Former singer and current opera marketer Rich Russell offers a nice metaphor linking orchestral programming to the beer selection at his local bar. I’m a wine guy myself, but what he says is right on. Of course, this is where I link to my recent article on the same subject—orchestral programming, not beer—which has generated more reader comments (most of them positive) than anything I’ve written in years.
I’m teaching a four-session course on the history of the American musical theater for the Arizona Senior Academy this month, and boy, did I get lucky with my content this past Wednesday. This week’s session was about shows before the development of the “integrated musical” in the early 1940s. From Oklahoma! on, all of a show’s elements—the book, the lyrics, the music, the dance numbers—ostensibly worked together to define the characters and propel the story. During the period I was talking about this week, though, any old song could be dropped into a show, whether it was relevant or not.
Well, on Wednesday morning I watched online the first episode of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, the latest project from Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel and Firefly/Serenity. Whedon produced Dr. Horrible on the fly and has posted it free online (until July 20, at which point you’ll have to pay to download it from iTunes). As I was driving out to Academy Village, I impulsively resolved to work Dr. Horrible into my presentation. The subject is a geeky young man who aspires to be a supercriminal. (Remember the trio of nerd villains in Season 6 of Buffy? This guy, who goes by the name Dr. Horrible, is cut from the same cloth as Jonathan and Andrew, but he’s not as malevolent as Warren.) Trouble is, Dr. Horrible has a crush on a girl he sees every week at the laundromat, and his first opportunity to have a real conversation with her comes when he’s in the middle of committing a crime. Said crime is foiled by Dr. Horrible’s arch-nemesis, Captain Hammer, who thereupon starts making googly eyes with the bad doctor’s love interest. That’s the gist of Episode 1, which you can watch here, except I forgot to mention that every couple of minutes the characters break out into song.
My audience on Wednesday had no familiarity with the Whedon oeuvre, and I doubt that they had any interest in Dr. Horrible’s subject matter, but I forced them to watch a few bits and pieces of the first episode because I think it’s a splendid, compact example of the craft of the integrated musical. Every single song reveals what the characters want, and follows them as they resolve to set the next course of action. Oh, and the whole thing is very, very funny.
So then I contrasted that with the hodge-podge approach of the creators of American musicals from the 1850s through the 1930s, and I ended the class with a clip from the movie version of Cole Porter’s Gay Divorce (retitled The Gay Divorcee for cinematic release). Honestly, I hadn’t really watched the cllip all the way through before I plugged it into PowerPoint, but as I stood there watching the whole thing with the class, I realized that it perfectly brought the session full circle. Here was the great transition to the integrated musical: In the song “Night and Day,” Fred Astaire lays out to Ginger Rogers exactly what his character wants and tries to persuade her to succumb to his blandishments; this doesn’t work, so Astaire resorts to dance, and in the dance sequence the relationship between the two characters develops further. The whole clip really moves the specific characters and the show’s plot along, and I was able to tie this in with the Joss Whedon material I’d shown at the beginning of class. Symmetry is a lovely thing. Here are Fred and Ginger, courtesy of YouTube:
Two plays and a restaurant fall under my critical scrutiny in this week’s Tucson Weekly. Unfortunately, “fall” is the operative word in the restaurant review:
Last year's most appalling local restaurant news: Alan Zeman, one of the founders of Tucson Originals, was closing his excellent restaurant, Fuego, and selling out to a Canadian chain. The word "traitor" was bandied about in some quarters, but it seemed only fair to wait and see how things turned out. Yes, one should, as much as possible, patronize locally owned restaurants with unique menus attuned to the region, but restaurant chains are not necessarily evil, and you can get a decent meal at many of them, and besides, the Canadian company, Firkin, is a franchise operation; technically, the spot on Tanque Verde is locally owned. We gave Firkin and Friar--completely unrelated to Frog and Firkin, near the UA--a full year to get itself together and develop a following before deciding whether or not we should forgive Zeman.
I’m afraid that Zeman must remain unforgiven, and you can learn why I think so here. I’m more favorably disposed toward the plays:
Two people building a relationship, counselors have told us for years, have to compromise; each must try to look at things from the perspective of the other person. That idea is fundamental to two plays that opened here last week, and it's what leads Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park to its obligatory happy ending--but it's disastrous for the couple at the center of Tracy Letts' Bug, the late show in Live Theatre Workshop's Etcetera series.
Details abound here.
Today was one of those days where there actually was too much news to cram into the 3 1/2-minute news window I get each hour. Our reporters really kicked it up with lots of local stories, but that means you didn't get to hear some of the state stuff from that normally helps fill a newscast, so here's quick summary of what I wrote and what you missed...
State House Speaker Jim Weirs does not have the authority to appropriate surplus funds for school voucher programs for disabled and foster children.
Nine illegal immigrants were rescued by Border Patrol agents after trying to swim across the Colorado River in Yuma.
Governor Janet Napolitano says she doesn't support a ballot measure to hike the pay of state lawmakers.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is facing allegations, in a lawsuit, that his officers racially-profiled Hispanics during an immigration and crime sweep.
There you go!
Did you ever notice that when an NPR host is not on the air, that host is "away?" What's up with that terminology?
On rare occasions, that person may be "on assignment," but never on "vacation," "sick," or "off." What's the reason for that?
Does NPR think having a high-profile host on "vacation" stirs up some sort of negative connotation? NPR employees do get time off for vacation, don't they?
Another thing that confuses me is Deborah Amos, who is filling in for Rene Montagne today on Morning Edition, since Rene is "away." Half the time she introduces herself as "Deborah," while the other half she is simply "Deb."
I asked local host David Close about whether he noticed a pattern in which name she uses and he told me she's "Deborah" at the top of the hour and "Deb" at the bottom. Is the bottom-of-the-hour audience less formal than the top of the hour? Am I the only one who notices this?
How many question marks did I use in this blog? I'm so confused.
Via the Face of the Future photo transformer, here’s what I’d look like as painted by Modigliani:
And this is me in the style of El Greco:
And now I have to write some radio scripts, unless Spider Solitaire proves more interesting.
