proud member of the sixtus beckmesser protection squad. does exactly what title promises: focuses on finicky classical music details. unfortunately does not include delightful plastic nose as seen on composer.
can we pls stop misinterpreting every single beautiful sentiment out there. please. saw a post the other day that went "you owe me nothing. i did it out of love", which is a lovely way to put a non-transactional view of love and charity, that we should perform acts of love and charity without secretly expecting things in return, but because we want to, and because they feel right.
and the comments were fully arguing "noooo but u should only do things for other people if they treat u with basic respect!!!" or "this mentality will let u be used by ppl :/". and guys, that's really not the point. 'don't let yourself be walked on'/'you deserve basic respect for your humanity at all times' can and absolutely should co-exist with a non-transactional view of love. stop coming up with very specific scenarios/terms/conditions on which a sentiment shouldn't be applied if that clearly wasn't the point to be made. (bit weird that so many people also seem to think that practicing non-transactional kindness automatically translates to being a doormat, but...ok man).
aside from that not being the point, we're also all adults and allowed to make our own stupid decisions. if u decide to spend ur entire life doing things for people who actually don't respect you, then... that's your choice. not a good one, but your choice. enough of getting into fights with random strangers about their life choices on the internet. enough. ENOUGH.
we all know the problems of the male gaze (applied to women) but in the name of equality, we must remember its opposite: the male gaze (applied to men). i call it the Gay Male Gaze and at the theatre, it involves lot of male characters unnecessarily undressing onstage, all men wearing tight boxers but women wearing lovely nightgowns, and i assure u it's a real bother when u in the audience are not as interested in men as ur gay male director
i can’t think of a single nice thing i’d want to say to the man richard wagner except maybe that he actually didn’t do badly on tannhäuser. he wasn’t happy with the composition all his life and towards the end, even famously said something like “i still owe the world my tannhäuser” and.
honestly man i have no idea what your tannhäuser is, but i know this tannhäuser, the one we have, and it’s good. it’s desperate and sad and a little funny, it’s got an aria about anticipatory grief and being all alone in that. it got a 14 year old to stay at the opera and never leave (me). and that’s good. don’t beat yourself up over it, yeah. beat yourself up over your shitty pamphlets instead pls.
it’s rude that the opera i’m going through a sudden phase with isn’t available to go see near me with a cast to my great liking in the foreseeable future. the season planners should’ve known this would happen. literally rude.
uh. maybe i am capable of witchcraft. guess who’s coming to sing macbeth next season at an opera house just one horrible train ride reasonably far away ☠️ [screaming]
@ all everyone who’s had to miss a show/concert/whatever due to circumstances outside of their control: RIP. my heart is with u and it has always been, but it happened to me this friday and i crashed out over it a very disproportionately high amount 😭
(background: was supposed to go see axe murder opera but my train was so crazy late that my 80 minute window before the show started was not enough bc the train was 100 (!!!!!) minutes late. yes, i cried.)
& it’s so weird how intense this crashout is?! wtf?? otherwise things are well, i finished a super long-standing creative project recently, but somehow all that joy is steamrolled, and that itself is so rude. also doesn’t help that my brain does NOT love changes of plan and in these moments i wonder whether i have a sprinkle of the ‘tism
anyway. fellows i get it on a very personal level now too
⤖ amfortas and kundry are mirror-image depictions of suffering. (read this analysis at ur own risk. i’m half in my pyjamas and should have other concerns)
i think they're representative of two different types of suffering. i don't think it's as simplistic as amfortas with his bleeding wound that won't close representing physical illness and kundry with her curse of immortality and inability to weep representing mental illness because really, these two types of illness overlap and are highly interconnected from both a biological and symptomatic pov. BUT.
amfortas' suffering is of the very public type. his wound-that-won't-close immobilises him physically. he needs foreign hands to help him and carry him pretty much anywhere, or else he ain't getting there. simultaneously, even despite his help, he's alone, because that's simply one of the intrinsic properties of continuous physical pain: it's overwhelming, it clouds your entire perception, and eats away at your ability to interact with and be part of the world. the other grail knights are well used to this. they dutifully help him, carry him to the bath, but ultimately, his suffering when he fulfils his duties as the king of the holy grail is business as usual. when you know you can't reach someone, or help them, at some point you get used to it, and you tune out their pain because it's so constant. (i think we all know this phenomenon from the constant stream of terrible news stories.)
worse for amfortas, everyone can gawk at him when he bleeds, and everyone does. it feels deeply, deeply humiliating and shameful for your most agonising pain and your physical vulnerability and weakness to be right out there for everyone to see, especially if it's perceived as being "your own fault". and because it's "his own fault", the others still hit him with the old "you must fulfil your duties"-argument. and the physical pain eats away at his psyche, leaving only this shame and anger and fear of his constant pain. amfortas is like a mouse in a glue trap. he would chew off his own limbs to physically get away from his terror of having to suffer.
