Night at the Opera with Peregrin

Hello, I'm Peregrin, a.k.a. Pippin or Maria. This is a place for my doodles and sketches at the Minnesota Opera. See 2011-2012 season sketches here!

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Sketches from Don Pasquale as presented by the MN Opera! Happy 2017-18 Opera season!

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Sketches from the MN Opera production of Das Rheingold, part 1 of the Ring Cycle. Highly recommended! The visuals were gorgeous and kinda steam/cyberpunk, with excellent use of the projectors.

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Embarrassed to admit I lost my sketch pad for over a week. 😰 Anyway here's what I have for Romeo and Juliet at the MN Opera.

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Sketching at MN Opera's Preview Night for Puccini's 'Tosca'. Go get 'im, Tosca! Sketches and photos presented without further explanation. If you want to see the show, use the code 'social50' when buying tix online for 50% off on March 18, 20, and 24!

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I'm super slow getting this online but it deserved inks so I spent some time finishing it. Here's Rusalka and her dad having a moment. One of my favorite of all the MN Opera productions, which is saying something because I have seen a lot of opera via preview nights over the past few years. The sets are amazing. The music is sumptuous and I love the way the Czech language sounds. Also I am a sucker for a good old fashioned tragic fairytale. I have more sketches that I might finish and post later.

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Scientists now think that being overweight can protect your health

Studies show it helps patients with an increasingly long list of medical problems.

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And notice the tone the scientists researching this.

“What do you mean the fatties live longer? This CANNOT BE RIGHT DO THE STUDIES 15 MORE TIMES!”

And when they can’t figure it out, they simply say “it’s not worth reading” to keep anything POSITIVE about fat bodies from getting out into the public eye.

Because then folks might not but into the billion dollar industry for diet fads and weight loss scams that all of these obesity doctors line their pockets with.

Because then theyd actually have to start treating their fat patients like PEOPLE.

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Night at the opera with Mozart's 'The Magic Flute'. Easily the most beautiful, surreal, and visually stunning production I've ever seen at the Ordway. The music was masterfully performed as well. Here are the two sketches I managed to get done, along with a few of my favorite snapshots of the show itself. Highly recommended. You've never seen a show like this one, I guarantee.

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Sketches to get me thinking about my NaNoWriMo project.

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Sketches from the opera 'Ariadne auf Naxos'. I focused on getting at least one good cartoon for each of the three characters I had chosen to draw. The composer was my favorite. Precious melodramatic baby. I also enjoyed the two rival sopranos, Zerbinetta and Ariadne. Check out the MN Opera website for more info: www.mnopera.org It's opera season again! Looking forward to the 2015-16 season of the Minnesota Opera, and they're off to a great start with Ariadne. Absolutely phenomenal vocals, slick set design, and a really cute story. Next up: The Magic Flute by Mozart.

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Tonight we were one again treated to the MN Opera Companies Social Media Preview Night, when artists, bloggers and tweeters get to watch the final full dress rehearsal of an opera for free, and spend the whole time drawing writing and live tweeting. This months production was Ariadne de Naxos. Which was about a party in which both a fancy schmancy opera company and a lowbrow comedia del arte troup were both booked to preform. They waste so much time arguing about who performs first that the host of the party decrees that they have to go on together, and hijinks ensue. The young idealist composer of the opera falls for the girl on the comedy troupe, the sopranos duel, and everybody waxes eloquent about the nature of love. I suspect the woman playing the composer is meant to represent a boy, but I spent most of my time drawing rather than reading the supertitles, so I didn’t see it. So, queer opera headcannons it is!

If you want more context, look me or Ty up on twitter as AmmoniteInk and printed_soot, respectively.

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(I'll have mine up tomorrow sometime when the light is better to photograph my sketches, but I had to reblog my friend's post in the meantime. :3 )

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Carmen sketches and photos. I will write up a longer post later today.

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The Elixir of Love by Donizetti So this is a few days late.  Not only was this my first opera since giving birth to my son, Quin, ten months ago, it also happened to take place on my birthday! Between baby-wrangling, birthday shenanigans, and every possible technical difficulty I could imagine, it took awhile to get these few images posted online. I would have had more sketches, but my book light died halfway into my third sketch (poor Doctor Dulcamara), so I regrettably have very little to show for this session. I had some vague plan of doodling up some mini comics when I got home, but again, super busy, plus tech gremlins thwarting me at every move. I swear I'll do better on the next one. Anyway, enough of my excuses. Let's talk about the show.

