a short story of pop'era

... it started off fine with this...



the three tenors popularize the beautiful Nessun Dorma before the 1990 FIFA World Cup
(the idea was to make opera available to a larger audience, and it did. Many arias are known thanks to these three guys)

... went on with this, still making musical sense...



Freddie Mercury and Monserrat Caballe sing Barcelona for the 1992 Olympics

(Freddie has proven he knows about opera since Bohemian Rapsody and knows how to not take himself too seriously. This is why it works)

... started going wrong with this...


Andrea Bocelli gets a career by squandering a tenor voice on corny pop songs , e.g. Vivo por Ella

(note how Marta Sanchez, an otherwise competent pop performer, suffers greatly to catch up with Bocelli. This is what happens when you get opera trained people to work/compete with pop singers and they both take it seriously)


... quickly lead to this...



Il Divo. I guess it's better than being unemployed.

(I need someone to sit down and explain this video to me. Slowly. )

... degenerated into this...



The Ten Tenors. Bee Gee Medley?????!!!!! WTF?????!!!!!

(no, it is NOT a parody. Why you need to spend all your childhood and youth studying classical music to end up performing a choreographed Bee Gees medley with 9 other guys is a mystery to me)

... and finally, we got this...


...

Warning: downer.

I was there, at Loquillo's concert, last Sunday. The song is a version of a poem that has always been a favorite of mine, especially as you can see a fragment of it at the Universidad Complutense subway station. True enough, it's probably not the best thing to read at birthdays, but still great in a depressing kind of way...



NO VOLVERÉ A SER JOVEN

Que la vida iba en serio
uno lo empieza a comprender más tarde
-como todos los jóvenes, yo vine
a llevarme la vida por delante.

Dejar huella quería
y marcharme entre aplausos
-envejecer, morir, eran tan sólo
las dimensiones del teatro.

Pero ha pasado el tiempo
y la verdad desagradable asoma:
envejecer, morir,
es el único argumento de la obra.

-- Jaime Gil de Biedma.

(and here, a chance to use my translating wheels)

WON’T BE YOUNG ANYMORE

Life was in earnest –
one realizes that only later.
As with all the youngsters, I came
to take life by storm.

I wanted to leave my mark
and leave with an ovation
– to age, to die, were only
the dimensions of the theatre.

But time has gone by
and the ugly truth begins to show:
to age, to die,
is the only plot of the play.

what I'd rather be talking about on a Saturday night...

... intelligent conversation or at least intelligent bullshit... it's been soooo long....


Review: How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard | By genre | Guardian Unlimited Books


Bayard's approach is Derridean: a focus on the relation between objects and the systems that support these. He perceives books themselves as a 'system', important only in so far as they are received within society: the gossip that they generate; the ideas that they spawn; the conflicts that they provoke. 'Relations among ideas are far more important than the ideas themselves,' he insists. Thus, it is only ever necessary to get a rough sense of what any particular book is about - and where to place it in the 'collective library'.

Blogged with Flock

I really have to record this before going to bed

Location: Flamenco concert at a small bar, 1AM
Excerpts:
"You don't look like yourself in your pictures. I mean, if they told me to look for this person in the camera in this bar, I would never think it was you"
"I don't know what's wrong with gypsy women, they get so fat after 25... I guess they have their kids and let themselves go"
"I don't listen to music, I don't see the point. I have a stereo in the house, but I don't use it"
"Opera? Well I heard in a movie that you either love it the first time or you shouldn't bother. Me, I don't bother"
"I find Indian women disgusting... I mean, physically. They have a right to live of course"

To make matters worse, none of these statements were uttered in an obvious state of drunkenness. Loud enough to make heads turn, yes, but drunk, I don't think so.

Prescription: read this every time you think being single is the worst thing that could happen to you.

Blogged with Flock