"Vissi d'Arte"

[ellenkushner]

I'm not the world's hugest Italian opera fan - but Tosca! How can you not love a show in which a villainous baritone Baron threatens Our Heroine against a background of giant chorus and clanging bells of a pious Te Deum (and then has her shadowed by Tre sbirri, una carrozza [3 Cops, 1 Carrlage]) . . . . while the wretched object of his loathsome affections objects that she simply lives for Art and Love, and when they fail her leaps to her death from the -- oops, spoiler!

And now (with 4 weeks to our Rome Trip and counting) someone has kindly published an article letting us know the whereabouts (and admission times) for the "Tosca Trail" to see where it all takes place . . . . I shall go. And I shall make a huge fuss. See,

I have been utterly disgusted lately by the TV worship one sees here in NYC: not only are crowds lined up outside the stage door of every Broadway show featuring an actor they've seen on the screen - and only those - I mean, we're talking people actually screaming and flashbulbs popping when Clay Aiken (who?) emerges from Spamalot. Yeah. We saw Boeing Boeing last night, and they were lined up to, I dunno, like kiss the hem of Brad Whitford's jeans (leaving the unbelievably brilliant Mark Rylance to escape scott free - all this will change, of course, when he finally achieves greatness and plays a prosecutor on some show about the brave men & women who track down semen stains on criminal microwaves or something) - but yesterday for the first time in several years I revisited our old haunts at the far end of Bleecker Street, to discover it all utterly transformed: Juicy Couture where the little Japanese fountain store used to be, Ralph Lauren in place of the Indonesian carving place where I bought Delia the little deer while we were writing The Fall of the Kings. . . . and why? Because of the Magnolia Bakery. Which makes perfectly decent cupcakes, I'm sure, but is now a pilgrimage site for Sex in the City fans. I liked that show, but now I may never forgive it for making it literally impossible to walk down the block, the sidewalks were so crammed with tourists waiting to get in (which I assume is what encouraged name brand shops to move in to take advantage of them). And I'm, like, People, look! You're in Greenwich Village! Two blocks further down there are Italian cafes with homemade cannolli!

But, gee, nobody's made a movie or TV show about the old hipster Village, or Edna St Vincent Millay. If they did, I'd probably never get a seat - or a little ricotta pie - at Rocco again.

It's as if only things that are on TV are real. I am filled with hate - No, not hate. Something more 19c. Anomie, perhaps, some kind of spiritual loathing and general sickness that seems to find relief only in making loud rude remarks as I pass the mindless hoards, who probably think I'm some kind of TV stunt or other. Or possibly simply not real, as they've never seen me behind glass.

I must go put on Tosca now, and cry my eyes out.

Vissi d'arte, baby.

Comments

The sad state of the stage

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

It's almost like you're a luddite or something, but ... I don't know what to call it. I feel so removed from most of what drives "culture" these days - when I see plays, people keep telling me what TV shows the actors have been in them - as if I'd seen them or I cared! Oddly, I was (ahem) driven to see Ewan Macgregor in Othello ... and found him ... oh, I don't know, it can't be me and him and the Pillow Book, so what was I expecting to see or feel with him onstage? (That said, Shakespeare with Patrick Stewart/Sir Ian is a different story, but those people can command a stage like nobody's business.) Part of me is glad because this is keeping theater going, but what kills me is that really good plays are being watered down to the level of TV talent. I really would enjoy seeing Chicago here, but with the stream of TV nobodies that keep populating the London production, why bother? I want a g**damned singing and dancing ACTOR on stage! Thus I am forced to see some show I've never heard of, "The Good Soul of Szechuan," in order to watch Jane Horrocks ...

Thanks for the Tosca tip, my husband is wild about that show and it looks like we'll be in Rome this autumn ... so there we shall go!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I adore Tosca, it's just all passion. Have you ever seen the video version that was filmed live in Rome in real time and in all the places where the events took place? It's well worth seeking out.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Nope - we will, now!

[ladyuranus.livejournal.com]

I am torn... I keep hearing people complain about TV, and I am totally behind you on your views, but I do want to be a TV writer... And I just discovered an awesome new show (How I Met Your Mother), plus the feeling that TV is where it is at, creatively, these days...

I am not contributing. Will be quiet now.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I think you're contributing! This is interesting. More, please?

