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opera stream alert!

What: Rossini: Il Turco in Italia, Madrid 2023

When: Sunday, April 28, at 19:00 CEST (18:00 in London, 13:00 in New York)

Where: Kosmi – https://app.kosmi.io/room/5z1ws1

Who: everyone is welcome!

Extra info: A Rossini comedy about a poet who orchestrates quite a complex romantic situation as inspiration for his next play. In this staging, it's imagined as an old-fashioned photo romance.

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Roland Barthes also addresses the aspect of speechlessness with regard to pleasure: No “thesis” on the pleasure of the text is possible; … [pleasure is] unable to speak itself … (if I assert some pleasures of the text here, it is always in passing, in a very precarious, never regular fashion). In short, such a labor could not be written. I can only circle such a subject—and therefore better to do it briefly and in solitude than collectively and interminably. Writing about this motor that is so clearly at the heart of opera thus requires that one take into account this subjectivity of the object or the particular phenomenal dimension of the dissolution of the subject–object dichotomy. It is necessary to bring one’s own subject into the description, to exhibit one’s own subjectivity, to tell one’s own story, to act autobiographically. Yet exhibiting one’s own subjectivity, describing one’s own experience, is associated with a risk, since it means admitting that one is susceptible to the seductions of opera and the voice. So as to conceal and hide this susceptibility—which is, I maintain, the reason for engaging with opera in the first place in most cases—most reviewers and authors of books about singers fall into an abstract, technical language. They concentrate on technical details of vocal production instead of writing about experiencing the voice. But when describing a voice in these abstract, technical details seems to work,then one can also assume that the voice has missed its actual goal, namely, to move. The fact that I have taken or have had to take a detour via singers’ bodies or my own body to describe my intensive experiences with the voices of Cecilia Bartoli and Edita Gruberová is also indicative of the incommunicability diagnosed by Bataille. Only in describing one’s own experience can a trace of the performative or, more precisely, the erotic interrelation between the singer and audience member be articulated, if it is possible to do so at all. And this requires a certain courage—a bravery similar to the bravery that singers regularly demonstrate by exposing their vulnerability on stage. But the fear or shame of admitting that one is susceptible to the sensual stimuli of opera and of thereby making oneself assailable and vulnerable is—I would like to assert—the necessary first step toward describing a scenario of perception that shapes the aesthetics of the performative as it is uniquely manifested in opera: as an eroticism of the performative that defines opera as a special attraction.

Opera in Performance. Analyzing the Performative Dimension of Opera Productions, Clemens Risi

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Ludwig Wittgenstein, April 26, 1889 – April 29, 1951.

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Another day, another dipshit asking "but WHY did this fictional character make SUBOPTIMAL LIFE CHOICES???"

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hellooo! List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who liked or reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers. (no pressure, ofc!)

I'm feeling specific rather than general:

Living in my beautiful city which is so dense with PEOPLE and THINGS and ART and RATS

Popcorn

The delight my cousin's kid, who is in grade school, had at totality during the eclipse, despite the sun being entirely obscured by clouds the whole day

I bought a dress for $15 and I look so damn good in it

The song "Vos Mépris chaque jour":

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The Devils (1971), dir. Ken Russell

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[redacted]

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Two friends who need to just sleep together once and get it over with

Catching the first bit of the Theodora stream on my lunch break. So far it seems Valens is a Vienna cafè owner who delights in sexually harassing his male employees and licking knives clean of frosting. There's a bit of sexual tension between Didymus and Septimius (Septimius is definitely crushing hard).

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Catching the first bit of the Theodora stream on my lunch break. So far it seems Valens is a Vienna cafè owner who delights in sexually harassing his male employees and licking knives clean of frosting. There's a bit of sexual tension between Didymus and Septimius (Septimius is definitely crushing hard).

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i’m so easily influenced by older women especially if i have no fucking clue what they’re talking about i’ll just agree wholeheartedly and do exactly what they tell me to it’s an issue

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Now imagining a 54-year-old Jonas Kaufmann as Albert Herring and losing my mind differently

Trying to imagine a Kaufmann Aschenbach and losing my mind (source)

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Médée - Opéra National de Paris 2024

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actors love to make their characters subtextually gay not just because they’re a little gay themselves though that often is the case but rather because having a secret is like energy drink to acting, and being gay is the easiest most obvious secret. whenever you’re unsure of your character’s motivations consider: maybe they are gay? see where that takes you. should be pretty far

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Platée - Opernhaus Zürich, 2023-24

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I reviewed Heartbeat Opera’s new adaptation/staging of Eugene Onegin; finally, an Onegin that supports fujoshi rights and is not afraid to say it. read all about it!

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Ohhhhh my god u think directors should follow the libretto? should we tell everyone? Should we throw a party? should we invite franco zeffirelli