The Elixir of Love is a romantic comedy. Possibly the first I've seen at one of these opera preview nights, in fact, since I missed out on a few of the others. I usually wind up seeing the tragedies (which are also wonderful). Unlike some of the more grandiose productions, this show had a relatively simple set that remained the same throughout, and the costumes did not especially stand out (save for Doctor Dulcamara's magnificent purple suit with the orange waistcoat). The visuals were obviously not the focus of this opera. The music was top notch, though, both from the orchestra and the singers. The story, too, was a wonderful balance of hilarious and sweet, with engaging characters. I was particularly fond of Doctor Dulcamara, the snake oil salesman who provided the titular 'elixir' (which turned out to be an ordinary bottle of wine). His stage presence was phenomenal, and what a voice!  I enjoyed this production so much that I'm going to try to do some more artwork based on The Elixir of Love when I have the time. I still think some mini-comics would be fun.  In the meantime, please enjoy the sketches and photos! Cheers, -Pippin Coming soon: The Manchurian Candidate!

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Verdi's Macbeth

I was lucky enough to see the MN Opera production of Verdi's Macbeth on Thursday. Since my digital tablet was out of commission, I was forced to resort to good ol' fashioned analogue paper and pencil. Thus it took a bit longer to get my sketches posted, since I don't have a working scanner at home. Sorry for the delay! Anyway, here are some sketches for you. The raven was projected on the curtain between each act, and it wasn't moving, so it was the perfect subject for a warm-up sketch. I also enjoyed the visually stark set for the opening scene with the witches.

I tried to get a nice gesture drawing from one of the witches, because I really enjoyed the raven theme they had going on with the bird masks and the flapping dresses. I also did a quick sketch of our main title characters, Lord and Lady Macbeth.

Banquo and his son were really cool characters, but they were on stage for such a short scene that I didn't have much time to draw them. Here they are, surrounded by lurking assassins.

Towards the end of the play, I was really distracted by how hungry I was, so the banquet scene made me a little loopy. I really enjoyed how Macbeth was freaking out over his hallucination of Banquo's head on a platter, and how Lady Macbeth was like, "Dude, chill, you're embarrassing yourself." Also, Macbeth, you should really learn to decipher cryptic witch prophecies better. "No man born of woman can kill you" is some pretty specific wording, you know?

And here's where I really lost the thread of the play and just started making up alternate surprise endings. Good ol' Macduff.

I hope you've enjoyed the sketches! Tune in next time, when I (hopefully) get a chance to sketch things for Dream of Valentino. If I'm REALLY lucky, I'll get to do some Magic Flute sketches as well, but by then I should have a newborn baby so we shall see... Cheers!

Gypsy-Maria

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This post is a little late due to technical difficulties.

 The first opera of the season was Manon Lescaut, an early Puccini production. As such, it was focused heavily on the emotional states of the characters, as well as the realistic portrayal of the characters' humanity.

 Though a tragedy, this opera had a surprising number of comedic moments. The playful interactions between Manon and her brother, the childish fury of the rich suitor, all served to create a lighter tone than I would have expected.

 Even the ending, where Manon dies of exposure, is not as depressing as it could be, While dying, she comes to realize the importance of love and regrets her selfish ways. This gives her death a bittersweet feeling, as she is redeemed by love.

  Unsurprisingly, the MN Opera put on an amazing show. Lush sets and costumes, a top notch chorus, and a full orchestra made this a fully immersive experience. Kelly Kaduce as the lead soprano and titular character was, as always, phenomenal.

 I highly recommend this production of Manon Lescaut.

-Maria

[pippinmariaoperadoodles]

What is this thing?

Good question!

Basically, I will be posting sketches, doodles, and mini-comics here that relate to the Minnesota Night at the Opera events.  These events are where artists and bloggers can preview some of the opera shows and post their sketches and reviews online as a sort of cross-promotional, artsy, wonderful exchange of stuff.  

The first show this season is Manon Lescaut on September 19th, so I’ll see you then!

-Maria