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Something something the feeling of emptiness of Faustus's life before the pact. Something something the way the magic scenes bring vibrancy and life to the play. Something something the hollowness of the Helen scene. Something something the feeling of energy and connection in Faustus's scenes with Mephistopheles.

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fragments of time, 1st century B.C - 200 A.D

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In the Middle Ages, it was very common to wear a book case on the belt. Book of Hours, Bible, Breviary etc and they were thus at your fingertips.

This one is Italian, made between 1465 and 1485, in nicely worked leather.

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Singing the Verdi Requiem is like having your bones pulled out through your mouth, but, like. In a good way.

(One thing Maestro has put a lot of emphasis on in rehearsals is that the end of the piece is very unresolved -- just a quiet unison "Libera me." We don't know if we're going to be saved! You can really feel that at the end of the performance, especially when the performance space is as hot and muggy as ours was tonight. You're like: I've got nothing left. Deliver me anyway, Lord.)

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took another selfie in the green room, it's amazing how much difference lighting makes

Going dramatic for the Verdi concert. Dies irae, bitches.

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Going dramatic for the Verdi concert. Dies irae, bitches.

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i think what’s on a person’s nightstand is very telling so reblog this and put in the tags the things you have on your nightstand

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i feel so violent right now what the fuck what the fuck “this and whatever my faustus desires shall be performed in a twinkling of an eye” im going to go fucking berserk. hello

shut the FUCK up. shut UP. bark growl hiss attack. kill

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Silly addition: obviously demons work on the Roger Rabbit principle: you can ONLY summon them against their will when it's FUNNY.

Somewhat more serious addition: the scene with Robin suggests that even if you do manage to summon Mephistopheles against his will, it doesn't mean you have actual power over him! He can just turn you into a dog or an ape and fuck back off. While Faustus is able to bind Mephistopheles to his service, he does so in a specifically human manner, by making a contract--their relationship is not the magical servitude of Ariel to Prospero, but more of an employer-employee thing, albeit a fairly drastic set of working conditions. (Mephistopheles does say "I will wait on thee and be thy slave" but it doesn't seem to accurately describe his servitude, which seems to be voluntary and submitted to in pursuit of the long-term goal of fucking that indeterminately-aged man ensnaring another soul.)

Additional (also serious) wrinkle: Mephistopheles seemingly doesn't have the authority to make the contract on his own! He has to ask his boss first. This, again, presupposes Mephistopheles is a reliable source, but it's a very common attribute of demons that they don't so much lie as tell the truth in a deceptive manner. Additionally, the question of free will is one that hangs over the play: does Faustus have it? Can he repent, or is he a reprobate, destined from before his birth to be damned by the whims of a terrifyingly inscrutable God? Consequently, I think the text supports the reading that Mephistopheles, at least, does not have free will; he may not actually want to damn Faustus (and thus sincerely warns him about the stupidity of his course of action), but it's out of his hands. But the person with real power over him isn't Faustus, but Lucifer.

Silly conclusion: we can, therefore, assume that Lucifer, the literal boss from hell, dispatched Mephistopheles to the clowns just to be a dick. Because it was funny!

Appendix: the 1662 C-text (a substantial rewrite of the original for Restoration-era tastes which is only labeled "C-text" because DF's textual history is already a giant mess) has Mephistopheles say explicitly that ceremonial magic doesn't work and that standing in a magic circle accomplishes absolutely fuck-all in terms of protecting you. Not really pertinent since it's a later rewrite, just thought I'd throw it out there in the interests of pointing out elucidations of the subtext. I think it completely scraps the Robin stuff for a different comic plot though.

am very interested in the in play logic of what it takes to summon mephistopheles. because when faustus tries to do it, mephistopheles tells his it wasn’t his magic that summoned him, he just decided to show up because faustus was denouncing god. but then robin the clown says a bunch of nonsense and name drops mephistopheles and when he appears, he’s pretty pissed about it which implies to me he didn’t chose to show up, and maybe was summoned?!? so like is robin the clown a better magician or am i going crazy here

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from ml.books

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The Dipòsit de les Aigües Library, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Catalonia.

This library is set up in a 19th-century water reservoir located in the heart of Barcelona. After 100 years of different uses -old people’s home, storage for the fire brigade, car park for the local police department, archive for the Court of Justice- it became property of the Pompeu Fabra University in 1992. Since then, it’s the university’s library.

Photos by Arq Foto, Burçin Yildirim on Flickr, and The ISA Journal.

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Also, if you ever find yourself in the position of needing to collect fun facts about people, one of my professors in library school used to use "tell us a boring fact about yourself" as an icebreaker. I've adopted it myself and it actually works really well because people actually say interesting things that tell the listener something about their life and personality when they're not feeling pressure to Be Interesting.

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It's that magical time before any concert or performance where I need to find somewhere to hide so that I don't have to listen to my fellow chorus members bitching about how everything everyone around them is doing is terrible

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found this in the notes app while looking for something else and ok it is from february but it needs to go in ye olde tumblr dream journal also

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i do think it’s a really fun feature that operas have birthdays. i know that everything can have a birthday if you know how to look at things but i love that every march 6 i see people saying happy birthday la traviata!! and every october 29 i see jokes about how of course don giovanni the opera is a scorpio (although i think don giovanni the character should have been born in may). there’s something so kind about it

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Golden Fields, Amber Brunsden — 2023 Oil on canvas

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Details from The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin — Harry Clarke (1923)