...kundry, on the other hand, suffers almost entirely invisibly. physically, she's fine (if immortal, apparently). if amfortas is stuck in a glue trap, she's cursed to the opposite: she wanders between societies, eternally, and has no place where she rightly belongs, where she's accepted, where she is loved and is allowed to love honestly and sincerely. she's cursed to be this eternal symbol of seduction/sin, but she takes remarkably little interest in the actual act of seduction itself and expresses little joy at it. i truly believe she wants to love and be loved, or at least be seen and taken seriously in some genuine manner. as a real person. and whereas amfortas can't not express his situation to other people (he can't just close his wound and fckin stop bleeding, physically), she can't express her agony to other people: she's cursed to only laugh and never cry. she, too, is painfully limited in her ability to participate and interact with the world by the root of her suffering: her curse.
and because kundry is physically fine, she receives no pity and no attempts at understanding from anyone. whereas amfortas can’t physically sleep, kundry’s sleep isn’t restful and provides no respite. whereas amfortas is suffocated by his official position as king of the holy grail brotherhood, she has to fight for even half a seat at any table, always. she serves the knights' brotherhood and receives some thanks for it, knowing full well she'll never really belong because they're an all-male society. but her being the semi-affiliated outcast is the most true appreciation of her person that she'll ever get, so she'll take it. at the same time, other people, like klingsor, recognise her lack of belonging and try to impose their own perceived authority to subjugate her, instead of chasing her with the duties of an official position that must be fulfilled. klingsor believes himself to be her "master" (...rlly bro?), but as she constantly leaves to visit the grail knights, evidently he's not.
...and so they know each other, amfortas and kundry, in a way. they know each other in suffering, and they know each other in secret since no other member of the knights' brotherhood knows it was kundry who seduced amfortas and let klingsor wound him, thus setting the plot in motion. they both walk towards their suffering, knowing there will be no respite and no mercy, and resistance is futile. kundry says as much before she falls to sleep in the first act, and amfortas thrashes in his trap in his act i monologue, and then he falls silent and trembles before the grail in pain. so they pretend to not know each other, and she wanders to faraway arabia on horse and foot to find potions that help him, as if that's a completely normal thing to do for a guy you don't even know.
parsifal really is an opera that says i know how heavy it is. i know how much you tried. you tried to be good. i know. you tried for so long. and it was too heavy for you. i know. i’ll carry it for you. and i ahhhhhh
soprano characters named elisabeth who are decidedly not having a good time because of their tenor love interest, and the bass in the picture just Really Doesn’t Get It
love verdi for giving us this extreme direct juxtaposition of the two (2) types of operatic tenor characters directly talking after one another in macbeth:
macduff: [singing an gripping, poignant aria, full of sorrow and emotional weight, about a loss too heavy to bear, a loss he’s willing to let make a monster of him]
malcolm [physically tripping into the scene] bruh what even is this forest lol? anyway, i know exactly what i’m doing, FOLLOW ME LADS
if not one, but TWO mythical creatures warned me that my shiny ring was cursed and would cause my death, and the second instance (water-dwelling ladies) politely reminded me that i was actively involved in ending the previous owner’s life and fulfilling the curse once again, i’d simply throw that shiny ring away. r.i.p. to siegfried but i’m different
[a person you love most dearly and will love for the rest of time greeting you with the most aggressively invalidating and queerphobic monologue you’ve ever heard at the kitchen sink at 8:00 am as ‘something they’d just always wanted to tell you’]
i love my macbeth interpretations. they are like dolls on a shelf, like so:
🎀🧍♀️ “humans are just the playthings of fate and no matter how much you thrash, it'll always Get You exactly the way it was always supposed to get you. no matter how hungry you are, you'll always be the devoured party”
🎀🧍♀️ “there is literally nothing supernatural at all about this. some guy is taking everything at face value and Does Things bc he's emotionally vacant and morally adrift”
and i take them out and play with each and love them exactly 50/50
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