"So much sea and so much sky" - Puccini

"They may-poled her into her wedding obi!" - Rachel (just for the record, haha)

Today, was an overall excellent day, as usual here in London. :)

I must correct myself about something. Russ McDonald, who taught part of our class today, isn't an actor, but rather a professor at the University of London, as well as a Shakespeare scholar. In addition, he was a student of Professor Clum's during Clum's 2nd or 3rd year at Duke so that was pretty cool.  His son also did the very program we're doing about five years ago. So lots of connections.

Russ McDonald came today because he's really interested in Shakespeare from a literary point of view. So he told us that Clum can tell us all about directorial choices, and theatrical aspects of the shows we're seeing, but that he wanted to talk to us about All's Well That Ends Well (which we're seeing Friday), from a more literary point of view. It wasn't really an English-y lesson, but more like further meanings about this. I enjoyed it; it did seem like we were all, as a group, a little slow-moving this morning (You'd really be amazing at how trekking all around London all day and seeing a show every night until 11 pm will actually make you exhausted for a 10:45 am class every day). 

Anyway, here's what we learned from him today:

-All's Well that End's Well (From here on, "All's Well") is really a pivot play for Shakespeare because it came at a time when Shakespeare was transitioning from some of his hardcore comedies (A Midsum, As You Like it, etc), which were from the first decade, around 1590-1600 to the second decade (1601-1611 ish) which had more dark comedies, his tragic plays, and what are today called his romances (Winter's Tale and the Tempest). All's Well came at about 1602, along with Troilus and Cressida. For this reason, they had some weird underlying ideas. But seem like comedies and end happily with marriages. however, one is caused (for some reason or another) to question the validity of such happiness in the endings, what is sometimes called "Dark Comedy." 

-All's Well is actually adapted from an Italian story of Julietta of Narbonne. It was translated to English in about 1577, and it was adapted from that. Julietta is like the Helena character. She's not of the proper class, and when the male character says he won't marry her for that reason, no one gets upset because it makes perfectly good sense he wouldn't want to marry lower. Eventually her loyalty wins him over and everything ends happy. All's Well, on the other hand, has a situation where all the older adults what him to marry her and he still won't. Shakespeare then complicates teh story, adding in teh COuntess, Lafeu, Parolles, etc. These characters aren't necessarily required but they ad a lot of thematic weight.

-This comedy is slightly different, because in many of his others, the young people want to get married and the old people don't want them to / won't let them. Something happens and they get to get married, the end. In this case, The old people are FOR the marriage, Bertram is just a jerk. Which in the end makes you question how happily this marriage will be after all? This may also test the adequacy of this truly being a normal, comedic play. In addition, Bertram could have been eloquent at the end and apologized emphatically in remorse for not taking Helena to be his wife originally, but he doesn't he says, "I'll love her dearly, ever ever dearly." ....BAD RHYME. makes us feel like everything is all right while at the same time question if it's true that "All's well that ends well..."

-Shakespeare, (this point is almost a no duh statement), was always fascinated by the power of love. But one question he never actually answered or dealt with was this "How does love work?" For his characters, he pretty deals with it as an obsession, something that comes over his characters, and sometimes sexual, too. But we never fully come out saying, this is how Shakespeare thinks love works.

-Some Basic Themes that he loves:

-The power of Love (see above: can't explain it or predict it)

-The capacity of humans to get out of problems

-The power of the imagination (tends to be feminine, women are more interesting in his plays then men [in many of them, anyway!!])

-The Dangers of vanity and pride (See Parolles in All's Well)

-Unreliability of Language (puns, meaning, etc).

-he also likes to include the inverse of all these themes (their limitations, so to speak), imagination can be deadly, language is always good for communication, love can be devastating, etc). 

-So he really likes the complementary and sometimes contrasting ideas or issues of something, and both sides will come up in many parts of his works.

-Parolles the character is actually a spin off the French word for "words," so you can kinda see double meaning in the egotistical, pompous...fool.

-Another part of Shakespeare's balances: quivocal ideas. the French word for pun is actually "equivoque," two different ways of looking at something. So, in this case, Helena is a wife, but she's not really a wife because he won't have her, etc.

So overall, it was interesting listening to him. I'll tell you what, I've learned more about shakespeare in the past week and a half than I have in my entire life and it's been AWESOME! Kyle actually said the other day that he "can't believe he's saying this, but that he thinks he's starting to actually like Shakespeare." so cool, changing some of our perspectives on certain types of theater, etc. 

------

Madame Butterflllyyyy

-In 1901 Puccini (great Italian Composer) watched the play, "Madame Butterfly," written by an American at the Duke of York theater (which we saw Arcadia in!!). He didn't know hardly any English, but was deeply moved by teh play and was also very interested in the idea of women trying to elevate or empower themselves, but always portrayed it as a tragically sad scenario. 

-I think we all agreed, it shouldn't have been translated into English. We had to read the subtitles anyway! might as well have been in Italian! might have flowed better anyway. I still think it's weird that when they sing a song nothing rhymes and when they speak their lines they're just singing. woo opera.

-And thus, you have Madame Butterfly, the opera. The tale of a Japanese girl whose family was shameful (for unknown reasons except that the Mikado mandated that her father must kill himself [Interesting side note: men had to commit suicide by disemboweling themselves; women just had to slit their throats, guess which would be harder to do...]). It centers around a Japanese industry during the war (i dunno, something in Nagasaki in the 1890s...), an industry of marriages that simply legalized prostitution. Kinda like Geishas, sold to Americans to be wives for a night, or longer, and they could get out of the contract at any point, just temporary marriages for one thing only...

