Cosmic Connection
Having read Norman Lebrecht's "Who killed Classical Music", "The Maestro Myth", "Covent Garden", not to mention Blair Tindall's "Mozart in the Jungle"* and having my own experiences with the Seattle Symphony, I thought I had had assembled a reasonably complete picture of what that environment was like.
At the same time, however, there was a nagging feeling that I had known it already, that somehow I'd already experienced it all.
Then, last night, we broke out our old VCR tape of the Marx Brothers "Night at the Opera" and it all came back.
Kaufman's version penetrates to the heart of the matter more deeply than the other aforementioned authors.
*
I thought I told you not to mention that.
At the same time, however, there was a nagging feeling that I had known it already, that somehow I'd already experienced it all.
Then, last night, we broke out our old VCR tape of the Marx Brothers "Night at the Opera" and it all came back.
Kaufman's version penetrates to the heart of the matter more deeply than the other aforementioned authors.
*
I thought I told you not to mention that.
Labels: The party of the first part
posted by Lane Savant at 7:56 AM
3 Comments:
The one scene I remember most vividly about the Marx Brothers in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA, Groucho and Chico smack the lead singer, probably a tenor, in the head with a mallet, so that their brother, Zeppo, could sing the lead and get the girl. The stage manager discovers them standing over the prostrate tenor, and he demands to know what happened. Groucho says," He pulled a knife on me, so I had to shoot him!" Somehow that cracks me up.
Glenn
In the tradition of Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential" and Gelsey Kirkland's "Dancing on my Grave" comes an insider’s look into the secret world of classical musicians.
From her debut recital at Carnegie Recital Hall to the Broadway pits of "Les Miserables" and "Miss Saigon," Blair Tindall has played with some of the biggest names in classical music for twenty-five years. Now in "Mozart in the Jungle," Tindall exposes the scandalous rock and roll lifestyles of the musicians, conductors, and administrators who inhabit the insular world of classical music.
Tindall's "Jungle" travels around the globe, from performances in Vienna's Staatsoper, Rio's Teatro Colon and a remote Brazilian rainforest, then on to New York City, where she and her musician colleagues live in the squalor of a decrepit west side tenement. A metaphor for the classical music business, the building has fallen from glory, its elaborate stone carving chipped, windows patched with cardboard, and its elegant décor plastered over by a greedy landlord and her predatory handyman. Outsiders have never looked farther than the ornate facade…until now.
Inside, music transforms a schoolteacher into a beautiful diva, and sustains a renowned pianist who endures two heart transplants to perform with the stars who pay him a pittance. An American goddess of the arts struggles to fulfill a dream, her ominous future mirrored by an older musician whose fantasies drain away in her lonely apartment upstairs. A stunning cellist becomes an AIDS-infected crack addict and prostitute; a Metropolitan Opera violinist is jailed for selling cocaine; and an African-American virtuoso becomes so lost inside the elitist white arts world that he smashes his $185,000 eighteenth-century French violin into splinters.
The drama of "Mozart in the Jungle" opens during America's Cold War-era optimism, and follows four musicians as their world dissolves into a culture of entitlement for a new generation of classical musicians, who are deaf to changing American tastes and demand. By weaving memoir with investigative arts journalism, Tindall shatters rhetoric about the arts in the United States -- in an real-life tale from a musician whose career paralleled America’s late twentieth-century culture boom. As "Mozart in the Jungle" races to its dramatic conclusion, Tindall reveals music as a simple, spiritual gift accessible to all.
I hope this clears up this up.
Glenn
Co-incidentally. Blair married Bill Nye "The Science Guy" who was one of the performers on almost live before he exploded into fame and fortune on his Disney show.
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