How about a little Cecilia Bartoli for the afternoon?
… and because it is just too much fun, the second video from this:
After a good couple hours playing oboe, time to chop up some pineapple…and watch some Ninja Turtles. Yes.
(Oops! I forgot to prepare these for posting, and nothing at all went up yesterday for the “QODs”. Bet you were sad about that. Or not.)
Welcome to land of no cell phone reception. Yay oboe practice time. I see what they did there lol
Wouter Verschuren, dulcian
Kathryn Cok, harpsichord
If you go here you can read Michael Leopold’s blog entry about the three instruments he plays during Xerxes.
I went looking for videos of him playing. The first thing I ran across is a fun listen (includes talking as well) …
(And gee, I sure hope I get to Italy before I die … just sayin’.)
I think about this older music and how it moves me. I don’t find as much contemporary music that moves me emotionally, but I wonder if music being composed today will move people several hundred (or more) years from now. Perhaps it’s the aging that makes it so? Dunno!
I’ll continue to look for more early music that Mr. Leopold is playing, but first have a look-see-&-listen to this, because, after all, next week we go to Carmen with San Francisco Opera. It’s the “True Story of Carmen” … hysterical!
Dan and I are home from a very wonderful night at the opera. We heard and saw Handel’s Xerxes at San Francisco Opera. Wow! Voices were incredible. Orchestra sounded fabulous. I was a happy camper.
I wasn’t such a happy camper about the traffic. PG&E is currently on my bad list. Due to a pipe rupture or whatever it was the drive took us an hour longer than usual. 280 was a MESS. I left home at 5:20. We arrived at the parking garage at nearly 7:30. Guess what? The opera began at 7:30!
But we didn’t even know that on the drive up (maybe that’s a good thing; my stomach would have been in knots!).
Foolish, foolish me. I assumed an 8:00 show, since all the rest are at that time. But nope. 7:30. Fortunately we went straight there (thinking to catch a bite to eat at the hall since we arrived too late to go out) and ran to the elevator because I looked at the tickets as we were walking over and I saw the 7:30 time. (And I even checked the date earlier and didn’t notice the time.) The usher took us in to some seats in the back of the dress circle which was fine by me; the orchestra had already started and I was just very grateful to get in the hall at all, as I thought we’d have to wait until the second act to go in.
If any of you have a chance to get to this I highly recommend it. I believe it’s my fave of the year so far!
But what a long day I had. It started with driving to Stanford at 7:30 AM. Drove from Stanford to UCSC to demonstrate the oboe and English horn to an orchestration class. Drove home to have my first meal of the day after 2:00 PM. Taught two students. Then it was SF Opera time. Whew!
Now I’m off to bed — I have Opera San José (first of our two final dress rehearsals) tomorrow during the day, and then Dan is in a photography show which has its reception tomorrow evening!
Oh. Wait. it’s already tomorrow! Must. Get. Sleep.