-Not much happens in the opera, I think which is typically of the opera, act 1: marriage, act 2: baby and alone waiting for the American (Pinkerton) to return, act 3: he does because he finds out she had a son, he's married, tells her he can't but he's sorry, she kills herself (sorry mom). 

-But this opera, my friends, was different. directed by Anthony Minghella (who actually passed away recently, and wasn't old or anything, the show opened in June), who generally was a film director, he used EVERYTHING he could possibly think of to add detail, beauty and...awesomeness to this show. Besides, he had to do it differently it's been done so many times. The lighting was extremely elaborate, it changes constantly...literally. There was a lot more movementa nd choreography, japanese-esque, and it was choreographed by his wife so that's cool. There's a mirror above the stage, so you sorta see everything twice, and it also was good for sound, too i think. The stage itself slanted up, which looked kinda weird but was very beautiful to see all the different levels when people were on the slanted part. There is a three-year-old child in the play, Madame Butterfly's son, and in this show they used a marionette doll/puppet as the child. it seemed to me it would have been impossible otherwise, simply because they call to the child and whatnot, and I don't know how they would have done it with a real 3 yr old kid. 

-BIIIIIIGGG orchestra... let me be exact: an EIGHTY piece orchestra! TONS of violins. It was beautiful. kinda weird though because sometimes the violins played the exact same note as Madame Butterfly (ie, really high!) and she blended in so well you could hardly hear her. The orchestra also incorporated some intreesting sounds: Asiain ones (using a pentatonic scale [wholetone scale], some common Japanese melodies, various parts of The Star-Spangled Banner for the Americans [kinda awkward.], and even tried to sound like a organ during the church part. too cool.

-The part of BF Pinkerton (lead male, guy who marries her), was actually played by a different guy tonight!! The original, has been having some vocal problems and was warming up THIS AFTERNOON and realized he wasn't going to be able to do it. They didn't put in an understudy, but called some guy in Scotland who had done the show before and got him to FLY down from Scotland and do the show at 7:30 p.m.! I can't even imagine! Anyway, considering the circumstance, he did brilliantly. We only noticed two places where he messed up the lyrics, and that's just because of the wonderful subtitles that were right above the stage. haha. what would you do without subtitles in an opera! :)

-Favorite was probably this duet at the end of act one with Pinkerton and Butterfly. SOOO Beautiful. And they had it all dark and midnight blue and there were all these "floating" white lamps that were just gorgeous moving around them. so pretty. the show itself was extremely beautiful. So many vivid colors and contrasts, and it was just awesome. very visually cool. 

-Act 2 she pretty much sang the whole time. She rocked it. I really liked her because she didn't just make the normal ugly I'm-singing-opera face that many opera singers do (I can think of one, mom, can you???). She had great facial expressions and body movement, too. An overall good actress in addition to be able to kill someone with her vibrato. I think we all agreed at one point in act 1 it was higher than a normal hearing frequency. I thought we had lapsed into some ringing piercingly high dial tone...but it was her...chillin. haha

-Some pretty quotes:

"You wonder at the world but feel nothing at all."

"It would be past forgiveness to crush those fragile wings, to bring despair to a heart so full of trust."

"The night will embrace us while the rest of the world sleeps."

title of this blog.

-We'll see if this video works:

 

-Anyway, loved the show, as long as you take it to be opera and not a comedic musical, anyone could like it. Opera may not be your thing (certainly isn't mine), but if you take it for what it is, this show was amazing. Respect if anything. I have a ton of respect for how awesome that show was. the cast, the conductor, etc. good good good! I also rocked out my opera skills after the show. when asked if I'm gonna be the next Madame Butterfly, I said "Psh, I am Madame Butterfly. ahhhhh--AAAHHHHHHHHH" hehe. 

This afternoon we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum (Have you heard of this one mom?) It was AWESOME!!!! AND it has something for everything. it's just different exhibits and then across time. They had a sculpture section, paintings section, silver and gold section, iron junk section, Fashion section, jewelry section, books section, stained glass windows section, some british stuff, an entire exhibit on asian everything, textile section, and my favorite, theatre and performance section. All across time. It was very cool and very interesting. we didn't cover everything, but I did all the exhibits I really wanted to do I think. It was a really neat museum. glad I went. I also went with different people today. Chelsea, Geoff, Tyler, Rachel, Robert, and John. because the gallon boys all wanted to work out at the gym and i had a feeling I wouldn't be doing aynthing if I waited for them (I wouldn't have) so I went with them so fun. Except I got Tyler and myself lost on the way to the English National Opera and we really cut it close. It was the first time I'd gotten people lost! We got off at the wrong tube station. Well, the other day i led the boys in the wrong way, but at least we were on the right street and figured it out. But other than that, I rock as guide person. Well, I try anyway. with my map and my awesome guidebook (by the way, meredith! The Time Out London book is amazing! I use it literally every day!). 

Tomorrow is Hatfield House, so i'm excited about that. and then Been So Long, a new hip-hop musical. ....which should be fun anyway! we haven't done a normal musical yet this week so I'm excited. 

That's it i think. I'm pretty sure we're taking a half day trip out to Oxford on Saturday which will be nice. 

More Soon. 

So sleepy! 

With Love,

Becca