BTW, I hope it's obvious that I'm not saying that TV is bad. I *like* "Sex and the City" and several other shows! I just think the public's sheep-like reaction to TV is bad. Bah(hh)!

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

::hugs you:: I know, I know. But it seems like every other play or musical on or off Broadway has a TV actor taking a break from LA.

Homemade cannolli? Mmmmmmmm.

[phoebesmum.livejournal.com]

A critic whose name does not come immediately to mind referred to Tosca as 'that shabby little shocker'. I bet he hated Women's Novels, too. But, hey, everyone knows Tosca. while I have, as I say, forgotten his name, so it all pans out.

Your Tosca did not, I suppose, bounce back after jumping? It has, allegedly, been known to happen.

I'm not sure that people in London make pilgrimages to - no, stop. I do happen to know that people are just lame enough to make pilgrimages to Torchwood sites in Cardiff, so there probably are London TV pilgimages, I have just not noticed them. What I was going to say is that it is now almost impossible to stage a play unless (a) it's a musical and either (b) the musical is not, in fact, a musical but a string of pop songs - by Queen, Abba, Rod Stewart (that one was a huge flop, yay!), most recently The Four Seasons - tied together by a flimsy plot, and/or (c) one of the leads has been chosen via a TV reality show.

Not that I was not addicted to Any Dream Will Do. WE ARE ALL GUILTY. I will say, in my defence, that when I went to see Ewan McGregor in Guys and Dolls, I went for the show, not the cast.

Someone really should make a TV show about Edna St Vincent Millay. Although what I suddenly find I want to see is a full-scale Broadway spectacular about the life of Emily Dickinson.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

lol!

[mantichore.livejournal.com]

Not just allegedly. It was filmed and I saw a clip of it. It does put a crimp in Tosca's style, shall we say?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Mmm, Mark Rylance...

I met him when he was doing not-very-big parts for the RSC - Ferdinand in "The Tempest", I think, and a couple of other Young Men that season: the kind of roles that can lead on to greater things, but are certainly not guaranteed to do so. We kept in touch casually for a while - and then he was suddenly running the Globe, and clearly a major figure in London theatre. I'm glad that at least you recognise how good he is.

[krismcd59.livejournal.com]

It is astounding, the dual diaspora -- second-rate TV actors to Broadway, and stellar Brit stage actors to TV. I've seen Rylance live -- Hamlet at the Globe -- and it would be a shame to waste such talent on a crime show. That said, Dame Helen in Prime Suspect can't be topped.... And, speaking strictly from my own academic bias, Rylance deserves to become a pop-culture hack because of his championing of the anti-Stratfordian heresy. But that's my personal high horse; he's still a great actor.

I sympathize with your tourist woes -- but at least you live in a place people actually want to visit! You can bet no one's lining up at Stan's diner in Mt. Pleasant looking for Sarah Jessica Parker. Our biggest local celeb is the University football coach. Oh, and the guy who does the wacky furniture-store ads. Sigh...

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

As my nephew said when he was visiting from Cleveland last year: "Well, that's one good thing about Cleveland. No tourists."

[eclecticmagpie.livejournal.com]

I Sebastiani performs Commedia dell'Arte at Brandeis at 5:30 tonight -- you can still make it in time if you take a cab to the airport RIGHT NOW, and I guarantee you that none of our actors have ever been on TV. Also, our plots are just as silly as Tosca, though this one has a happy ending with the young, handsome, but vacuous, gentleman stealing the young, pretty, but vacuous girl away from his father. Oops. Spoiler! But you can still wonder about who gets the cheese (a middle aged, handsome, yet absolutely enormous wedge of Gorgonzola, which gets romanced by Arlecchino, Francescina, and Dottore Gratiano).

[contrarywise]

Hmmm. The schedule on the i Sebastiani Web site is a year out of date, the Myspace page is almost as old, and I can't find a listing for this show on the Brandeis Web site for more details. Is there a more up-to-date source for show info besides pinging you directly? :) This sounds right up my alley and I loves me some good Commedia dell'Arte. I can't make it to this performance, but I'd love to catch your show sometime.

[eclecticmagpie.livejournal.com]

Oops. Yes, that website is sadly out of date. I shall start pestering the webmaster mercilessly.

