Free Republic

Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich reacted to the ongoing dust-up between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. He called it the “soap opera phase of American politics,” suggesting there were more important issues facing the globe than Musk’s “temper tantrum.” “I’m beginning to think that they are mad at each other,” he said. “I don’t want to get into much. Look, this is the soap opera phase of American politics. Everybody can understand it. Everybody can pay attention to it. But in the long run, what’s happening with China, what’s happening with Russia,...

During Lent, I usually attempt to limit my consumption of secular entertainment and shift over to works with more overt Catholic themes. With this in mind, I noticed a video pop up on my YouTube feed of a work that had long been familiar to me, but that I had never troubled myself to watch in its entirety. This was a production of Mozart’s great opera, Don Giovanni. Full disclosure: I’m not a huge fan of opera generally, select Gilbert and Sullivan works notwithstanding. Some of the extended Prima Donna arias can really get under my skin. In the case...

As Bizet’s masterpiece reaches this milestone anniversary, Jon Tolansky sits down with the musical minds behind the Royal opera House’s upcoming revival, Sir Mark Elder and Aigul Akhmetshina, to delve into the psyche of this composer – and his entrancing protagonist. ‘A savage; half gypsy, half Andalusian; sensual, mocking, shameless; believing neither in God nor in the Devil... she is the veritable prostitute of the gutter and the crossroads’. These words from journalist and opera librettist Achille de Lauzières in La Patrie are just one of many similar comments made by critics attending the world premiere of Georges Bizet’s Carmen...

Globalism, 18th century style. This was extremely common at the time, in the cultural sphere. "Don Giovanni", Mozarts' opera, opened in Prague, Bohemia in 1787. Mozart was a Austro-German, his librettist Da Ponte was a Venetian-Italian ex Jew and ex-priest. All sung in Italian by an international cast, none, I think, were Czechs/Bohemians. "Don Giovanni" is based on a Spanish legend, that became a Spanish play in verse (think Shakespeare) by Tirso de Molina, which was ripped off by the French playwright Moliere (and others). All produced with permission and tacit support by the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXJj5_avNpI...

Gorgeous...May it bless your day.

December 7 Strauss: DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN December 21 Mozart: THE MAGIC FLUTE January 4 Offenbach: LES CONTES D'HOFFMANN January 11 Verdi: RIGOLETTO January 18 Puccini: TOSCA January 25 at 12:30 PM Verdi: AIDA February 1 Verdi: LA TRAVIATA February 22 Verdi: FALSTAFF March 1 Bizet: CARMEN March 8 Puccini: LA BOHÈME March 15 Beethoven: FIDELIO April 12 Mozart: DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE April 26 Mozart: LE NOZZE DI FIGARO May 3 Verdi: IL TROVATORE May 31 Rossini: IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA

The first thing you notice about Wolf Trap Opera’s new production of “Silent Night” — composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2011 opera — is its broken frame. Directors Tonya and Ryan McKinny have mounted their production at the Barns like a painting, the perimeter of the stage bound by a gilded frame, its bottom edge snapped and in fragments on the floor. Has it been destroyed by war? Looted by thieves? Or does the McKinnys’ staging suggest a different kind of irreparable damage? An opera based on Christian Carion’s 2005 film “Joyeux Noël,” which chronicles the...

From an opera concert with Trondheim Symphony Orchestra & Opera in Olavshallen, Trondheim, 11 March 2021. Conductor: James Gaffigan Valkyries: Helmwige – Sigrid Vetleseter Bøe, Gerhilde – Camilla Stenhoff Vist, Schwertleite – Siv Oda Hagerupsen, Waltraute – Åse Krystad, Ortlinde – Tonje Eero Hove, Rossweisse – Maria Nohr, Grimgerde – Nina Sætherhaug.Richard Wagner: The Valkyrie - Ride of the Valkyries

Climate activists angered opera fans at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, by standing up and screaming during an opening night performance of Tannhäuser, Thursday. Radical climate group Extinction Rebellion, NYC, took credit for the protest on social media, and shared videos of the disruptions. Halfway through the second act of the performance, several protesters stood up and demanded an end to fossil fuels. One man scolded the audience to "wake up" to the "climate emergency," before unfolding a black banner that said, "No opera on a dead planet." "Wake up! The stream is polluted! The stream is tainted!...

In October 2023, an official responsible for programming at North Carolina public radio station WCPE rejected broadcasting several operas being produced this season at the New York Metropolitan Opera. An article, now scrubbed from the net, entitled “North Carolina Public Radio Station Rejects Contemporary Operas” explains that the programmer cited her Christian faith and viewpoint that the operas are vulgar and inappropriate for children as reasons for declining to broadcast them. The viewpoint intolerance and anti-Christian cultural fascism of NPR and institutions such as the N.Y. Met are fanatical. It was intolerable that a single dissident public radio station would...

