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Jan. 31st, 2005 12:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaalaThe A New Brain Rookie Night was a pleasant time, and quite free of any fearsome hazing rituals for the girls at least. The girls were supposed to dress as "naughty nurses and dirty doctors" and I don't think I need to say anything more than that. I made an effort though, which I think the girls appreciated... and then I washed off the makeup and took the safety pins out of my scrubs uniform the very first time I went to the washroom.
I was the videographer of the female rookie activities around town and then I took photos at the joint house party, so I was generally more a witness than a participant in the activities. And I can't dance without choreography. It was pleasant chatting with people, however, and I got some great (not to mention some quite incriminating) photos. I hope my inadvertant gift of four bottles of Rickard's Red was appreciated by the hosts.
* * *
So I left Rookie Night around 1am. this morning, fell asleep far too long after that, woke up far too early, got in a cab at 7:55am. and was taken to the parking lot where I would catch a bus bound for Toronto. The bus returned to Kingston at 10pm. Much of the time in between was spent taking in the Canadian Opera Company's delightfully bizarre production of Wagner's Siegfried. (Globe and Mail review here.)
Leaving aside my back pain and annoyance at the incessant coughing of the audience, I loved all of it except for the final love duet, which bored me to tears; this may have been because the director and designer used strange artistic judgement in that scene but I think it was mostly because the singers, Brünnhilde especially, conveyed very little emotion or dramatic development. I was pissed off that I had to feel dissatisfied at the end of the performance; so much of the rest of it had been quite enjoyable. The orchestra's performance, Robert Künzli's Mime, Siegfried's grief about his mother, the uncannily well-controlled human set pieces and the dragon were special highlights.
I had but one real quibble with the staging: there was nothing (e.g. an anvil-like object) against which to bang a hammer (and no hammer either) during Act I. It was unintentionally funny to see Mime aimlessly banging two pieces of metal together and then complaining that he couldn't fix that damn sword. Some master smith there! When forging Nothung, Siegfried simply handed the fragments to the "fire" and waved his arms, so it was still more ludicrous to hear anvil noises coming from the orchestra and to hear/read constant references to hammer blows.
There were a couple other minor production-specific anachronisms (e.g. people not doing exactly what they were singing about, Wotan not wearing a hat when Siegfried made fun of it) but that was the only one that bothered me. I can forgive the director and designer though because most of their work was so effective. And of course there were the usual operatic anachronisms about singers' physiques and ages not suiting their roles, but I expected that and most (*ahem*) singers were good enough musicians and actors that it didn't matter.
Wagner may have been a despicable human being, but man did he write gorgeous music. And--note to my dad--it works so much better in a theatrical context than as background music in the living room!
PS: Seriously, you have no idea how cool the dragon looked in motion.
PPS: I still hate the stupid Ring ad campaign images though.
I was the videographer of the female rookie activities around town and then I took photos at the joint house party, so I was generally more a witness than a participant in the activities. And I can't dance without choreography. It was pleasant chatting with people, however, and I got some great (not to mention some quite incriminating) photos. I hope my inadvertant gift of four bottles of Rickard's Red was appreciated by the hosts.
* * *
So I left Rookie Night around 1am. this morning, fell asleep far too long after that, woke up far too early, got in a cab at 7:55am. and was taken to the parking lot where I would catch a bus bound for Toronto. The bus returned to Kingston at 10pm. Much of the time in between was spent taking in the Canadian Opera Company's delightfully bizarre production of Wagner's Siegfried. (Globe and Mail review here.)
Leaving aside my back pain and annoyance at the incessant coughing of the audience, I loved all of it except for the final love duet, which bored me to tears; this may have been because the director and designer used strange artistic judgement in that scene but I think it was mostly because the singers, Brünnhilde especially, conveyed very little emotion or dramatic development. I was pissed off that I had to feel dissatisfied at the end of the performance; so much of the rest of it had been quite enjoyable. The orchestra's performance, Robert Künzli's Mime, Siegfried's grief about his mother, the uncannily well-controlled human set pieces and the dragon were special highlights.
I had but one real quibble with the staging: there was nothing (e.g. an anvil-like object) against which to bang a hammer (and no hammer either) during Act I. It was unintentionally funny to see Mime aimlessly banging two pieces of metal together and then complaining that he couldn't fix that damn sword. Some master smith there! When forging Nothung, Siegfried simply handed the fragments to the "fire" and waved his arms, so it was still more ludicrous to hear anvil noises coming from the orchestra and to hear/read constant references to hammer blows.
There were a couple other minor production-specific anachronisms (e.g. people not doing exactly what they were singing about, Wotan not wearing a hat when Siegfried made fun of it) but that was the only one that bothered me. I can forgive the director and designer though because most of their work was so effective. And of course there were the usual operatic anachronisms about singers' physiques and ages not suiting their roles, but I expected that and most (*ahem*) singers were good enough musicians and actors that it didn't matter.
Wagner may have been a despicable human being, but man did he write gorgeous music. And--note to my dad--it works so much better in a theatrical context than as background music in the living room!
PS: Seriously, you have no idea how cool the dragon looked in motion.
PPS: I still hate the stupid Ring ad campaign images though.
