It's interesting what people think of as culture

[Cam]

Not being judgmental in any way, I think its interesting to see the many and varied topics on the Culture Vulture board - especially when it was first introduced some people thought it would never take off!

me too Marina
god SAVE me from Wagner
I am just choosing the programme for an evening of songs from the Shows for the summer so it's on my mind
Cabaret for example
i love Sondheim's way with a lyric too

I think Bernstein is a genius
have you heard the Chichester Psalms? just sublime

Chichester Psalms is just beautiful.
HC, I have a admission to make. We have at work a Stravinsky set with the full conductor's score marked first by Serge Koussevitsky and then by Lennie himself, because it was owned by them both in turn. I actually feel a frisson of appreciation whenever we get it out.
We are Sondheim saddoes . Have attempted to see most London productions in the past ten years. Highlights being the stripped down Sweeney at the Cottesloe and the rampantly lush Night Music with Judi Dench...Am still smarting over missing the recent Chocolate Factory production of Sunday in the Park with George...

lol at "Lennie" you big name dropper....
where do you work Marina?

Marina, how totally weirdly fab: dh's Valentine to me has been a CD of Bernstein doing

a) Candide
b) West Side Story (with Kiri Te Kanawa [????] as Maria)

Did you catch the filming of the recording of WSS on BBC4 (the only channel for us culturevultures, if not More4)? - gave me shivers - most especially the woman who sang Anita. A boy like that. Would keel your brother. Forget that boy
and find another. One of your own kind ... etc.

Had to go away and tend to children and someone claiming to be my dh, HC. Work in a music college adjacent to one of LB's favoured concert halls when conducting in London. He left a number of his personal scores to us and very special they are.
Never MET the man of course, pre my time . Now, that Sir Colin on the other hand...
Bink, how lovely, and how hard to choose between them both. For me Candide has the edge, tbh. Glitter and be Gay replaced the Queen of the Night's Aria as my fantasy sing some years ago, after hearing Dawn Upshaw nail it to perfection in concert.
I am lucky enough to have the concert performance of WSS with Kiri on hand at work. MISSED the documentary though... am trying to remember who sings Anita in that production. I like KTK hugely but thought the casting for the event generally was a bit safe...

Coming back to this v. late, but PMSL at VVV and at 'Poor Sylvia would turn in her oven'.

Not sure that culture has necessarily to contribute to intellectual development, Cam. I like classical music, but I can't say that listening to it contributes to my intellectual development, because I don't really understand it. Music is not really a language I've ever been taught to 'read' (iykwim), so if I listen to, say, Mozart (currently the subject - should that be victim? - of a campaign of low-culture-ification) it just sort of washes over me. That's not so very different to how I listened to... ooh, I dunno... Duran Duran, say, when I was 12. But Mozart is still high culture, and Duran Duran are still popular culture.

Come back to this late and haven't read it all properly. I have nothing against popular culture, far from it as I "read" Heat and still go to see David Essex every year when he's on. But the term "culture vulture" coloquilly (sp?) denotes non-popular culture surely? Also, I'm a bit of an organisation freak and hate to see stuff in a section when there is a more appropriate one, e.g. Telly Addicts (whcih I visit regularly), Days Out, Chat etc etc. That's what we have sections for isn't it?
Oh yes, and I'm a crashing snob

Wasn't it Tatiana Troyanos that sang Anita in that recording?

I remember seeing that documentary years ago - brilliant, apart from Jose Carreras' inability to ditch his Spanish accent!

yes, spacedonkey, exactly right - could only recall as far as Troy-something. Sang with a power that made her nearly grotesque, hence shivers I think.

Also Bernstein quietly musing that he wasn't sure how well it would all go, "as this was, well, fifties music and of its time ..." - genius and modest.

I do love feeling awed, and for me that's the difference between high & "other" culture.

