Whatta Fiasco

Candy book. Tasty fantasy candy, but frustratingly not quite a stand alone. Luckily for me, book two is close to hand.

[powells]

It’s opera time again! And it seriousl suck up on me this year, mostly because going to the Santa Fe Opera last month threw off my internal opera clock. And I didn’t even know I had one.

So, this year is the 50th anniversary of the Kansas City Lyric. Opening with Aida is not such an odd choice. Big! Italian! Opera! Verdi does Egypt as an anti-war message. Wild.

[If you're planning on seeing this production, you might want to skip the rest of this and avoid the spoilers. I won't mind at all.]

First, while sitting and waiting for the show to begin, I overheard some folks behind me mention that there had been live camels included in some of the publicity photos that had been run in the local paper. Would there be camels on stage? (Breathless anticipation.) No, but it was even better.

The good: There wasn’t a single weak voice among the principals. Seriously gorgeous singing. The tenor and (especially) the baritone pulled off Italian to a chocolate truffle T. Both sopranos were very strong, which was a joy.

The bleh: I didn’t care for the lighting. For too much of the time there was too much of the stage left dimly lit with no focus for the eye. It just dind’t work for me.

The extravagant: A wading pool in the middle of the stage, running parallel to the pit and covering most of the widht of the stage when it was completely uncovered. Covering and uncovering the pool made for some long niosy scene changes, and the playing in the water bits weren’t worth all the trouble. But the reflections of the light off the rippling water were beautiful.

The wild: Radamanes, our tragic hero, goes to the temple to receive the sacred sword before setting out to battle. The temple scene is stunning. The priestess has wild scary eyes and is scantily clad. The sacrificial woman is even more scantily clad. The high priest pours water (for real) over her head to purify her. She removes her robe, and reveals the inner nine-year old boys in most of the audience. You could almost hear them shrieking “boobies! naked boobies!” Then the crazy-eyed priestess uses the sacred sword (a dagger) to complete the ceremony. The splurt of blood is dramatic and shocking, and insanely funny to all the inner nine year olds. The enormous bloody heart is lifted up, the scene ends, the curtain falls, and the audience titters its way through the next scene change.

The cruel: Now that everyone has more or less recovered from being exposed to naked breasts, our hero returns to a parade of triumph. Palm fronds and laurels and ringing trumpets. And then the Ethiopian prisoners are pulled out in line at the front of the stage to enact scenes of torture to remind us quite explicitly of Guantanamo while the triumph continues behind them. Sucker punch.

People sing. People do stupid things for love. Some of them regret what they’ve done. They sing some more. They die. Big. Italian. Opera.

This one has is slow in getting started and slow in building momentum, but once it gets well and truly going, it’s fun and adventure, with plenty of subversion along the way.

[powells]

I suppose it’s just as well that this didn’t turn out to be a three book series, because it’s not done yet. But I’m getting impatient. The books are fun and the characters are interesting, but it feels like series of suspense-building digressions and expansions. I’m increasingly nervous that the big pay-off (dragon emancipation) is either never going to happen, or will be less than satisfactory. (Hm. I wonder how Jo Walton would have handled that particular situation?) Still, enjoyable reading and I’ll be picking up a copy of the fourth book.

[powells]

I think this might have been Ruth Reichl’s first collection of stories about her life as a foodie. It’s biggest weakness is that it is just that – a colleciton of stories rather than clear narrative arc. Still, amazinly fun stuff. If you get frustrated with the disjointedness of this one, then you’ll probably love Garlic and Sapphires.

[powells]

I loved this book. It covers Ruth Reichl’s career as food critic at the New York Times from the first tentative job offer through her decision to leave the post. In between, we get loving descriptions of meals (both good and bad) and the introspective lessons she learned while devising and wearing disguises in order to avoid getting the star treatment at restaurants she was reviewing. The only downside to the book was falling in love with the descriptions of wonderful foods I’ve never tried, and then having to face what I actually eat day to day.

[powells]

Yes, it’s a book about physics, one that wide and well-deserved accolades when it came out last year. Clearly written and with all the Scary(tm) math tucked away in the footnotes, it walks your reasonably well-educated layperson through layers of modelling surrounding string theory and multiple-dimensional models of the universe. I now understand all the kerfluffle over 10 vs. 11 dimensions, and have at least an inkling of what all the hopping excitement is about on the subject of branes and curled dimensions, and the enormous possibilities of the soon to be operaitonal Large Hadron Collider. If you have any interest in the current shape of this field, this book is a lovely guide. (Although the Alice inspired anecdotes don’t always work as well as they might have.)

[powells]