We meet most Tuesdays at MIT, rm 36-155. Not *this* Tuesday, though. In addition to always looking for new people, we also frequently welcome folks to come watch our rehearsals, and certainly our dress rehearsals. Our next expected show is in June, in Bangor, but there will be a dress rehearsal beforehand, probably at MIT.

Drop a line to capo AT isebastiani DOT com, and she'll try to put you on our mailing list.

Drop a line to ME: augment AT world DOT std DOT com, if that doesn't work.

[contrarywise]

Excellent, thanks for the info! Yes, please commence the pestering. :)

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Quit torturing me!!!!!!

[redbird]

That is hard. Though I'm not sure I can blame the television tourists for the loss of your carving shop, given the amount of other stupid chain store stuff, and other stupid stuff, in the Village for the tourists (the series of several places on Sixth Avenue a little north of West 3rd that seem to offer a mix of bad tattoos, cheap sex toys, and t-shirts, for example). Even if I didn't have perfectly good, trustworthy sources for anything they sell that I could possibly want, I'd not go in there.

[miep.livejournal.com]

ohhhhhhhhh Mark Rylance was SPECTACULAR as Peer Gynt last fall here in the Minneapple.

did I just say "Minneapple?"

[rozk.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons why Tosca is so great is that it has a three-dimensional villain - Scarpia regards himself as the saviour of the traditional order and his little habit of rape through trickery and threats as an allowable peccadillo. He is a nasty piece of work, all the more so because we see into his twisted soul, but he is real which makes him so much more interesting. He has an inner life - 'Tosca' he sings at the climax of the Te Deum 'You make me forget God!'

Also, both her frivolity and jealousy and Cavaradossi's inability to shut up are real flaws in admirable characters - this is a genuine tragedy about real people in the world of passion and politics bigger than they are.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes! Thank you, Roz.

I love villains who never shut up. One of my favorite quotes from THE THIRTEEN CLOCKS is about that.

[otherdeb.livejournal.com]

Hi Ellen --

Sadly, I have watched the Village change markedly over the last three decades. It shocks me every time I pass through it how many of the places I loved have gone. I can only imagine how seeing it after years of being away must feel.

The only good news is that there are still plenty of lovely undiscovered places that work for us locals, and for those who are not looking for the same old thing they have in their home towns. Admittedly, some of hem take effort to unearth, and some are not in Manhattan, but they do exist.

What really galls me are the Landlords who raise prices so high that the places who are not chains can barely afford to hang on.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

And the odd part is, I'm quite sure many of the TV actors would completely agree with you. These are the real actors that happen to work also in TV who take serious roles on Broadway.

Don't get me started on the subject of TV. I'm totally with Bill Watterson (and you) on that subject.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

And I'm, like, People, look! You're in Greenwich Village! Two blocks further down there are Italian cafes with homemade cannolli!

It reminds me, though, of people traveling to foreign lands and ticking off all the sights in their Baedeckers without ever noticing anything that hadn't been pre-approved by a guidebook. I think we can safely say that people were stupid and shallow even before TV.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Any excuse to be shallow; I know.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

Last year I found the DVD of the version of Tosca that was filmed on location--I mean the exact locations (and time of day) of the opera. It was almost pretty cool enough--another movie that I would have like better had I seen it years ago.

[ellen-denham.livejournal.com]

I'm not generally a Puccini fan -- Madame Butterfly always makes me feel manipulated into tears. But I adore Tosca. I was in the chorus of it a couple months ago with Indianapolis Opera. Because there's not much for the chorus to sing, I got to enjoy watching a lot of other scenes in rehearsal.

I was a nun, which was great because I didn't have to have a wig or do anything to my hair. A fellow chorus member took a picture of me in costume with my hands folded, looking very pious. The scary thing is, I looked pretty believable. A nun! Who'd have thunk it?

[meener.livejournal.com]

i wonder if the star worship you talk about is something endemic to TV specifically, or if it can be linked in some way to the sympathetic magic kind of stuff that can happens with fictional characters and settings (platform 9 and three quarters, will & lyra's bench from his dark materials, etc.). i have to confess i do get unduly excited when i come across literary sites from favorite books, maybe because that's one way to physically touch one's intangible loves. but i really don't know.

on a different tangent: homemade cannoli, you say??? into the batmobile i go!!

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

Mark Rylance! What an actor! I saw him as Olivia in Twelfth Night at the Globe a few years ago and he was superb!