I'm not really familiar with art songs, but AFAIK they're standalone songs about love and nature and God and uplifting things like that. Anna Russell was a MidCentury performer who trained for opera and made her living doing comedic send-ups of opera and classical singers and Gilbert & Sullivan, and she talked about German and French art songs. I can't remember which is which, but one has glorious music and insipid lyrics, and the other has wonderful lyrics and boring music.
Anna Russels interpretation of Wagner's Ring Cycle is hilarious and quite informative.
edit: as is her "How to Create a Gilbert & Sullivan Operetta" piece.
I'm not a big fan of opera either.
Oh yeah, I like art songs. When I was studying singing in high school, I did a bunch of them. Some German love songs that of course now I can't remember, but my favorite was this Scarlatti.
I always liked working on opera as a wardrobe person, but didn't care for listening to it. And I find the acting to be appallingly bad. I mean, I worked on student productions, but the school is ranked 2nd in the country for opera/vocal performance, so I am thinking they are actually pretty good!
The worst thing I can imagine in Staples just happened--I tested our corporate discount, and it's not consistent, but was more than 20% in this go round.
Wow, Grey's Anatomy feels like it's pulling further and further away. The big decisions they made with this season are blah.
Puppies are rarely not Yay-worthy.
I really liked Ingmar Bergman's
The Magic Flute
if you're looking for a good film adaptation of an opera. Sometimes it seems like it's just a filmed stage production except when you seamlessly realize that it's not.
Mostly though with opera I'm in the "too many notes" camp -- I can for sure see (and HEAR) that it's highly trained musicians performing flawlessly complicated music, but I just can't keep up.
Ah, Coca-Cola, the duct tape of sodas. I've just used a bottle to clean some persistent stains in my bathroom sink and toilet bowl, and it did a much better job than Comet or Scrub-free.
In other news, I'm not drinking Coca-Cola anymore.
Mostly though with opera I'm in the "too many notes" camp
"Which ones do you suggest we leave out, Your Majesty?"
Drink Coca-Cola! Your stomach will be stain free! That penny you swallowed when you were five doesn't stand a chance!
