Art Walk

Last night I went on another Queen Street art walk.  This time we stayed in one place:  the 401 West Richmond Street complex, just east of Spadina Avenue. (That's further east than we usually go.)

We started out at Abozzo's, which had some nice pictures of Newfoundland and Labrador.  We also visited an installation showing a film about the town of St. Pauls, Alberta, which built a UFO landing platform as its Centennial Project back in 1967.  We saw a place with posters that seemed blank at first glance, but if everyone stood still, the motion-sensing lights would go off and you could see images copied from a 1980s U.S. government manual on how to sabotage Nicaragua!  And we went to a display of entries in a student art competition. (I liked the photo of the girl with snowflakes in her hair.) We also got a behind the scenes look at a plant for making art prints.

I had to leave early for the art walk, and Moira was late at the dentist, so I had to get my own dinner. (I found a KFC that still serves the old type of fries.) Speaking of the dentist, today I picked up my mouth guard to wear at night to prevent tooth-grinding.

Gala rehearsal

Poor Beatrice!  The choir and the opera have kept her really busy, and now she's dealing with a cold. (I wonder how Giuseppe largely avoided getting sick.) At last night's choir rehearsal, we were going to start on the Andrew Lloyd Webber song that was the official song of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, but it turned out that when they copied out the score, they missed one page!  There's another song we're going to take up, but that score had one page printed upside down.  It wasn't Beatrice's day.

In a couple of weeks the opera soloists are going to put on a fundraising gala concert, and the chorus--or at least some of the chorus people--will be doing a couple of numbers.  This evening the chorus came to the Bickford Center to rehearse our numbers.  We're doing two Verdi numbers:  the Slave Chorus from Nabucco and the Drinking Song from La Traviata.  Fortunately, I'm pretty familiar with both of them from the choir.

For the Drinking Song, both soloists came to rehearse with us.  One of them was Carrie Parks, who I confirmed was Fiordiligi at the Cosi Fan Tutte performance I saw on Friday.  I complimented her performance, and she was predictably grateful.

COSI FAN TUTTE

Friday night I saw the Toronto City Opera production of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte.  My favorite performer was Carrie Parks, the soprano playing Fiordiligi. (At least I think that was Carrie:  I'm not sure that it wasn't Tammy Short.) Gerald Hannon's surtitle translations always throw in a couple of contemporary jokes:  doctor Despina says "I'll need their health cards"!

Cosi Fan Tutte has a lot of great music, though those two sisters are pretty silly.  One character I like is Despina the maid:  Cecilia Bartoli was a scream in that role in a Met production I saw on PBS fifteen or twenty years ago.

I baked some gingerbread and gave two-thirds of it to the opera people to sell in the intermission.  David Roche, who's handling the front of the house this year, says baked goods like mine always sell, which is nice to hear.  I still haven't got my plastic container back.

Last night we performed Carmen again.  At this performance I got to help move the Virgin Mary statue after all.  Our next performance won't be till Friday.

THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI

"I don't know how to shoot." "It's easy.  You just pull the trigger"--The Lady From Shanghai

This morning I went to my dentist's office and fit my teeth for the mouth guard. (I bit down on something that felt like soft cheese.) Dr. Hrabalova is merging with another office and will soon be moving near Yonge & St. Clair.  She warned that prices may be higher.

This evening I went to see Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai at the Lightbox, for the second time. (It's part of a series a movies that Jean-Luc Godard considers influential.) I saw it with a Movie Meetup group.  For some reason they wouldn't let you bring popcorn into this screening, and I was going to buy a big bag too!  The movie's a crazy, witty film noir that I'm not sure I completely understood.

I did this post in my old diary format, devoting a paragraph to each subject.  In the future, I think I'd rather give each subject a whole post.  The drawback is that I won't be posting as often, but I hope to take this blog to a higher level as a result.

A CARMEN evening

For a 7:30 performance of Carmen, I arrive at the Bickford Centre around 6:15, beating the rush at the makeup table.  After putting on my costume, I apply the makeup, a routine I know pretty well:  foundation (all over the visible face), shading (along the jaw line, both sides of the nose), powder (on the cheeks, forehead, chin, nose), rouge (just a little on the cheeks), eyebrow pencil, lipstick (just a little).  I usually have some time to spare before we do a musical rehearsal and go upstairs.

