More than probably i'll be just a rebloger (since i lack talents XD); but since i have wide and varied tastes you will see a lot of variety aroud here.
So far you will find mostly BBC's "Sherlock". And of course some of my men ;)
Other things that may drop by: art, music, weirdness, geekness, fun, other TV shows....etc etc etc
What you won't find here at all: Irene Adler, Avengers, Hiddleston, Elementary. Specially the last two.
My Contributions: Made By me
My Recomendations: Give it a look
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It’s been a while since i posted a recommendation and all things considered (read Benedict’s Star Trek). I thought this one could be fitting and also a bit of a wink ;P
I want to dedicate this recommendation to my dear Deareje, you know why dear ^O^
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(Beware! For those who have not seen the movie this can be called Spoilers XD)
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Borodin. Prince Igor. Polovtsian Dances.
This composition is better know by many by its orchestral version (or better said suffered popularized in many instances…), where the chorus, is cut. In this case we won’t be cutting it since it is what gives us the wink of fun.
Borodin was fascinated with medieval historic Russia and specially those parts of the story with Asian influences and flavour. Yes, what this opera tells happened back then in the XII century, more or less. The topic was suggested to him and his answer was
“Your outline is so complete that everything seems clear to me and suits me perfectly. But will I manage to carry out my own task to the end? Bah! As they say here, ‘He who is afraid of the wolf doesn’t go into the woods!’ So I shall give it a try…”
—Aleksandr Borodin
(Plus fantastic advice right there for all)
He wrote it on and off for eighteen years(he died with it unfinished), because at some points, like this piece, he felt “there was not enough drama”. He had it written, but not orchestrated.
Finally Borodin’s friend Rimsky-Korsakov insisted in having this piece represented and
”’In despair I heaped reproaches on Borodin. He, too, was none too happy. At last, giving up all hope, I offered to help him with the orchestration. Thereupon he came to my house in the evening, bringing with him the hardly touched score of the Polovtsian Dances; and the three of us — he, Anatoly Lyadov, and I — took it apart and began to score it in hot haste. To gain time, we wrote in pencil and not in ink. Thus we sat at work until late at night. The finished sheets of the score Borodin covered with liquid gelatine, to keep our pencil marks intact; and in order to have the sheets dry the sooner, he hung them out like washing on lines in my study. Thus the number was ready and passed on to the copyist. The orchestration of the closing chorus I did almost single-handed…’
Just imagining this scene is hilarious! Who said classic music and opera were serious, measured, calculated and boring?!
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What’s happening here?
Prince Igor and his son have been captured and his captor (yes i’m not mentioning the name yet on purpose) seeing him depressed and wanting to rise his spirits calls into his slaves to dance and sing to them, and what started as a sentimental moment ends up in an orgy of praises to their master, Khan Kontchak. (There, i said it!) And all in eleven minutes.
It is mainly a vibrant dance number with chorus and orchestration. Heavily driven my rhythm, the instrumentation is amazingly clear. Borodin was not really knowledgeable of the rhythms of the Polovtsy, also his movement was against representing explicit ethnicity, preferring representing general melodic influences to link people to the story. He used bright rhythms and tones making those watching really see it was a party and also feel it.
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Borodin himself is quite a surprising and interesting figure.
One of “The Five” of the Russian Nationalist musical movement, he considered himself a “Sunday Composer”. Since his main activity was as that of a chemist and doctor (ex-army surgeon), investigating, teaching and giving lectures, he only composed in his free time.
He was also an active defender of women’s rights. He fought for educational equality and made it happen. Also created the School of medicine for Women in St Petersburg.
Lyrics under cut
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Seriously, these Russian composers, man.
Source: lelutin
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Swan Lake, Op. 20 (Complete) - Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, 1969
I found this 2 1/2 hour long recording of Swan Lake the other day, and I haven’t stopped listening to it since :’)
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Loved singing this opera.
Despite chorus being only in the second act, it’s a brilliant second act for a chorus; or choruses since the main one in our version was reduced and reduced through it, for the different parts of the developement, until in the end we were just 12 persons, 3 men for high and low voices and 3 of us women in the same positions :) Happy to say i made it to the very last 3! (oh my pride i can’t control you sometimes XD)
I’m posting this version, one because it’s the whole opera, two because it shows what happens behind the curtain when the acts change and a bit of how the salutations at the end goes (there is much more going on behind the curtain but to see it all, and know how it really is you need to live it ;) ) and three because i loved singing it despite my four arses and extra bustle ^^
Specially check from 0:43:51 to 1:15:48 It’s the second act, the one with the chorus ^^
*****EDIT****
Had to change the video, this one is older and has worse quality but at least still has backstage and it’s the full opera. Second act in this one 1:06:43 to 1:40:30
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My mobile sucks but here’s a bit of Carmen from last night Opera
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August 22, 1862: Claude Debussy is born.
I love music passionately. And because l love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth — an open-air art, boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art.
Photo reblogged from They're Giving Me an ASBO with 1,948 notes
Zitkala-Sa: A Yankton Sioux woman of Native American and white mixed ancestry. She was well educated and went on to become an accomplished author-she wrote the first Native American opera, The Sun Opera, in 1913. She was also a musician and composer and later went on to work for the reform of Native American policies in the United States.
By Gertrude Käsebier
(1898)
You can listen to excerpts from the opera here.
Source: firsttimeuser
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June 29, 1888: One of the earliest sound recordings - of Handel’s Israel in Egypt - is recorded.
Though Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s phonautograph recordings (which date back to 1860) have since been discovered, George Gouraud’s recording of Handel’s oratorio is still one of the oldest in existence. Because he recorded it a long-ish distance away from the chorus performing, the quality is worse than it might have been, and old age has degraded it even further. The result is a sort of eerie track that sounds mostly like music but dissolves into static by the end. Still, an interesting bit of history. When Gouraud introduced the phonograph to London at a press conference later that year, this was one of his demonstration pieces.
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June 20, 1819: Jacques Offenbach is born.
This German-born Frenchman composed over 100 operas, including Orphée aux enfers, or Orpheus in the Underworld, from which the Infernal Galop - the tune most often associated with the “can-can” - comes from. Offenbach, who worked most prolifically in the 1850s and ’60s, helped popularize the operetta - a lighter and more humanistic (or, in Offenbach’s case, risqué and often satirical) genre of opera. Operettas like La belle Hélène (1864), La vie parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867) and La Périchole (1868), made Offenbach popular with audiences, though apparently Offenbach was dissatisfied with his reputation, and many critics dismissed his works, claiming they would be forgotten with time. In writing arguably his single most famous work, Les contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann), which premiered months after his death, Offenbach hoped to establish a reputation as a composer of serious opera.
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June 11, 1864: Richard Strauss is born.
… my principle is simply that you should let deeds and works speak for you, not words.
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