Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Toronto City Opera

Yesterday at the memoir slam our subjects were "Change of residence" and "Unusual meals." (The subject "Hemorrhoids" also got chosen, but we decided to skip it.) When I mentioned about having lived in London somebody expressed interest in hearing more from me about it.  On the subject of unusual eating, I mentioned that when I was thirteen I ate a whole can of cherry pie filling on a dare from John.

Last night at choir practice we started "The Little Drummer Boy." We're no longer doing the version with the men singing "Prum, prum..." but the one Bing Crosby and David Bowie did as a duet.  I liked prum-prumming but the new version does have nice harmony.  It's also in favor of peace on earth, like anyone admits to being against it.

This evening was the first rehearsal for the Toronto City Opera (formerly the Toronto Opera Repertoire), where we're doing Bizet's Carmen and Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte.  Beatrice has succeeded Giuseppe as artistic director, while Adolfo is still musical director.  We started learning Carmen, and this time Beatrice directed the men downstairs while Adolfo stayed upstairs with the women.  We did that opera five years ago, and the music is still familiar to me.

Last night I dreamed of a much longer version of the movie Citizen Kane, as screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz might have imagined it before director Orson Welles scaled it back to normal dimensions.  This version included a subplot about a woman involved with a pirate on the Panama Canal. (The movie has a line about the Spanish-American War: "But do you think if it hadn't been for that war of Mr. Kane's, we'd have the Panama Canal?")

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