One of the big lessons I learned from the thing, picked up from grief counseling, is that it’s OK to feel more than one emotion at the same time. Grief itself is a snarled ball of sadness, rage, relief, frustration, etc. and that’s OK. And I bring this up because 2025 so far has been a very obvious double track of ‘the world is falling apart’ and ‘my life is pretty great right now’. So I have to remind myself it’s OK to enjoy my own life and build on my successes while also being cognizant of our current political situation and doing everything I can to fix that (which, at the moment, it’s hard to figure out how).
But I really had a great day yesterday – leisurely just getting laundry and other house stuff done, plus some important tasks re performance projects. Nothing is panicky. And today, knocking off a few more tasks and then going to see Le Nozze di Figaro at the Met. I could have dumped some of the stuff yesterday and gone to see Die Zauberflöte yesterday as well, but two opera matinees in one weekend when I do have stuff to do felt like a lot. And much as I love Magic Flute, that new Met production looks so creepy and unpleasant. I’ll get to it eventually. I’d like to go to Barbiere next weekend – that’s high on my list of ‘incredibly popular operas I’ve never seen on stage’.
Figaro is one of my favorite theater pieces ever, and possibly the opera I know the best (I’ve played two roles in it) and the only opera I’ve ever seen more than once at the Met – this will be my third time. And it’s reminding me that my own opera-singing days weren’t that numerous, but I had a great time while doing it and wouldn’t mind getting back to it. There’s only one lifetime, unfortunately, being (more of) an opera singer would probably mean I wouldn’t have been a band director or a conductor or whatever else. Possibly the main reason I didn’t pursue horn as a career despite getting the training and degrees is it required focus on that instrument to the exclusion of everything else, just as I was discovering that I was a singer and was a conductor and wanted to play in all the sandboxes.
Well, I’m sure my friends who actually have made it as professional musicians would look at my ‘career’, such as it has been, and wrinkle their noses, but it’s been nothing but interesting and what amazing opportunities I’ve had and continue to have. And I will be singing an ‘opera role’ this week, Grinder (heh-heh-heh) in The Zoo. Fun to sing, and he has no character arc, he’s just a grumpy asshole. Totally in my wheelhouse.
It’s funny how some shows have bubble-ups where somehow, everyone is performing them. I hadn’t thought about Jesus Christ Superstar in forever until I just played Utopia Opera’s production, but suddenly there are at least two other local productions, and the famous Hollywood Bowl one coming up with Cynthia Erivo. I saw Company in Brooklyn recently – which should have featured a FB friend of mine as Bobby, but he had to drop out – until he got cast in the same role in another Brooklyn Company which is opening soon. Was it just a couple of years ago where I ended up seeing about four or five different Iolanthes in the space of a few months?
Which leads me to the oddity of, three months after seeing NYGASP’s The Pirates of Penzance with my G&S buddies Marisa, Carol and Rick, going with the same bunch to see the new Roundabout production of Pirates! The Penzance Musical. Carol, Marisa and I had a great sushi dinner on 43rd, then met Rick in front of the theater. We all had a great time at the show, but me less than the others.
I’ve already said negative things about PTPM on FB, and angered a dear colleague who’s related to one of the artistic drivers of the show. I apologized, or tried to, but honestly, criticizing artistic choices isn’t an ad hominem attack, and I would like to think I would never do that. But still. I did go in with an attitude. There are 12(ish) G&S shows, all in the public domain, so you can do anything you want with them, but whenever one goes to Broadway, it’s invariably Pirates and they always need to fiddle with it. (I said “fuck with it” on FB, which may have been overly harsh.) I’ve never been a huge fan of the Joseph Papp 1980’s production with Kevin Kline and Linda Ronstadt etc., even though it brought the show great energy and got a lot of people interested in G&S that might not have taken a look otherwise. But the Papp production was actually much more faithful to the original show than PTPM, which relocates the show to New Orleans (um, OK), jazzes up the music, and rewrites most of the lyrics. To me, that shows a lack of trust in your original material, and I spent most of the show just thinking about how good the unedited Pirates is as a show, and gilding the lily doesn’t result in a better piece of art. I’m not sure what PTPM is trying to say with its revision, but it just felt unnecessary to me. Rewritten lyrics for G&S are invariably not-as-good or well-crafted as Gilbert’s originals. And the rewritten title itself is witless.
OK, so yeah, I had an attitude about the base-level ‘why does this exist’ of the show. But I still had a good time. The performers are mostly really good, and I love David Hyde Pierce (excellent as always), Jinkx Monsoon (who I’ve now seen in all three of her musical-theater performances in NYC) and (seeing for the first time) Ramin Karimloo, long a celebrated performer around here. The Frederic was adorable. Mabel didn’t do a lot for me – and the role was vocally rewritten in such a way that she seemed totally a different girl than the Pirates Mabel.
As with movies, I’m a staunch supporter of the idea of ‘don’t remake or adapt good shows (movies), do the ones that should have worked but didn’t’. And Pirates just doesn’t need it.
Anyway, my three friends didn’t have the problems I did with the show and loved it, and I’m sorry again, my enraged colleague, and I guess the bottom line is, if you go to PTPM, you’ll probably have a good time.
What else? I see it’s the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby. I’d never read it in high school, and only knew the MAD satire version of the Robert Redford movie. But, purely by coincidence, I read the novel for the first time last year and have now been listening to the audiobook, read by Sean Astin. So nice to be in tune with the zeitgeist, I guess? I like the book, don’t know if I love it the way I love some other American classics. (To Kill a Mockingbird is perhaps my favorite book.)
I don’t list all the books I read, because I plow through them quickly, and most of them are genre stuff, but I did just read John Scalzi’s When the Moon Hits Your Eye, which is charming and funny and actually poignant too. (suddenly the moon and all lunar samples turn into cheese, and no one knows why) And, still working my way through the Reacher series, reread Never Go Back, which is the one they based the second Tom Cruise movie on. I saw that movie, yet can’t remember anything about it – maybe I should watch it again. The Tom Cruise Reacher movies, aside from the egregious miscasting, are actually not bad – but the TV series is really doing them right. When I started watching, I thought Alan Ritchson was just too pretty and bland, but I grew into liking him a lot. (I’m about halfway through season 3 now.)
Current TV: Drag Race, Matlock, Elsbeth, Northern Exposure, Shetland, Resident Alien, White Lotus. I’ve seen one episode of Mid-Century Modern, of Paradise and two of The Pitt, which is wonderful. I’m intrigued by, but have not yet seen any of, The Residence and Adolescence. Bosch Legacy, which I just finished Season 2 of, is about to drop Season 3, and Poker Face is coming back. And Hacks is back, right after I turned off Apple for a while. I’ll get to it.
Happy Passover and Palm Sunday, for those who do them!
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