Second-to-last-day of pre-exam-week Theory, last regular Music History Class, and where does the semester and, for that matter, life, go?... blazing down the freeway in the blaring glare of welcome
late-season sun, for
Week 2, Day 3 of Student Teaching. Homeward for the afternoon, there's time to stop of at the library for further video enrichment, now all opera, including
Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (1687),
Ludwig van Beethoven's Fidelio (1814),
Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville (1816) and
La Cenerentola (1817),
Gaetano Donizetti's The Elixir of Love (1839) and
La Favorita (1840),
Richard Wagner's Lohengrin (1850),
Guiseppe Verdi's Otello (1887) and
Falstaff (1893),
Arthur Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance (1879, in William Leach's ahistorical, clangorous, obtrusive, over-the-top, suspect 1980 orchestration -- heavy on brass, guitar, synthesizer, glockenspiel, and xylophone)
Arthur Sullivan's The Mikado (1885, in a 1987 production featuring Eric Idle's operatic debut),
a typical double bill of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana (1890) and Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci (1892),
Kurt Weill's Der Kuhhandel (1935),
Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960), and the
John Adams Dr. Atomic (2005).
Grade a lot of papers over the afternoon,
but still not nearly enough -- Harriet heading out, and soon following suit for the evening's last hurrahs, with music astoundingly from Leonard Bernstein's Candide through serialists, minimalists, and rockers to Mark Alburger's Psalm 6: 1-5 and San Fernando Hub: I. Fresno, the latter as classroom participation, and a postlude on Camino Real: Block 9.
Home in shadow and smoke for more night music (pdf of page 5 Street Songs [second of II. At a Photo Shop] and 13th measure composed for Psalm 81).