My last computer question here on FR generated a lot of furor and only limited useful information (mostly positive comments regarding the Firefox browser.) But I'd like more info (feedback) from FReepers who may have used Brave or Opera, for comparison, as I got none in my prior thread. Pro's and cons from hopefully extensive use would be great to receive! In online articles, Brave seems particularly well thought of from a privacy and security standpoint, without going to the extremes (and more limited functionality) of TOR.

(SOUNDBITE OF JELLY ROLL MORTON PERFORMANCE OF GIUSEPPE VERDI'S "MISERERE") SCOTT SIMON, HOST: And that is Jelly Roll Morton, the jazz legend, playing "Miserere" from the opera "Il Trovatore" for Alan Lomax in 1938. Jazz, of course, is born of the African American experience and draws from musical influences around the world, including opera. (SOUNDBITE OF JELLY ROLL MORTON'S "JELLY ROLL CARVES SAINT LOUIS") SIMON: The New Orleans Opera has commissioned a project on the subject of opera and jazz. It's featured on its website, and there you can see videos produced by our pal and former colleague here on...

A singer's primary genre can impact the likelihood of developing vocal fold injury and may even influence the specific type of injury that occurs, a recent study suggests. The two-part study, led by Lesley Childs, M.D., involved the detailed review of more than 1,000 patient records. Phonotraumatic lesions that develop on the vocal folds include benign nodules, pseudocysts, and hemorrhagic polyps, all of which can lead to hoarseness. These injuries are typically caused by overuse or straining of the voice. The study found that while nodules were nearly equally distributed across all singing genres, opera singers presented with a significantly...

It started with soprano Anna Netrebko. In March, the superstar failed to condemn the war in Ukraine in terms explicit enough to satisfy Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb. It did not matter that reciting the Met’s required denunciation in coercive conditions would likely be false and worthless. It did not matter that critics within Russia, where Ms. Netrebko remains a citizen, can now be punished with up to 15 years imprisonment for criticizing the government. It did not matter that her family members in Russia could be made to suffer if she complied with the Met’s diktat. It did...

African American soprano Angel Blue has said she will not perform in an opera in Italy this month because another production held at the theater earlier this year featured performers in blackface. The 38-year-old Grammy Award-winner announced she is bowing out of La Traviata at Verona Arena, in Verona, Italy, later this month. She blasted the theater as 'archaic' for mounting another Giuseppe Verdi opera, Aida, that featured performers in blackface. They include Anna Netrebko, a white Russian soprano, has been cast in the titular role of Aida in Verdi’s opera - despite the character being an Ethiopian princess. In...

Britain’s Northern School of Contemporary Dance (NSCD) because it is “built around white European ideas” and is too “gendered”. The school has dropped ballet from its auditions process because of its “potentially contentious nature”, according to The Telegraph. “It is essentially an elitist form. Young people need to pay to take ballet classes as a general rule and for a vast number of potential students, they’ve not had access to ballet,” explained the head of undergraduate studies at the dance school, Francesca McCarthy, in comments to the notionally right-leaning newspaper. “It is a very specific form that is built around...

These wax cylinders were game-changers in the later nineteenth century. People could slide a blank cylinder onto their Edison phonographs and record themselves and their surroundings. However, because they are incredibly fragile, these cylinder recordings were considered unplayable by those living in the modern age – at least until now. These recordings will not remain a mystery for much longer. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which has a collection of these wax cylinders, recently acquired an Endpoint Cylinder and Dictabelt Machine. This modern machine, invented by Nicholas Bergh, can digitize wax cylinders thanks to a laser...

The Rumble app on my Android phone is downloading slow and won't play video. Same thing when I go to their website through the Opera browser. But it works fine through Roku. Anyone else having this issue?

“It is a great artistic loss for the Met and for opera.” Those words from General the Metropolitan Opera Manager Peter Gelb makes it sound like soprano Anna Netrebko has died or lost her voice in some accident. In reality, Netrebko was cancelled for failing to denounce Vladimir Putin. As with the criminalization of support for Putin in some countries, the termination of Netrebko is an attack on free speech. It is perfectly bizarre for the Met to stand against tyranny by attacking free speech, the very right that combats tyranny in all forms. This is not just the day...

So I was standardized on Opera for several years, tried Brave, didn't really like it, and then someone on here recommended Vivaldi. I tried it and really like it, it's my main browser now. Problem is, it seems to lose the file-type association for web links and http files and so on. I clicked on a link in an email and it opened the box inviting me to tell it what program to use, and -- Vivaldi wasn't even one of the pre-registered options, only Opera. So I browsed to the location (which is oddly in %APPDATA%), and explicitly told...