Compare and Contrast!

I’m winding down my day, so I’ll simply let you fill in the punch lines. All you have to do is compare and contrast these next few paragraphs.

1. This is an excerpt from Mark Kanny’s puff piece about John Adams’ Doctor Atomic, found in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

The action, such as it is, takes place during the day and night leading to the first detonation of an atomic weapon on July 16, 1945. After a soundscape created digitally by Adams, the opera begins with a chorus of scientists singing about physics. It sets a gray, prosaic tone as the characters worry and wait for the countdown to conclude more than three hours of opera later. "Doctor Atomic" is too long, particularly in the time spent at the test site. Scenes in each act at the Oppenheimers' house provide welcome contrast.

Oh, rarely have the words poured from a penny pencil with such feverish fluidity!

2. This is Ralphie’s Theme, from A Christmas Story.

What I want for Christmas is a Red Rider BB gun with a compass and a stock and a thing which tells time. I think that everybody should have a Red Rider BB gun. They are very good for Christmas. I don’t think a football is a very good Christmas present.

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And just for giggles, more from Mark’s Pittsburgh puffery.

I like the opera's quietly haunting ending. The novel "Black Rain" by Masuji Ibuse is a good way to explore the world hinted at by the opera's final words.

Kwuh? The opera’s final text...which is quietly haunting...it hints...of a world...in which a different text...enables good exploration...of the operatic text?

Pfft. (brain fart)

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And really, it's too long? Opera much?
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Castle Grayskull: A Momentary Diversion

I’m no expert on opera, admittedly—some I like (Morton Feldman’s Neither, for instance), but, in general, operatic vibrato tends to send my mind into a semi-schizophrenic state, seriously (oh, the price we pay for color!)—which is why I have rightly abstained from opera meta-criticism. Until today, sort of.

Surfing the newspapers, while eating my breakfast of champions (Coke, Doritos and Goobers), I was drawn to a particular picture that accompanied an article about opera ticket prices.

I thought it would be fun for you Detritus folk to meet the characters of this opera.

He-man, as Hunding.



Creepy Mel Gibson Scots, as Die Walküre



And Clifton Forbis, as the Michael Jackson “Black or White” morphing face, not quite He-man, yet not quite Scot.

Here.

I’d like to think that someone working with the Metropolitan Opera’s costume designers would have caught the humorous resemblance.

Enjoy!