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Used to be poisonivywalloftext.blogspot.com but some people did not know how to behave on the blogosphere.
RIP Jessye Norman
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Norman and Obama. Ah, a time when a president could do these things
The great American soprano Jessye Norman passed away yesterday. My own story about Jessye is small but here goes: after a very bad period in which I gained a lot of weight I took up running a few years ago and quickly learned that the miles went by quicker if I listened to beautiful music. Jessye's album of the Four Last Songs quickly became my favorite workout recording: at 40 minutes the album was perfect for my route, and Norman's lush gorgeous voice somehow made the miles and sweat easier. I listened to it over and over again on my workouts. I recently came down with a bad ankle sprain and have to stay off the ankle for awhile. When I'm able to work out again the first thing I'll do is put 4LL back on.
Meanwhile, here is a wonderful live video of her singing this:
The Norns say it's the end of the world! The nightly Met streams continue this week. Someone behind the dial at the Met must have a dark sense of humor -- for the first week of streaming they included La Boheme and La Traviata , two operas where the heroine dies of a specific infectious respiratory illness that was often acquired by lack of social distancing. This week they are doing an all-Wagner week which happens to include ... wait for it ... Götteradamerung . So try to forget the fact that the Met season has been canceled ! Try to forget that everyone in NY and NJ is essentially locked in our houses ! At the Met website we can watch the End of the World! Without further ado, here are some of my totally irrelevant musings on the Met HD offerings this week. Either way, these Wagner operas are great cleaning routines. You can disinfect your residence three times over BEFORE the first intermission:
I really can't believe I've now sat through three performances of Anna Bolena within a rather short amount of time. It's not my favorite opera by a long-shot, and the production is absolutely dreary. Read my thoughts on the first-cast performance here. But the buzz about the second-cast Anna Bolena has been strong among operaphiles, who have whispered that Anna Netrebko is the bigger star but Angela Meade the better vocalist. Meade made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2008 as a last minute substitution in Ernani , and since then has slowly been building up quite a following. So last night I dragged myself to the Met to sit through Anna Bolena again. Yippee.
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