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Tap BrothersI have been disappointed in all my expectations of Australia, except as to its wickedness; for it is far more wicked than I have conceived it possible for any place to be, or than it is possible for me to describe to you in England. |
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Tuesday, April 14, 1998
I noticed a strange phenomenon this morning, while listening to my Opera Arias compilation CD. Two pieces are by the same composer (Puccini) and sung by the same soprano (Te Kanawa) and are very close tonally. They are next to each other on the CD. The result is a segue unintended by the composer! "Vissi d'arte" from Tosca and "Quando m'en vo" from La Boheme blend right into each other, though they have nothing to do with each other!
Because I was watching part of Pride and Prejudice last night (I bought it on laserdisc a few weeks ago), I was inspired to pull a CD called "Jane's Hand: the Jane Austen Songbooks" out of the file cabinet drawer today. I've had this CD (from Vox Classic) for some months, and I think I've written about it before. The music on the CD was drawn from Austen's music notebooks. Because printed music was expensive, borrowed printed versions were copied for home use.
These songs are delightful! The CD was supposed to be the first in a series, and if there are more I'd like to find them. The fortepiano and harpsichord accompaniments consort very well with the melodies by Handel, Gluck, Storace and others. A good mix of duets and solos, humor and pathos. All the lyrics are in English except the first on the CD, "Non lo dirò col labbro." which melody was heard in the recent movie version of Sense and Sensibility.
Imagine living in a time when music making was part of almost every cultured person's education! I actually have some experience of home music evenings, with everyone chiming in on the refrains or taking turns in a solo, when my brother-in-law's band gets together on holidays. This is great fun! This ties in with the Schubertiad evenings I was talking about a few days ago, although we usually aren't singing new songs with the composer present.
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Today, I lived through one of those comic moments that one thinks only exist in cartoons. In our kitchen, I put my money in the vending machine for a snack, and the snack got stuck on the little mechanism and didn't fall down to where I could grab it. I was ready to give up, but the two developers who were there started banging and rocking the machine. I was worried that they'd be crushed! But eventually the peanut butter cups were dislodged and I had my treat.
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This evening my sister M---- and my nephew J--- and I went to the Fifth Avenue Theater downtown. They are putting on an original musical there, called Hot Shoe Shuffle. It's about seven tap-dancing Australian brothers. Get this: their last name is Tap! And each brother is named after a tap step, like Buck, Wing, Tip, or Slide. This whole thing was rather bland, but my nephew loves tap, so he loved it.
The second act was rather better, since it dealt with the show-within-a-show that the brothers are starring in on Broadway. They used good songs like "Opus One" and "It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing," so of course it was better!
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