October 27, 2007
Update...And Someone Please Kill Me
I have just finished a project that has consumed the past few weeks for me: an NIH R01 grant proposal. Jeez, these things are getting hard to do. The technical proposal isn't the problem: its all of the other stuff (15 pages on Human Subjects?!?!?!).
In other news, I am asking some faithful reader to kill me. This week I made the colossal error of watching Hotel Chevalier on iTunes. This short by Wes Anderson starring Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman is supposed to serve as a kind of prequel to his new film, The Darjeeling Limited. The short is garnering rave reviews. I'm not really sure why. Yes, it is interesting. But Oscar worthy (as some critics have suggested)?? I am convinced that the main reason it has proven so popular with the peasants is that is contains Natalie Portman's first nude scene (for those drawn to such things, I can report that it is a big snooze not worth the effort it takes to download the thing). I'll probably go see The Darjeeling Limited as well, but based on what I've seen and read of it, I am, in the wake of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, beginning to wonder if Anderson's whole game plan is to keep making Rushmore and The Royal Tenanbaums over and over (just spliced and diced a little differently each time).
Anyway, back to killing me: there is a song in Hotel Chevalier which I just cannot get out of my head: Peter Sarstedt's Where Do You Go To (My Lovely). Please kill me and make the insipid voice stop. This has happened once before (with Abba's Dancing Queen) and the nightmare only ended then when the Good Rabbi staged an intervention to force me back onto drugs.
Posted by dag at 10:11 AM | Comments (1)
September 28, 2007
Ducks, Dumplings, Marriages and Emperors
Last night the wife and I traveled to Raleigh for dinner and an opera. Let me first dispense with the rant phase of today's broadcast: downtown Raleigh is a freakin' mess! If they want to bring people in there and build up more of an arts scene, they need to make it accessible. Closing most of the streets for a biker rally (which they had done yesterday) is about as dumb as it gets, given the downtown they claim they are trying to build.
Our first stop was dinner at The Duck & Dumpling, which was fabulous. We paired a chilled Riesling with a first course of crab cakes (simply perfect: crisp on the outside with moist and fabulous crabulousness on the inside) and a very refreshing tuna tartar with notes of wasabi. True, both appetizers are cliche, which is a mean way of saying classic, but both were done to classical perfection. For entrees she enjoyed a lovely duck breast while I had superb salt and pepper lamb chops. This place is the equal of Lantern in Chapel Hill. (And for you big city types who snicker at my provincialism, why don't you check out Food and Wine's top fifty restaurants of 2006: Lantern kind of kicked the butt of most of the local Asian haute cuisine offerings in the major metro markets.)
After finishing off with flan and a snifter of brandy, we headed to the opera. Tonight's offering was Le Nozze di Figaro. I really enjoyed this performance. It was light and fresh and genuinely and spontaneously funny. Stephen Powell delivered especially good acting as Count Almaviva, while Sari Gruber's Susanna hit just the right tone. I felt the highlight was the reconciliation scene between the Count and Countess, which was sung beautifully. Grant Llewellyn delivered a very steady and solid, if not necessarily innovative or moving, performance behind the baton, but it certainly was sufficient to support solidly the vocals. If there was a hole in the evening it was Wayne Tigges Figaro, but his was still a highly competent performance. It was a very enjoyable evening, despite the headaches of getting into Raleigh.
Finally, let me veer off course and dispense with Tan Dun's The First Emperor, which we saw recently on an HDTV broadcast from the Met. I had eagerly awaited this new opera which was such a bold venture for the Met and was at once supposed to revive the form and take it in new directions. Unfortunately, what was delivered was a tedious and incoherent mess. The trouble was evident from the opening notes of the overture, which was a rambling cacophony of Eastern and Western noise, with no real theme and not even memorable moments. From there it descended into a tedious and plodding story better suited to a documentary. From the overture onward it was musically flat (indeed, for all the talk of the innovative instrumentation, The First Emperor is basically several hours of the filler music opera composers have traditionally used to get through the filler libretto between the arias and choral elements that are the real reason people listen). The wife and I couldn't even finish it, and moved on instead to a DVD re-release of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train which, I can assure you, is a far better way to spend an evening. I am told that The First Emperor sold well at the Met, which I can only attribute to the "event" quality of its premier (you know: see and be seen).
