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Post by neilmcgowan on Aug 5, 2013 2:19:41 GMT -5
A well-known centre of fusspot twaddle recently began a discussion claiming that opera is elitist trash. The word "elitist" is one of the Headmistress's favourite words. However, Rupert Christiansen has a piece in today's Telegraph which begins: All over Britain, people are dreaming the opera dream – and that doesn’t just mean they’d love to see La Bohème at Covent Garden, it also means that they long to make their own contributions to the art form as well. It would be to know how the Headmistress and her 200 followers react to this piece? Especially as her entire Philistine Cohort wouldn't have made-up even 40% of the audience of just one night of the series performed at the tiny Riverside Studios
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Post by ahinton on Aug 5, 2013 3:30:30 GMT -5
A well-known centre of fusspot twaddle recently began a discussion claiming that opera is elitist trash. The word "elitist" is one of the Headmistress's favourite words. However, Rupert Christiansen has a piece in today's Telegraph which begins: All over Britain, people are dreaming the opera dream – and that doesn’t just mean they’d love to see La Bohème at Covent Garden, it also means that they long to make their own contributions to the art form as well. It would be to know how the Headmistress and her 200 followers react to this piece? Especially as her entire Philistine Cohort wouldn't have made-up even 40% of the audience of just one night of the series performed at the tiny Riverside Studios If you're referring (as I imagine you to be doing) to the recent "HARDTalk" edition on BBC4 in which Sarah Montague quite spectacularly makes a fool of herself (and does little credit to her profession) in front of Thomas Hampson and an audience of far more than 200 spread across quite a few countries (as a number of respondents have clarified), I don't recall the word "trash" being used, though in so saying I seek to proffer no excuse for what was said by the interviewer, all of which was based on a particularly fatuous brief; I have no idea why that brief was handed to her in preference to a journalist with more knowledge of the subject (of which there are surely quite a few). If you're referring to something else, however, I'll shut up!
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Post by neilmcgowan on Aug 5, 2013 3:54:20 GMT -5
If you're referring (as I imagine you to be doing) to the recent "HARDTalk" edition on BBC4 in which Sarah Montague quite spectacularly makes a fool of herself I am - and to the support for her position to be found "elsewhere".
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Post by ahinton on Aug 5, 2013 4:03:22 GMT -5
If you're referring (as I imagine you to be doing) to the recent "HARDTalk" edition on BBC4 in which Sarah Montague quite spectacularly makes a fool of herself I am - and to the support for her position to be found "elsewhere". OK; I'd assumed as much; I have to say, however, that the "support for her position" of which you write is something of which I've unsurprisingly witnessed scant evidence, whereas complaints and brickbats understandably abound in more than one such "elsewhere"...
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2013 9:38:58 GMT -5
I sometimes check the bbc 4 schedule via iplayer but alas, it dumbed down, as I knew it would, books service a better niche market.
Opera is just opera, each to their own and let us not forget, elitest trash have to get out sometime and mingle with each other, where better ?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2013 10:09:42 GMT -5
The ballet, Jason?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2013 10:21:22 GMT -5
I do have a soft spot for ballet, triple bills especially... not something I do at the moment though.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2013 1:24:35 GMT -5
BBC - Prom 4: Les Siècles – The Rite of SpringHow about one hundred years of visionary ballet in November then, Jason, from Stravinsky’s twentieth-century masterpiece to innovative choreography by Wayne McGregor and David Dawson? The Royal Opera House - The Royal Ballet - Mixed Programme - Chroma / New Dawson / The Rite of SpringOf course, the audience for ballet and opera is very different. At the Royal Opera House, for example, ballet enthusiasts are generally younger, more female and better looking than the opera buffs! But is ballet elitish trash, too? Well, Friedrich Nietzsche once argued that he could not believe in a god who did not know how to dance. Even if God cannot dance, I hope that he has a good sense of humour, if only for Friedrich's sake! Dance, having played a central role in pagan religious rites, was largely ignored during the Middle Ages, apart from rustic entertainment. From Renaissance Italy, however, the baletto was exported in the time of Catherine de' Medici to the French court, where, under Louis XIV, it became a major art form. The modern theory and practice of ballet were largely developed in mid-eighteenth century Paris. Russia first imported French and Italian ballet under Peter the Great, but in the nineteenth century moved rapidly from imitation to creative excellence. After the Revolutions of 1917, the Ballets Russes stayed abroad, whilst the Soviet Bolshoi and Kirov Ballets combined stunning technical mastery with rigid artistic conservatism. Are you ready to dance, Jason?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2013 14:21:24 GMT -5
It is not my place to see these things at the opera houses but on dvd, now and then, when I am in the mood, am not at the moment, really, but perhaps again, one day. Interesting you say about pagan rituals, they had a whole article about dance and paganism in greenmantle recently. www.greenmantle.org.uk/Which I picked up at Atlantis bookshop when killing time, interesting stuff, paganism is dead, a few remnants remain in the following but anyone who develops real powers soon learns to keep a low profile. Interesting to think that the british rave culture and desire to get 'off yer head' on booze is actually a very very very old british tradition, dating back to several parties at stone henge.
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