At the start of Act 1, I guide the stage right curtain as it opens, then sit in the foreground.  I've improvised a routine where I sniff the flower girls' wares and look disgusted.  After the Habanera I wait in the wings for a while.  I prefer to sit on the stairs away from the crowd. (As I get older, I seem to like crowds less and less.) I come back in for the scene where the factory girls report Carmen's fight with Manuelita, then go back out until the final scene where Carmen escapes.

Some of the chorus are onstage at the start of Act 2, but not me.  Yet I tend to be in the wings then.  I come in for the scene with the Toreador song, then have a relatively long break when I can read The Pioneers downstairs.  I come back for the big number at the end. (The last time we did it, I was a soldier in the first act and had to change into a Gypsy costume for the second, but this time I'm a civilian throughout.)

Before Act 3 I have to put on a cloak.  Then Larry and I are smugglers carrying in a box of contraband from stage right.  During the tarot card number I pretend to be asleep.  Then we all move our stuff out stage left. (It took us a while to learn to exit quickly.) During Michaela's long aria I tend to sit near the stage right steps.  Then we all come in for the final number.

There's just a short break before Act 4, when I put away my hat and cloak downstairs. (Carmen and Escamillo have to change costumes in the wings because they don't have time to go downstairs.) The chorus sings its last part offstage.  Then we all come back out for the curtain call.

Acting class

Yesterday was my last acting class for three weeks. (Next week it conflicts with my opera, and the week after the whole class is cancelled!) Only three students came, and Martha left a bit early, but we made the best of it.

One of our activities was reading out loud a short play that Nancy found from a website that offers free plays.  It was about a young man who confronts the tycoon who's converting his mother's building into office space, leaving her homeless, and ends up blowing up the both of them.  My role was the super who reluctantly sets up the confrontation. (I speculated that he didn't know about the explosives and might be older than the young man, and suggested he'd be in trouble if the investigators figured out that he'd locked the door before going away to phone the cops.)

After Martha left, Linda and I read another short play about a married couple who start out playing cribbage with the loser drawing a random chore to do, which ended in acrimony over her wanting to have a baby despite their original agreement.

We also improvised a scene from a slip we drew at random, requiring us to use the romance genre, with marshmallow props and the line "I'll sleep when you're dead!" So we came up with a scene of a long-married couple out camping and toasting marshmallows and needling each other in a good-natured way.

The CARMEN premiere

Last night was the dress rehearsal for Carmen, and tonight was the premiere.  I'm glad I'm in only half of "hell week" this year.  Monday is Family Day so choir practice will be cancelled:  just as well for Beatrice, who looks like she needs the break.

They got the new pants for my costume, and they fit fine.  The vest is too tight to button--I should have caught that when trying on the costume--and unbuttoned there's no point in wearing it, because the jacket covers it almost completely.  But it isn't an important part of my costume.

Elaine is in charge of makeup this year.  She sent us an email about makeup details, and I asked her to post them on the wall because when they did that last year it was a big help.  She's promised to do so.

At tonight's premiere the audience was pretty small, though supplemented by schoolkids. (We're competing with the Sochi Olympics, which doesn't bode well.) And they were pretty dead.

Yesterday I had a dental checkup.  Next week I'm getting a fitting for a night guard to wear in my mouth, because I've been grinding my teeth at night. (Moira already has one.)

Earlier this week I finally managed to brush my teeth with my left hand as an exercise for my acting class.  Today I managed to shave with my left hand!  (I only needed one bandage.) I'm still working on observing people out in public.

LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN

"Have you ever known what it's like to be really hungry?" "I'm hungry now!"--a suggestive exchange in Leave Her to Heaven

Last night I saw the 1946 melodrama Leave Her to Heaven (for the second time) at the Event Screen.  I was there with the Classic Movies Meetup, who formed over half the audience!  

It was shown as part of the Film 101 series, and Murray Pomerance introduced it: "It's about to get colder in here.  It's going to get very, very cold!" It's the one about Gene Tierney falling in such obsessive love with Cornel Wilde that she lets her kid brother drown, falls down the stairs to miscarry (didn't Bette David so that in Beyond the Forest?), and kills herself in a way that frames her cousin Jeanne Crain for her murder.  Vincent Price shows up as a prosecutor.