Posted by dag at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2007
This weekend's opera selection
is the recently released Wiener Philharmoniker rendition of Mozart's Die Zauberflote (the Magic Flute):
This version stars Rene Pape, Diana Damrau, Paul Groves, Franz Grundheber and Christian Gerhaher. I think its going to be great. I have a particular Chateauneuf du Pape in mind (Sabon's 2003 Cuvee "Prestige") to enhance our viewing pleasure.
I also have my eye on a visually sumptuous interpretation of the same opera by the Royal Opera House that Discovery HD recently had on their "Operas at 7am Sunday Morning to Punish Opera Lovers" series:
To my utter and complete astonishment, we are witnessing an extraordinary flood of great opera DVDs onto the market.
Posted by dag at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2006
Current Listening-Thursday Edition
Stunning. Just stunning.
Posted by dag at 1:51 PM | Comments (0)
October 29, 2006
Tosca
I am up at this ungodly hour (7:40am Sunday!!!) for a noble purpose: to watch a production of Puccini's Tosca on Discovery HD.
I have to admit that the biggest disappointment associated with our new, slick, high resolution and big LCD HDTV has been the HDTV part. Its not that HDTV programs don't look good on our TV. They look stunning. For instance, I don't know why in the hell anyone will actually go to an NFL or NHL game ever again (but, you know, they will).
The trouble is that there is comparatively little HD programming out there. The HD channels are colloquially known as the "200s" in my house since they range from 200 to 299 (and no, there are not 100 of them-there are plenty of gaps in between). And regular programming actually looks pretty bad on our TV. The trouble is that the screen is so sharp that small flaws that might be less apparent on a conventional TV are served up like a giant wart on this one.
This makes the discovery of any new HD channel quite a thrill. And my newest find is Discovery HD. I was an idiot and watched last week's Discovery Atlas series (Italy, Brazil, Australia, and China) on plain old Discovery. Having just discovered Discovery HD last night I will tonight re-watch the Australia segment (narrated by everyone's favorite jackass Russell Crowe (why do I keep seeing his movies???)).
This version of Tosca is stunning, both for picture and sound (I should add that we got a whole Bose-based sound system for this TV). I plan to order the DVD ASAP. I have caught similarly stunning art or music oriented HD shows on the public TV HD stations. Could this be a new dawn for culture on TV??? (Before you answer too enthusiastically, I should point out that Survivor and Fear Factor are also available in "the 200s".)
By the by, this is post number 200 to the new Aging Disgracefully.
Posted by dag at 7:38 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2006
Housekeeping
I have made a few changes to Aging Disgracefully, mostly in the categories department. First, I have renamed the category "Food" to be "Bread". Why, you might ask? Because it occurred to me that it might be a nice juxtaposition with "Circuses: The Holy Game", another new category. "Circuses: The Holy Game" has been created to cover the all-important upcoming NCAA basketball season.
"Immortal Beloved" will serve as a tag for all posts related to my wife. I chose this in honor of my favorite composer and because it occurred to me that the wife might interpret "The Relentlessly Nagging Shrew" as negative in tone.
"Plinian Eruptions" is a special category reserved for outbursts. I had planned on two categories here: "Plinian Eruptions: Time Warner Cable" and "Plinian Eruptions: Everything Else", but it occurred to me that that might make that area of the site seem too crowded.
"The Bittersweet Symphony" is for music. "The Epicurians" is for every form of indulgence not covered by another specific category.
"The Meditations" is where I'll go on endless and tedious philosphical digressions, each and every turn of which I am sure you, dear readers, will follow with breathless anticipation and excitement.
"I, Claudius" is where I will follow politics in the next few years. It would seem that we may be in for quite a ride in this regard. It is also where I will address all matters related to the Empire, whether of Claudius's time or ours (cleaving to the matter at hand, Cartman had the essential handle then and now: "They Don't Respect Our Authoritaaaay").
Finally, I announce this in "L'Etat", my new category related to the management of Aging Disgracefully.
Update: I have created yet another category, "Dismal Science", to house all of my ramblings on Res Economia.
Posted by dag at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)
October 9, 2006
Stunning
Last night, we watched the 1995 Australian Opera interpretation of Puccini's La Boheme (with Baz Luhrman directing). Set in Latin Quarter Paris of the Fifties, this production had, no doubt in part due to its youthful cast, exactly the kind of feel I think Puccini was going for. David Hobson (Rodolfo) and Cheryl Barker (Mimi) are superb, and I don't think there was a true weak point among the remaining cast. A truly enjoyable experience, I highly recommend it.
Posted by dag at 2:42 PM | Comments (0)