Satyagraha, or Minor 3rds for Four Hours

Ok, ok, I kid about the title. Yesterday, I watched the Met's broadcast of Satygraha. I walked away with mixed feelings.

I loved the puppets. I'm very interested by puppets and their uses on the operatic stage, and I feel that the puppets in Satyagraha were fantastic. Simple materials like newspaper were used to create elegant, expressive puppets. Also cool? Krishna in a suit (picture from Variety).

The text from Satyagraha was taken from the Bhagavadgita. The opera is sung in Sanskrit, there were few subtitles, and there was no dialogue. Interesting as the first two points are, it is the third which intrigues me most. The action of the opera was taken away from it's usual main vehicle (text) and moved to the music and the emotional expressions of the actors. With a composer such as Phillip Glass, the music was a soundscape, leaving the actors to do all the specific communicating. Not necessarily a bad technique, but I felt like I was working very hard to get to the plot. I could have dealt with this for about an hour, but instead I had over three hours of it. I left feeling worn out.

TL;DR I liked the pretty images, but felt that it was just too long.

Dim Sum Adventure

So a little over a week ago, my loverly knitting buddies whisked me off to the West Bank for dim sum. Yum. Yum. Yum.

Highlights were the shrimp shumai and duck. Sweet shmowzowin' goodness! That duck was tastey. I'm usually not about animal skins or the fatty bits, but this was SO BLEEPING DELICIOUS.

There it is already half-decimated. There were lots of bones and bits that had to be removed mid-bite, but that added to the experience. The dim sum experience was ended with this:

Squid brains? Liquefied cotton? It is, in fact, hot dessert tofu. When I saw the sign on the cart I was wary!! But as the cart came around, it was preceded by a divine scent of ginger with a hint of sweetness. The tofu was in a very large ricer cooker, and then was topped with a ginger syrup. The tofu melted on the tongue, the ginger provided a heat that soothed on the way down.

All in all, a wonderful experience.

The Joys of Prop Tracking

I'm prop tracking (oh the glamorous life of stage management) and I'm using Google Documents. VERY handy. I can do everything I need to do with MS Office, but less stupidly. Easy to move drawings into documents, and I can view them offline for printing at rehearsal. I'm still developing a format that I really like/can use, but right now I'm just glad everything is getting accomplished.

I enjoy the organizing and all the little details. I have some trouble focusing (oh hai, undiagnosed ADD), but a pomodro-ish technique is helping. I have to find a time ratio that I can really stick to, but I feel that with practice I'll figure it out.

Book Friday and Spinning Pics

Here's the spindling I started working on last night. I'll probably contact the dyer and ask her for more, because it's amazing and all of a sudden I want a shawl out of it. Shawls! Shawl that I've spun! They're very exciting ideas, but they are lofty indeed.

Book Friday! (finally, right?) This is SHOWTIME, by Larry Stempel. It's a history of Broadway musical theater. The book is first of all, huge. After that, I notice pictures in color, a kick-ass works cited, and that it runs through Rent, so it's rather up-to-date. I've only started reading it (and that was a few months ago), but it was enjoyable. It started with trying to define the term "musical", which I believe will take a few more chapters, at least. A lovely volume that looks great on the shelves. If I ever finish it, I'll let you know more about it.

After an exceedingly long day working, I started spinning a silk bell I got in a trade. (I've been doing quite a lot of trading recently, and I love it. Stuff for stuff. Works out great.) It is gorgeous and soft. . . but I had forgotten how the dry bits on your hands get caught on silk. Thanks sudden cold weather, now I'm covered in silk threads. Pic tomorrow, Arachne signing out!

Verdi Days-1

I've just started my Assistant Stage Managing with New Orleans Opera Association for Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, and I have to say that the first day of rehearsal was marvelous! It's always a pleasure to walk into rehearsal and meet wonderful singers who are excellent to be around from the get-go.

Ballo is part of a fascinating history of opera censorship. Verdi was forced to change the setting of his opera multiple times-- Sweden to Boston to Naples depending on where the opera was being produced, resulting in a few changed names. "Anckarstroem" just doesn't roll off the tongue like "Renato", does it? Today in America, censorship comes not from the government, but from the audience, or to be more precise, the few audience members who pay the most money. A progressive setting gets toned down for the sake of the pearl-clutching big donors. Even though the local arts scene is downright avant-garde, the big opera house keeps it old school. This goes back to an even bigger problem with opera and money in the US and progressive opera in the US, but that's another blog post.

I've also decided to participate in NaBloPoMo; you'll be seeing a post (or at least a sentence) from me for the rest of November.

Quick Knitting Project

So the weather got cold last week, er, maybe cooler, and then the house got cold. My roommate and I live in a duplex built in 1917, so insulation isn't the greatest, but the cute factor is way high. Anyway! I had this need for my fingers not to freeze, so I found a lovely little pattern to use with a skein of Noro Silk Garden that had been sitting in my stash for a while. Maybe over a year. I'm not sure anymore.

Cute, eh? Pattern from NanoEffects. I made it a little shorter so I'd have some yarn left for a headband. Will it get cool/cold enough for me to need a woolen knit headband? Meh. It'll be cute :)

Weekends are for Fun

Saturday, I woke up extra early, roused the roomie, and we hit this AMAZING garage sale. We got some great stuff, the highlight being a lovely rabbit fur stole. This is Bessie's first time modeling-- please to be making constructive criticisms only.

It was rather affordable and only has slight rust damage where a safety pin had been left in it for years. I'm very lucky to have a vintage guru with me while shopping. I know nothing about the different types of furs, except "softer is better".

We also found a little shelf for the bathroom, which shall be documented upon painting, and a few other clothing items. All in all, a great shopping trip. Later, I saw someone on craigslist complain that the garage sale was NOT as advertised-- namely, that there was no vintage. Au contraire, you amateur shopper, hit early, hit hard!

Sunday afternoon, I returned to the house to find this culinary escapade happening in the kitchen.

Bacon pancakes with a pumpkin/caramel/sea salt/awesome sauce. Very delicious, marvelously prepared. I could only make it through one, but it looked like this:

That sauce is sitting in jars in the fridge, waiting to be consumed via spoon.

Book Friday and Socks

So this being my first post, I've decided to create a tradition: BOOK FRIDAY. I love books. I love Friday. Makes perfect sense. I bought this little gem at Arcadian Books.

It is part of the Brecht series I had my eye on for a few weeks. No, it's not the Mahagonny I originally wanted but I have to start somewhere.

But before Arcadian Books, I stopped by Dauphine Books. The Quarter is a haven for used bookstores. I was at Dauphine on an empty stomach and didn't feel like digging. (Dauphine and Arcadian are digging type stores.) But the proprietor asks me if I were looking for anything in particular, not so he could find it and sell it to me, but so he could point me in the direction of another store in the area that might have what I'm looking for. I'm now very much convinced that all the bookstore owners are the best of friends and meet for cards and sazeracs on Thursday nights. I love this city.

I also recently finished some socks. They are made with cheap big craftstore brand yarn. Color is ok; the yarn started pilling almost immediately. I won't be buying it again, but it was on super-sale and I couldn't resist.

Awesome first post: Check

See you soon!