I've got really lazy lately.  Sometimes in the afternoon I don't feel like going online or watching TV or anything, but just get into bed.  (Mother spent a lot of time in bed in her last years.)

On page 104 of The Pioneers James Fenimore Cooper finally reveals that the tall, dark stranger is called Oliver Edwards.

City life

Yesterday was the latest ROLT event.  It's now at the Victory Cafe as a regular place, and fifteen people showed up!  The topic was City Life.  I read St. Paul's sermon in Athens, where he mentioned seeing a temple dedicated "to the Unknown God." (How modern!) I also read from Charles Dickens' Bleak House, both the opening page where he describes London fog and the passage where Jo the street urchin shows Lady Deadlock the place where her first husband is buried.  I also brought Dorothy Parker's "The Standard of Living," about two young women in New York City, but decided not to read it this time.

The other people were reading a lot of interesting stuff.  Jane read from a book publishing letters Dickens' son wrote from Ottawa in the 1870s after he moved to Canada and joined the mounties; and from a Mavis Gallant book about the 1968 Paris student protests.   Several people read their own writing.  A man from Turkey read two translations he'd written of a paragraph from a Turkish book about Istanbul and asked which one we preferred. (I voted for the second one, but I'd have to read them for a true judgement.) I mentioned that some time this year we'd have an event with translations of foreign-language writing as the topic.

I also solicited $5 in annual dues from those who hadn't paid last month, and I now have half my Meetup expenses paid!  Since they all wrote their names down on the reverse of the Meetup table poster, I later noticed that Yvonne paid in both months, so I'll have to reimburse her sometime.

Gore Vidal

Last night I saw the documentary Gore Vidal:  United States of Amnesia at the Bloor.  He was very entertaining. (I remember seeing him on The Tonight Show talking about his book Lincoln almost thirty years ago.) Christopher Hitchens and Mikhail Gorbachev turned up too.  Lots of sharp quotes.

Yesterday I went out to buy a new pair of boots because my old ones were finished.  I had to wear Father's boots, to my shame.  I didn't want to shop at Walmart's lest I feel morally compromised, so I went to Zeller's but that place was closed so I had to go to Walmart after all.  I could only find one type of winter boot--I was in a bit of a hurry because of the delay--but it feels comfortable.  Today, however, Moira objected to my choice and ended up buying a new pair online.  But they won't arrive for a week or two and in the meanwhile I'll be wearing the ones I chose.

At today's acting class I played a lion pouncing on an invisible prey and eating my fill.  It was pretty good except that when I pounced I slid awkwardly.  It's taking me a while to get into those exercises of observing people and doing things with my left hand.

Tonight I watched another online PBS documentary aired on The American Experience, and this one was about the U.S.A. in the year 1964.

THE PIONEERS

"From beneath this masque were to be seen part of a fine manly face, and particularly a pair of expressive, large blue eyes, that promised extraordinary intellect, covert humour [note the pre-Webster spelling], and great benevolence"--The Pioneers

Yesterday I started reading The Pioneers:  or The Source of the Susquehanna, the first of the Leatherstocking novels written by James Fenimore Cooper, featuring the frontiersman Natty Bumppo/Hawkeye and his First Nations companion Chingachgook.

I'm reading it because it was a Classics Illustrated comic.  Chronologically it's the second-last of the five books, and Last of the Mohicans comes earlier in the comics series.  But Cooper wrote this one first, and I remember reading the comic when I was young. (The dorky splash page had the characters introducing themselves, saying things like "I am Louisa Grant, Elizabeth's friend.")

What I've read so far isn't exactly slam-bang.  One paragraph goes on for four pages!  I've just started the fourth chapter and Cooper still hasn't revealed the name of an important character introduced in the first one. (He's the young man who removes a bullet from his arm by flexing a muscle.) When I recited the passage quoted at the top of this post and added "They don't write like that any more," Moira said "Thank goodness!"

Fifty-two

Yesterday was my fifty-second birthday.  Moira gave me a book of fairy tales rewritten by Philip Pullman, which looks promising. (It reminds me to return to those Dumbass fairy tales I've been rewriting myself.)

