6-9-13

Written by earwormopera

About halfway through The Enchanted Island. I am not at all sure this was a good idea. On the one hand: DiDonato, Daniels, De Niese, Pisaroni, Domingo. On the other . . . I think the libretto’s probably way better if you don’t speak English. (Though listening to Luca Pisaroni sing in English is fun – as he says here, the sounds are very different from Italian. Sometimes, when he has to deal with the ‘R’ sound while singing the result is somewhere between “Irish” and “pirate” – and who could complain about either of those?)

Also, I thought Prospero rescued Ariel from a cloven pine – what’s all this business about a holly tree? Does the Met have a donor with a pine tree phobia or something?

16 thoughts on “6-9-13”

  1. If only arboreal inexactitude were Mr. Sams’ worst sin…

    I’m a bee, in a tree, whee!
    What kind of tree, bee?
    A holly by golly
    For a pine would be folly

    The only pleasure in Enchanted Island is being able to parody it.

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    1. The libretto is pretty awful – I think when I first saw it I managed to filter out more of the words because I wasn’t reading the supertitles. The singers (and the music) deserve better.

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    2. I would think that The Enchanted Island is beyond parody.
      I mean,
      Could the Verse be Worse?

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            1. We did once make a pilgrimage to the site of the dairy that made the giant cheese.

              We have seen thee, Queen of Cheese,
              Lying quietly at your ease,
              Gently fanned by evening breeze;
              Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

              All gaily dressed, soon you’ll go
              To the provincial show,
              To be admired by many a beau
              In the city of Toronto.

              Still better than Sams I think.

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  2. You have now redeemed yourself for the double-Luca oversight. I think you managed some profanity, too. Well, not in this post, but another recent one. Thanks for sharing yet another amazing JDD Video (AND Luca!!) At least TEI has them (and other singers) going for it. Can you turn off the sub/supertitles?

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    1. Whew! (I knew if the Luca-oversight problem continued for too long there would be hell to pay in some form.)

      The subtitles are optional on the dvd itself, but I ripped the dvd to transfer it to my iPad because I didn’t feel like lugging my work computer home over the weekend, and by default I selected subtitles on – so, long story short, being able to understand every last word of the text was at least in part my own damn fault.

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      1. I wonder if you could just cut in another opera for the sdtk, sort of like watching The Wizard of Oz to Dark Side of the Moon?

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