Word: operas
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...third season, this self-described soap opera has turned into the last act of Hamlet, with corpses littering the stage. After the deaths of several supporting meerkats, Flower--the show's matriarch and protagonist, a furry female Tony Soprano--died of a snakebite defending her pups. A few weeks later, Flower's long-suffering daughter Mozart--a fan favorite who was abandoned by her mother and lost several pups--was killed off camera by an unknown predator. Grief-stricken fans held online vigils, created Diana-style tributes, even suggested the deaths were faked. (Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance--they...
...Sunday afternoon in the Lowell JCR, eight students in their post-brunch T-shirts and sweats stand in a semi-circle as Matthew J. Hall ’09 tidies his sheet music at the piano. The Harvard Early Music Society is rehearsing for its biannual opera, Henry Purcell’s 1691 King Arthur, going up at the Agassiz Theatre Nov. 8, 9, and 10 at 8 p.m.With the exception of Hall, everyone in the JCR looks nervous. Once the piano music starts, the semi-circle launches into a powerful operatic chorus. Impressive, certainly, but hardly unusual for Harvard...
...year-old Zhang Jun is changing all that. The newly promoted deputy director of the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Theatre, Zhang believes the art form can be salvaged to appeal to audiences in the era of roaming broadband and speed punk. During the past two years, he and his team have compressed epic Kunqu scripts until they play about as long as the average movie, and introduced other innovations. The changes are finally starting to draw respectable audiences of curious Shanghainese. At last summer's three-week run of Palace of Eternal Youth, a Tang dynasty love tragedy, two thirds...
...take a modern approach and employ the right marketing, the chance for Kunqu is there," says Zhang, who with his artfully shredded jeans and spiky hair looks more like a pop artist than an opera devotee. In fact, he is a former member of Wind, a popular Shanghai hip-hop outfit, but says he has always had a special affinity for Kunqu, which he began studying at the age of 8. "It was a torturous experience," he recalls. To train for the acrobatic maneuvers that are sometimes incorporated into a Kunqu performance, "we were forced to squat for hours...
...piano and then a black stage. Actually, there’s a lot of black in this video. It’s glittery and sequined, but it’s dark and there’s not much of that chirpy Polly Pocket-sized Australian girl from Australian soap opera “Neighbours” left to love. Her legions of gay followers are probably mourning their loss. Her skin-tight costumes look as though they were borrowed from Prince, her curls are shamelessly Xtina-esque, and her set design smacks of Gwen. She doesn’t even...