The Latin intermezzo Apollo et Hyacinthus was composed for the Latin school play Clementia Croesi by Father Rufinus Widl*
Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, K. 38*
Librettist: Father Rufinus Widl*
First performance: Great Hall, Salzburg University, 13 May 1767

- remember that What's Opera, Doc is every Tuesday, 10AM- 1PM on WWW.WHFR.FM.

This performance features: Arleen Auger, Jean-Pierre Faber, Cornelius Hermann, Anthony Rolfe Johnson. Conducted by Leopold Hager.

Link to the libretto HERE.

Birgit Nilsson - RIP

What's Opera Doc has not been ignoring the passing of one of operas greatest singers of ALL TIME. The truth is, so many others know so much more and can write so much more eloquently about this artist, that I encourage you to read these links:

The New York Times - as reprinted in the International Times
The Guardian

We will miss you.
~wod~

Mark your calendars - Mozart Madness - Week One starts Jan. 17th - featuring Apollo et Hyacinth

Tuesday, January 17th 2006 marks the first week of some adventurous programming on What's Opera, Doc?. I will be playing all of Mozart's operas in the order they were written to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the year of his birth. That birthday is actually tomorrow.
The first selection will be Apollo et Hyacinth, which Mozart wrote when he was 11 years old.
Apollo and Hyacinth, or the Metamorphosis of Hyacinth
The Latin intermezzo Apollo et Hyacinthus was composed for the Latin school play Clementia Croesi by Father Rufinus Widl

* Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, K. 38
* Librettist: Father Rufinus Widl
* First performance: Great Hall, Salzburg University, 13 May 1767

Dramatis Personæ

Oebalus, King of Sparta (tenor)
Melia, his daughter (treble)
Hyacinthus, his son (treble)
Apollo, his guest (alto)
Zephyrus, friend of Hyacinthus (alto)
Two Priests of Apollo (basses)

Setting: Greece; antiquity
Here is a link to the libretto so that you can follow along: . A reminder will be re-posted on Tuesday - remember the What's Opera, Doc is every Tuesday, 10AM- 1PM on WWW.WHFR.FM.

This performance features: Arleen Auger, Jean-Pierre Faber, Cornelius Hermann, Anthony Rolfe Johnson. Conducted by Leopold Hager. If you click on the image to the right, you can purchase this at Amazon.

Even when you're dead, the media hype continues - Mozart's skull found?

UPDATE* - Mozarts manuscripts will now be online!

He's been dead since 1791, but still the media hype over which grave is Mozart's continues. Now his skull may have been identified.
Some smart PR person timed this "discovery" to coincide with the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth on Jan. 14th. How clever. :)

Handel _Radamisto on What's Opera Doc today

Unrequited love and war on wHats Opera Doc today - Handel's Radamisto features Joyce DiDonato, Patrizia Ciopi Maite Beaumont Dominique LaBelle Laura Cherisi Zachary Stains and Carlo Lepore. Alan Curtis conducts the Il Complesso Barocco.

Handel based this opera on Domenico Lalli's "L'amor tirannico".

We will hear Act One in its entirety, and half of Act 2 this week, with the conclusion next week, Jan. 10th, 2005.

What's Opera, Doc is on 10AM-1PM EST on WHFR-FM, 89.3 OR WHFR.FM - click to listen live!