Music: What are you listening to?

[Colonel Sun]

[Rhapsody]

[~]

Is Alizee old enough for me to have a crush on yet, or do I have to limit myself to thinking about her eyelashes?

[YMix]

[Rhapsody]

[Yukon Cornelius]

[~]

[Yukon Cornelius]

Too true, there's very little in the way of DVDs, too --- not good.

[Hans Bulvai]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Sparky]

Ween's distilled essence of Motorhead:

[Colonel Sun]

[Yukon Cornelius]

Kind of a crappy live version:


This is right off the album:

[~]

[Yukon Cornelius]

[~]

"The Durango '95 purred away real horrorshow. A nice warm vibratey feeling all through your guttiworks..."

[Yukon Cornelius]

[Hoosiernorm]

[Colonel Sun]

I heard it through the grapevine ~ Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong



Marvin Gaye

[Yukon Cornelius]

[Yukon Cornelius]

(Jet City is Renton, WA.)

[Hans Bulvai]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Endovelico]

Yesterday I had a special experience, which I want to share with you. But first a little bit of history:

In the 18th century the Portuguese Court received a lot of money from Brazil (gold, diamonds, precious stones) and the King decided to use some of it for the arts. So he had a opera house built next to the royal palace which, because of its proximity to the river Tagus, became known as the Opera of the Tagus. It was completed by the end of march 1755, was considered by some visiting foreigners as one of the most magnificent opera houses in Europe, and then it was destroyed in the great Lisbon earthquake of november 1755.

It may have looked like this on the inside:



And like this, after the quake:



Lisbon was without an opera theatre for almost forty years, until another one, San Carlos Theatre, was built in 1793. It looks like this today:



During the short life of the old Opera, only three operas were sung there, the last one of which was called "Antigono", by Antonio Mazzoni (1717 - 1785), an Italian composer well liked at the time but who is practically unknown today. The last performance was on the eve of the great earthquake, and the opera disappeared from memory.

A few years ago the opera's musical score was rediscovered at the old royal archives, in Lisbon, and its libretto was known to be in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. So a decision was taken to recover it and perform it once more. A lot of work was necessary, as there was only one copy of the score and the musical notation had to be transposed into modern notation. Also the score was mostly for castrati and, as we know, there are no longer castrati singers. So the score had to be given to sopranos (and one countertenor). Finally it was ready and the opera was again performed, yesterday, in Lisbon, at a more recent theatre which happens to be also facing the river Tagus:





The performance itself was very interesting. Mazzoni is no Haendel but his music is pleasant enough and the singers (with the exception of a disappointing countertenor) were very good indeed. Besides the musical aspects of the performance, I felt it very important from a psychological point of view. The great earthquake of 1755, which destroyed almost half of the city, was a very traumatic experience, and remains so to this day. Lisbon has long been rebuilt, we have our opera houses and a normal cultural life, but re-enacting the last opera performed just before the quake, an opera which had been written especially for that opera house, and had never again been sung, sort of places a full stop to that tragedy. The last bit of unfinished business has been cleared, "Antigono" has been sung again, 255 years later. The Great Earthquake chapter may now be closed, everything worth preserving has been recovered, the city life may go on. I felt yesterday a greater feeling of achievement than if I had made a good financial placement and had earned a few hundreds of thousand euros (sorry, Mr. P...)