Red Palm
A YEAR
CXLI
How about some operatic mewling:
how the completely feasible—cost-
efficacy a must—dry storage
and continual delivery of sheer
gaseousness awaits its Edison, though
compression canister-bombs en forme
de l’écriture « post-Idlewildienne » allow
a limit’d work-around. Like
changing one’s name for art!
van de Beeck to Torrentius!
Every affair develops on two
planes (and ends up in
an airport lounge, surround’d by
a forest of giant bamboos
mold’d out of recycled truck
tire Ho Chi Minh sandals).
Tango Uniform Victor Whiskey. I
think you know the story
of the feeble Dutch medical
student by the name of
Jan Swammerdam with the mania
for insect life. Bee-stung
lips, veins crawling with ants,
he shat out black beady
heaps of Coleoptera. There is
no end of human folly.
How I loved seeing brick
factories—so artisanal!—in Mexico.
“And then we towel’d each
other off and dash’d out
nakedly, into the green rain.”
—
Hunh? Off I went hier soir to see mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča in the Metropolitan Opera’s recent do (record’d “live in HD”) of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, a version of the Cinderella story, liking particularly the broad comedic moves (think of Art Carney) and impeccable timing of Alessandro Corbelli (who play’d Don Magnifico), irreparably addled by the ongoing reverie of marrying off one of the two haughty daughters—gawky, horse-faced Clorinda (Rachelle Durkin) and Tisbe of the pinch’d snout (Patricia Risley)—to the princely Don Ramiro (Lawrence Brownlee). Garanča: mischievous, exquisite, and capable of singing tremendous soaring runs and flights of notes nigh-effortlessly, without any sign of temperamental vanity, recalcitrance, or any of the freights of the prima donna-ish. One question (ask’d in mighty and resonant basso profundo): how come the tenor always ends up with the girl?
Alessandro Corbelli in the Rôle of Don Magnifico in Rossini’s La Cenerentola
