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Went to watch some free opera last night, and the key word there is 'free', followed maybe by 'in that ampitheatre arrangement next to the Mayor's HQ, and yes we saw Boris wandering home behind the stage'. I've only ever seen opera twice before: an experimental production of The Magic Flute to which my parents took me as a tiny, where they probably weren't expecting the evil henchman to be wearing rubber and brandising a whip with a cock-shaped handle; and Nabucco in Verona, which we went to mainly for the ludicrous scale of the Roman theatre there, and the staging (giant chariots! Five harps!) and during which one of my friends still managed to fall asleep and nearly go over the back wall. Comic opera, I know even less about. So yes, I could just about work out that The Barber of Saville Row was going to be The Barber of Seville updated, but who it was by in the first place? Needed ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cappuccino_kid to tell me Rossini. That it features Figaro and furthermore has the 'Figaro' song I know from cartoons? Well, I always thought that was in The Marriage of Figaro (the sequel, apparently). But...well, after 15 minutes or so of set-up, it was rather funny, in that same farcical sort of way the TV Jeeves and Wooster was. There was a policeman character doing topical gags, leading audience participation and the like, and apparently such panto borrowings are not normally part of comic opera, but sod it, I like panto. And I like plots motivated by wideboy Mercutio-types in Teddy Boy jackets, and nuns who owe more than a little to Jake Thackray's Sister Josephine, and ludicrously convoluted romantic deceptions, all played out under a purpling London sky. So I enjoyed it. It's still on tonight and tomorrow and while the stone steps aren't the comfiest of seats, you're in the open air and can take your own food and drink, so I'd definitely recommend it.
I've also seen Hazel Blears - the Movie. Well, sort of. I'd always taken Dolores Umbridge - quite the most hateful character in the whole Harry Potter series - as a type, bureaucracy and 'not rocking the boat' incarnate. But watching the fifth film, they play her as Hazel Blears and not once does it go against the books. Well, Blears with a few dashes of Thatcher, maybe, and even in a fantasy film that weird, waxy complexion would be too implausible for fiction. But otherwise, the tittering condescension, the terror of facing someone who is convinced that they and they alone are reasonable...it's an astonishing resemblance.
All the major new characters in Order of the Phoenix (or at least the film) are female, come to think of it. Bellatrix, aka Helena Bonham-Carter playing basically the same character as in Sweeney Todd. Luna Lovegood, aka Cassie from Skins. And lovely, lovely Tonks who is barely in it but still adorable.
cappuccino_kid to tell me Rossini. That it features Figaro and furthermore has the 'Figaro' song I know from cartoons? Well, I always thought that was in The Marriage of Figaro (the sequel, apparently). But...well, after 15 minutes or so of set-up, it was rather funny, in that same farcical sort of way the TV Jeeves and Wooster was. There was a policeman character doing topical gags, leading audience participation and the like, and apparently such panto borrowings are not normally part of comic opera, but sod it, I like panto. And I like plots motivated by wideboy Mercutio-types in Teddy Boy jackets, and nuns who owe more than a little to Jake Thackray's Sister Josephine, and ludicrously convoluted romantic deceptions, all played out under a purpling London sky. So I enjoyed it. It's still on tonight and tomorrow and while the stone steps aren't the comfiest of seats, you're in the open air and can take your own food and drink, so I'd definitely recommend it.I've also seen Hazel Blears - the Movie. Well, sort of. I'd always taken Dolores Umbridge - quite the most hateful character in the whole Harry Potter series - as a type, bureaucracy and 'not rocking the boat' incarnate. But watching the fifth film, they play her as Hazel Blears and not once does it go against the books. Well, Blears with a few dashes of Thatcher, maybe, and even in a fantasy film that weird, waxy complexion would be too implausible for fiction. But otherwise, the tittering condescension, the terror of facing someone who is convinced that they and they alone are reasonable...it's an astonishing resemblance.
All the major new characters in Order of the Phoenix (or at least the film) are female, come to think of it. Bellatrix, aka Helena Bonham-Carter playing basically the same character as in Sweeney Todd. Luna Lovegood, aka Cassie from Skins. And lovely, lovely Tonks who is barely in it but still adorable.