The other week Moira asked me why I didn't complain about the cold weather, and I said that I was happy to have problems I knew I couldn't do anything about:  it's better than those problems where you have a feeling you should be doing something about them but you're not sure what.  Well, that's the same way I feel about growing older.

Today I went to see Dr. Hassan.  On the way I took a gamble and stopped off at the Northern Branch library to borrow their copy of James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers.  As a result I was five minutes late, but as I expected the shrink was even later in getting around to me.

My winter boots are shot and I had to borrow Father's to go out.  I had lunch at KFC for the first time in a while, and didn't like their waffle fries, which are too much like potato chips.

I haven't looked at the American Experience documentaries at pbs.org for a while, but tonight I watched a film about American relief efforts during the Russian famine of 1921.

The costumes have arrived!

At Monday's choir we learned John Cutter's arrangement of the hymn "For the Beauty of the Earth," and I think I prefer it to the original! (We'll soon be learning "You Raise Me Up" and Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World.") I told Beatrice I was sorry I couldn't do Cosi Fan Tutte as well as Carmen, and she was understanding.

This morning I went to the Bickford Center and helped Beatrice and a few others hang up the opera costumes from Malabar. (I got up earlier than usual.) I also tried on my own costume, but the pants turned out to have a 29-inch waist, and I'm at least 32!  Sam, you made the pants too tight...

As a result, when we rehearsed Carmen that evening I had to wear my street clothes when almost everyone else was in costume. (There was one woman who was also in my situation.) BTW, it turned out that they didn't need me to help carry in the madonna statue:  three guys can do it instead of four.

This afternoon Moira and I walked all the way to Loblaw's and bought a white chocolate mousse cake for my birthday tomorrow.  Later I went to the bank and there was no queue at all!

I've finished the comedy issue of Lapham's Quarterly.  My next reading material will be James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers, as part of my quest to read every novel turned into a Classics Illustrated comic book.

Digital Film Festival

"You certainly have a way of cutting through the felgercarp"--Battlestar Galactica

They're having the Great Digital Film Festival at the Scotiabank cinema.  The list includes two James Bond movies, but they're both on Tuesday night and conflict with opera rehearsal. (What a shame, I've never seen On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which is said to be one of the series' best-directed entries.) They've shown a whole slew of superhero movies which don't interest me.  They're also showing the campy Dino de Laurentiis production of Flash Gordon. (I recall liking the special-effects clouds in the sky.) I'll see if I can make Brazil or Lock, Stock and Smoking Barrels.

Friday night I saw Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (for the third time, but the first time in a cinema). It could have been one more broad 1980s teenage comedy but it turned out pretty amusing:  Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter have a nice chemistry.

This afternoon I saw the movie of the Battlestar Galactica pilot. (You can tell where the commercial breaks were.) I watched the show sometimes when I was a teenager:  it was such a goofy, shameless Star Wars imitation that I saw in it a certain ersatz cool!  Cliches by the hogshead.

This evening I saw Logan's Run (for the second time, but the first time in a cinema). Kinda fun sci-fi, in a very dated way:  my favorite scene is the one with the Box robot in the freezer.  Peter Ustinov has a nice turn as the aged man, and Jenny Agutter was a cutie!

A new acting class

It's been really cold this week.  My energy is low, and I've been having trouble thinking of things to write about here.

I volunteered to help out Fair Vote Canada, and one of these Fridays a group of us will be going to our MP Caroline Bennett's office to give her a petition for her to present in the House of Commons!

Thursday night I joined the Non-Fiction Book Club to discuss A Concise History of Byzantium.  Afterward we went to Sassafraz, where I ordered a protein smoothie and a nougat parfait.

Today I started a new acting class taught by Nancy.  It's at the same place as the Acting Meetup I've been going to, but later on Saturday afternoon.  Also in it are Martha and Linda, whom I know from starting that mystery play. (I hope we get back to it this spring.   

We've been doing some Meisner exercises.  Today there was an exercise where you sing a song one syllable at a time, and I sang "When I'm Sixty-Four," looking at each of the others in turn with each syllable. (I think I managed to develop a rhythm.) We also took turns pretending to be an animal, and I was a lion lying in the sun and roaring/yawning while waiting for the lioness to bring dinner.