the energy of desire
It’s kind of weird to have an entire train car to myself at 3:05 on a Saturday. Well, up until Quincy Center, at which a family got on having a conversation in what I thought was Amharic or Somali but I’m not sure. The kids were half Asian.
On the Green Line was a dog named Santa.
At Sprout for dinner, I took the idea of the Petra, but made it mixed greens, chickpeas, green olives, red olives, broccoli, za’atar. sunflower seeds, and lemon dijon dressing.
Hector Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette is a hybrid symphony-oratorio, although I feel like Berlioz’s definition of “symphony” is “large-scale orchestral work.”
Berlioz heard a Bellini opera and thought it was shit. "I could do better," he thought. "In fact, I will do better."
It sort of forgets that the mezzo-soprano and the tenor exist. The chorus, which is equal parts Greek chorus and the Montague and Capulet family, starts off mini-sized and then they go offstage and sing from the room behind when the Capulets are leaving the ball and they come back for the finale in full double chorus form. They even break the fourth wall and namedrop William Shakespeare.
The instruments take on the role of Romeo and Juliet. That was intentional. Firstly, it’s not an opera, secondly, even in 1839 there were already a billion and a half sung love duets, and thirdly, only instruments can do it justice. Like the Symphonie fantastique, it had an ophicleide which is usually replaced with a tuba in modern performances. It can be done with up to 10 harps and requires at least two. The BSO used two.
In the version Hector Berlioz saw, David Garrick made a few rewrites including the removal of Rosaline and modified the death scene to have Juliet wake up right before Romeo succumbed to the poison, which means Berlioz wrote a moment where the music is pure ecstasy.
Here, the reconciliation between the two families that was only vaguely alluded to in the play is brought to the forefront.
Friar Lawrence makes the two families swear before a piece of the True Cross. Berlioz was agnostic himself. But I guess it makes sense because he is a friar.
I've seen performaces that excise the reconciliation entirely.
It’s a coincidence that Ozawa was a big fan of Berlioz. It’s also a coincidence that there’s a message about the two families putting aside their ancestral hatreds because people are getting killed but it seems awfully relevant.
Michaela isn’t an artist but Jay and Sophia are. Michaela had straight hair and a necklace and earrings of downward-pointing daggers, while Sophia had hair tied with red ribbons and a pearl necklace and opal and silver pendant, while Jay had a mustache and a septum piercing. Sophia has tattoos of her cats. One of her cats is a chonker and one of her cats is sharp and angular with a personality to match. So we mostly talked about my current dog and my past dogs.
Jay heard the BSO play back when he was in high school and he forgets exactly what it was he saw.
Burning Question: wait, why are they busing on the Ashmont line again? Yes, screw Ashmont, but on the other hand, this is just lending credence to my theory that the busing is going to go on until the sun turns red.
On the Green Line was a dog named Santa.
At Sprout for dinner, I took the idea of the Petra, but made it mixed greens, chickpeas, green olives, red olives, broccoli, za’atar. sunflower seeds, and lemon dijon dressing.
Hector Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette is a hybrid symphony-oratorio, although I feel like Berlioz’s definition of “symphony” is “large-scale orchestral work.”
Berlioz heard a Bellini opera and thought it was shit. "I could do better," he thought. "In fact, I will do better."
It sort of forgets that the mezzo-soprano and the tenor exist. The chorus, which is equal parts Greek chorus and the Montague and Capulet family, starts off mini-sized and then they go offstage and sing from the room behind when the Capulets are leaving the ball and they come back for the finale in full double chorus form. They even break the fourth wall and namedrop William Shakespeare.
The instruments take on the role of Romeo and Juliet. That was intentional. Firstly, it’s not an opera, secondly, even in 1839 there were already a billion and a half sung love duets, and thirdly, only instruments can do it justice. Like the Symphonie fantastique, it had an ophicleide which is usually replaced with a tuba in modern performances. It can be done with up to 10 harps and requires at least two. The BSO used two.
In the version Hector Berlioz saw, David Garrick made a few rewrites including the removal of Rosaline and modified the death scene to have Juliet wake up right before Romeo succumbed to the poison, which means Berlioz wrote a moment where the music is pure ecstasy.
Here, the reconciliation between the two families that was only vaguely alluded to in the play is brought to the forefront.
Friar Lawrence makes the two families swear before a piece of the True Cross. Berlioz was agnostic himself. But I guess it makes sense because he is a friar.
I've seen performaces that excise the reconciliation entirely.
It’s a coincidence that Ozawa was a big fan of Berlioz. It’s also a coincidence that there’s a message about the two families putting aside their ancestral hatreds because people are getting killed but it seems awfully relevant.
Michaela isn’t an artist but Jay and Sophia are. Michaela had straight hair and a necklace and earrings of downward-pointing daggers, while Sophia had hair tied with red ribbons and a pearl necklace and opal and silver pendant, while Jay had a mustache and a septum piercing. Sophia has tattoos of her cats. One of her cats is a chonker and one of her cats is sharp and angular with a personality to match. So we mostly talked about my current dog and my past dogs.
Jay heard the BSO play back when he was in high school and he forgets exactly what it was he saw.
Burning Question: wait, why are they busing on the Ashmont line again? Yes, screw Ashmont, but on the other hand, this is just lending credence to my theory that the busing is going to go on until the sun turns red.