Posts Tagged ‘opera’
“You are the music while the music lasts”*…
A beloved album can turn into a sonic home of sorts, and provide a measure of comfort that trumps an actual living space. Now we have a mash-up of both: In his new illustration series, “Archimusic,” Barcelona-based designer Federico Babina has designed homes that embody the sensibility and tone of 27 musicians and their biggest hits. Among these sonic fortresses–which range from sleekly designed small-scale homes to colorful and funkier buildings that could be apartments, institutional homes, or symphony halls–are Miles Davis’s So What, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, and David Bowie’s Space Oddity…
Babina appears to be no slacker when it comes to hard thinking about the ways in which design and music mesh. “Both music and architecture are generated by an underlying code, an order revealed by mathematics and geometry,” Babina says in his artist statement. He describes the series as an exercise in “listening to architecture,” interpreting its musicality and rhythm, and representing the structural, visual qualities of music. He explored whether “the music is horizontal, vertical or oblique,” whether “sound leans firmly on the ground or if it touches on tiptoe,” and whether “it’s made of contrasting colors or tones that change gradually.”…
See more of his work at his site and here (where one can also buy prints); read more at “27 Musicians And Their Hits Reimagined As Buildings.”
* T.S. Eliot
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As we’re grateful that music can Gimme Shelter, we might recall that it was on this date in 1868, at the Königliches Hof-und National-Theater in Munich, that Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg premiered. At four and a half hours, it’s one of the longest operas performed in modern times; and it is unusual in Wagner’s oeuvre both because it is a comedy (the only one among his mature works) and because it isn’t driven by mythological or supernatural themes. The premiere was sponsored by Ludwig II of Bavaria and conducted Hans von Bülow. Franz Strauss, the father of composer Richard Strauss played the French horn at the premiere– despite his often-expressed dislike of Wagner, who was present at many of the rehearsals.
“I hope I die before I get old (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)”…
From illustrator Bruce Worden and writer Clare Cross, a children’s classic for the new millennium (albeit, about the last one), Goodnight Keith Moon.
[TotH to Tyler Hellard, aka Pop Loser]
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As we prepare to explore the teenage wasteland, we might spare a thought for Sophia Cecelia Kalos (who later became much better known by her stage name, Maria Callas); she died on this date in 1977. The pre-eminent bel canto soprano of the Twentieth Century, Callas was known by her legion of fans as “La Divina,” (“The Goddess”), a superlatively-specific appropriation of the approbation reserved by opera aficionados for the very finest female singers. The term “diva” (while it dates back to the late Nineteenth Century as a descriptor of a “fine lady”), emerged among Callas’ following as a shorthand for “divina”– making her the first singer who was a diva.
First Takes…
The very first photograph was taken in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, who aimed a camera obscura, which held a polished pewter plate coated with bitumen of Judea (an asphalt derivative of petroleum), out the window of the upper-story workroom at his Saint-Loup-de-Varennes country house, Le Gras. After a day-long exposure, the plate was removed and the latent image of the view from the window was rendered visible by washing it with a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum, which dissolved away the parts of the bitumen which had not been hardened by light. The result was this permanent direct positive picture– a one-of-a-kind photograph on pewter:
(For more on Niépce and the story of his pioneering accomplishment, visit the source of this photo, the site of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas.)
But in many ways as interesting as the first photo of anything is the first photo of a specific thing. OObject has curated a collection of a dozen of the most interesting “firsts,” from the first photo of a human face
Self portrait of Robert Cornelius, 1839
… to the first photo on the web
Les Horribles Cernettes (LHC... pun intended*), a band at CERN (where Tim Berners-Lee "created" the web), 1992
More– from the first photo of the whole earth and the first x-ray to the first color photo and the first picture of the surface of another planet– at OObject.
As we say “cheese,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1935 that George Gershwin signed his name to the completed orchestral score of the opera Porgy and Bess. The composer considered the 700-page work his masterpiece; many critics agree, considering this first American opera to be the finest American opera.
From the title page of the manuscript score (source: Library of Congress)
* LHC
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