Saturday, June 12, 2010

More Random Notes

  • If you think you might be pregnant, call for Brünnhilde. Sieglinde has been knocked up for what, ten hours at most? by the Annunciation of Death scene.
  • Best bit in the press kit: "The fire scene at the end of Act III is created with a perforated pipe filled with gas that is progressively lit. Both Mark Delavan and Nina Stemme are wearing fireproof costumes, and Delavan also has fireproof gloves." (Why isn't this stuff in the regular program??)
  • This also belongs in the program: The photos of the fallen heroes are images of American soldiers who have died in the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, used with permission of the soldiers' families.
  • Wonderful bass clarinet playing from Anthony Striplen at crucial moments.
  • Please sign Eva-Marie Westbroek up for something, anything.
  • I would buy a messenger bag like the one Brunnhilde was carrying.

2 comments:

Paul Muller said...

"The fire scene at the end of Act III is created with a perforated pipe filled with gas that is progressively lit. Both Mark Delavan and Nina Stemme are wearing fireproof costumes, and Delavan also has fireproof gloves."

And what could possibly go wrong with that?

At some point we gotta go back to the music as the main thing...

Lisa Hirsch said...

That's two sentences from the press packet, which is put together to provide members of the press with useful info not in the program. It's four pages long for Valkyrie, and also includes the instrumentation, info on cuts (none for this opera!), whether anything is amplified, and a complete performance history of the work at SF Opera. I don't see that these two sentences say anything about whether or not the music is the main thing. (And there's now a link on the media roundup posting to my review, so you can see what I thought.)