Word: operas
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Unfortunately, Steinman and the Loaf made good; we would have been much better off if the franchise were still held hostage. The once-campy features of a typical Meat Loaf release—rock opera (Wikipedia says “Wagnerian”) vocals and orchestration, hilarious lyrics, immense sing-a-long possibility—are all absent or poorly done the third time around...
...life-saving medicines, the internet, more efficient energy storage, and digital entertainment; they also have shepherded nuclear weapons, biological warfare agents, electronic eavesdropping, and damage to the environment.”Well, yes, and I suppose one could say that architecture has produced both museums and gas chambers, that opera has both uplifted audiences and inspired the Nazis, and so on. It makes it sound as if the choice between science and technology on the one hand, and superstition and ignorance on the other, is a moral toss-up! Of course students should know about both the bad and good...
...there's a common thread to these disparate works, it's their intimacy. Jericho, for instance, gives us doomsday as soap opera. The postapocalyptic tales of the cold war--On the Beach, A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Day After, Threads--were books and movies that had conclusions; a TV series is open-ended, like life. Jericho doles out its horror in doses--flickering TV images of ruined cities, radiation victims dead by a lake--and softens it with soap-opera B-plots. The survivors have affairs and family fights; teenagers flirt and throw parties. Chicago may be burning, but somewhere...
Through the chilled autumn air, a shrill, quasi-melodic screech pierces the rumbling din of cars, buses, and intermingled conversations that form the acoustic character of Harvard Square. The sound emanates from the two-stringed jinghu, a Chinese opera fiddle, played by Zhi Z. Zhou, who is in his early 60s. Sitting on a cold concrete planter outside the Harvard Coop, Zhou is sporting bleach-white K-Swiss sneakers, blue jeans, a crisp white button-up shirt, and a blue fall jacket. While playing, Zhou stares transfixed at his jinghu, only breaking his concentration to go to the bathroom...
...like an explosion. The green glow of the power strip starts pulsating and finally the waiting becomes too much and the discouraged viewer leaves. The work is frustrating and mesmeric.By far the best installation is Canadian duo Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s “Opera for a Small Room.” One cannot actually enter the piece, but is forced to look through slits in the wall to the large wood room in which it is housed. The room is reminiscent of a junk shed, filled with thousands of albums marked...