Jose Carreras - NOT born to sing that role, bless him. Nor Tatiana for that matter... still a very interesting project though.

aha! I saw that documentary on the recoding of WSS with Carreras years ago if that's the one you are referring too and still remember him being told off and coming across as a bit dim...
I still like him but this was not the role for him
Love KTK, fabulous voice and she did some great gershwin/cole porter songs
Am a big fan of WSS and am not ashamed of it, it has some great songs and music. Nice to be in good company!

Behind door when brain cells were being dished out, but at head of queue for genuine charm, le petit Jose!
Kiri at her cinematic best in Losey's Don Giovanni IMO.
She does wounded dignity FAR better than volatile girlishness

ah yes, Losey's DG! saw it as a teenager and still love it, wonderful stuff
But what about Teresa Berganza? what an old flirt as Zerlina (although felt she looked a bit old for it...)

Would On the Town pass the high culture test?

so, opera lasses, what shall I take my mum to for her 70th? Sometime in May? In London?

ROH has Cyrano, ENO has Madam Butterfly. Not sure where else to look.

I'm sure you don't need me to tell you to avoid giantesses from the Chisinau State Opera shaking the Albert Hall to its foundations...
If the Butterfly is Minghella-does-opera production, it's meant to be a feast for the eyes, but not a must-hear.
Is she a high-opera fan Bink, or will she countenance 20th century repertoire, or music theatre?
On the Town! SD, did you hear abour poor Jules Munshin having such awful vertigo during the filming that he had to cling on to Gene Kelly in all the high-rise shots...
Teresa is a glittering star etc, but virginal serving maid...I thought her performance in the film had a touch of the Babs Windsor to be honest FrenchGirl.
And how much slap was the otherwise gorgeous Ruggiero Raimondi wearing?

oh god opera in the Albert Hall

Donizetti's her fave. Where does that put her??

Though I once insisted hundreds of years ago that we saw Nixon in China (Edinburgh Festival) and she has ever since marvelled at having really rather enjoyed it.

Musical theatre is a good idea - we saw Oklahoma! undemandingly together shortly before ds was born. (He did somersaults, and I can't wait to take him to WSS or something like that. He'd adore Oliver.)

We're doing Il Tabarro and Gianni Schicchi in double bill in June...stars of the future and all that. But for Heavens' sake don't buy anything from our in-house bistro Cafe (Throw) Up
Am googling away to see what else hits the schedules in London. Cough, Spamalot is due to transfer from Broadway, complete with Simon Russell Beale, and has had astonishingly good reviews. Hands up who'd take their mother to a Monty Python musical?

Our somersault gig for ds was that lovely Candide revival at the RNT!

If she is a fan of La Fille du Regiment etc then the next best thing is this gorgeous concoction:

La Belle Helene

lol at the Babs Windsor performance Marina!! I can see it now though.... But I thought that was her charm in this

Gene Kelly..... was in love with him for a long time when I was little
Which reminds me I was also in love with Gerard Philipe (who my mum saw at the festival d'Avignon when she was a teenager - her friend got to shake his hand and didn't wash it for a week afterwards...)
Any thoughts on him anyone?

Or am I bringing the tone slightly down with my juvenile crushes....

Gerard Philipe...do you think he would pack quite the emotional punch if he had lived to get old, wizened and multiply divorced though Frenchgirl? All my old Classiques Larousses had pictures of him, Jean Marais and Maria Casares stiffly expounding "gloire" under a ton of slap, and my French teachers' lower lips would quiver whenever we got to that page!
I think he must be someone you needed to see in the flesh, rather like the young Derek Jacobi (he spat on my front row teenage face during some scenery chewing in Hamlet at the Old Vic and I too didn't want to wash for ages).
It was that "juvenile crush" that got me into a lifetime of theatregoing and working in drama education. don't knock juvenile crushes! And how fabulous to have seen GP and co at Avignon. Who are the comediens serieux of today's French theatre in your view Frenchgirl? I thought Denys Podalydes and Jean Aurenche were very good in Laisser-Passez recently but do people like them, and Mathieu Kassowitz, still do stage work?

Never mind high/low culture - what about post modern culture, eh????

(you do Benjamin and Greenberg Suze?)