Happy Halloween: Opera Style!

"Gib' mir den Kopf des Jochanaan!"

I'm a lover of all things spooky and lugubrious, particularly my operas! Some favorite scary operas I've seen - and a couple I've only dreamed of seeing:

Strauss: "Salome"

Britten: "The Turn of the Screw"

Wagner: "Der fliegende Holländer"
Glass: "The Fall of the House of Usher"

Verdi: "Macbeth" & "Rigoletto"

Puccini: "Il Tabarro" & "Le Villi"
Argento: "Miss Havisham's Fire" & "The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe"

Corigliano: "The Ghosts of Versailles"

Tamkin: "The Dybbuk"

J. Martin: "Beast and Superbeast" (4 marvelous chamber operas)
Bartok: "Bluebeard's Castle"

Menotti: "Martin's Lie"; "Help! Help! The Globolinks!"; and "The Medium"

Picker: "Dolores Claiborne"

Dvorak: "Rusalka"

Beason: "Lizzy Borden"
Adams: "Doctor Atomic"
Massenet: "La Navarraise"
Tchaikovsky: "The Queen of Spades"

Tchaikovsky: "Mazeppa"

Donizetti: "Lucia di Lammermoor"

Webern: Der Freischütz

Sondheim: "Sweeney Todd" (pushing the envelope operatically perhaps.)

For an opera-themed movie Dario Argento's wondrously horrible "Opera" about the ghoulish goings as a celebrated film director makes his operatic debut staging a production of Verdi's "Macbeth." There is a wonderful anti-regie tirade by the diva singing Lady Mackers:

"This isn't one of your crummy movies, it’s Verdi’s Macbeth. Birds on stage? Back projections? Laser beams . . . What is this an opera house or an amusement park? I have to SING! How can I do that on a stage with a raven who hates me? It never takes its beady eyes off of me . . . it shrieks, whistles, flaps its wings . . . that raven is DELIBERATELY destroying my performance! Birds belong with other birds and NOT in the opera house singing Macbeth!"

Happy Halloween, everyone!

AMC's Wondrous Walking Dead

When is the last time you cried during a zombie movie? Honestly, AMC's new series "The Walking Dead" (based upon the successful cultish graphic novel series) is, after Breaking Bad and Mad Men, their third show poised to be a remarkable and heavily awarded television series. Graphic in its gore content and violence, the pilot nonetheless presented a plausible and terrifying "end of the world" tale that is surprisingly personal with moments of great poignancy.

The central character, Georgia Deputy Sheriff Rick Grimes, is shot nearly fatally spending a long (unknown) amount of time lying in a coma, awakening from it and, barefoot and clad only in his hospital gown, stumbles through and out of the hospital to discover a world devastated by some mysterious catylcismic event and nearly devoid of life.

Once again a fairly unknown British actor takes the lead in an American television series, but having watched Andrew Lincoln as Rick in this series, I fully believe the guy was made for the role (or the other way 'round). For nearly 70 minutes, Lincoln's Rick is mostly on his own, but his face - a magnificent mirror registering every emotion from self doubt, fear, grief, utter despair but also the hope of finding his wife and boy. Lincoln's is a tremendous performance of made all the more remarkable considering the genre and thus a rare opportunity for subtlety and introspection.

Rick's interactions with another father and son who capture, but ultimately rescue and aid his return to health, has a deep resonance in a world where men are considered stulted in understanding or expressing their emotions (a topic which is introduced nicely in the shows opening scene with Rick and fellow officer Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal).

If you love zombies (and who doesn't?) this new series is a must see. I honestly was blown away after the premiere, powerfully moved and properly scared to death!