Re: OT, sort of: Dr Atomic

On Dec 30, 10:07 am, suds macheath <sudsmcduff19...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Last night I stumbled on the last 1 1/2 hours of this opera on PBS....a
real toe tapper, check it out if you get a chance.....

There was so much to love there. Superb singing. Dynomite sets. Great
story. Killer period costumes. Even the "bomb" was cool. But I'm
sorry, that "modern" atonal, arhythmic stuff that passes for music
just doesn't do it for me. Yeah it DID fit the spoken poetry nicely
but how much of this stuff can one take without a toe-tapper in
there?

What amazed me was the singing. I mean just LISTEN to those arias and
then imagine yourself trying to SING that crap! I mean the singers
were a demonstration of SERIOUS musical ability just to be able to
sing that, let alone memorize all of it! Yikes!

I also saw the "other" Dr. Atomic documentary on PBS recently too. It
was about the writing of the opera and the first production of it in
San Francisco. It was really interesting as they struggled with how
do you present this or that on stage or in the music. Again, the
talent shown in the initial production and development also was
interesting as well. To me it's truly inspiring to see a bunch of
talented people start from nothing and then create something that ends
up as cool as this opera, even it the final total effect wasn't quite
my cup of tea.



.

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