Anna Nicole Smith channeling Ginger Rogers or Joan Blondell?
Anna Nicole Smith or at least my opinion on the opera has caught the attention of a gentleman who says he is on a remote island in the Yukon. James the cougar emails:
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Hi, Cindy
. . . You really are into this, aren't you? You've pretty well got all the analogous operas in there, but I'm also seeing a touch of the Beggar's Opera and The White Horse Inn, with a bit of Goldiggers of 1933 on the side. This is shaping up to be something that one really ought not to miss.
[Note from Cindy, here's the Youtube of Goldiggers of 1933 with Ginger Rogers]
James says in closing, Forget RuPaul - way OTT for this. I've found you the perfect lead:
OK, so the roots are going to need touching up a bit, but that's easy these days. Now, I'm going to need a finder's fee. Up front, cash in hand . . .
You get what you pay for, I always say, James. But the Beggar's Opera opens with
If poverty be a title to poetry I am sure nobody can dispute mine . . . I own myself of the company of beggars . . .
To which Player responds:
As we live by the muses, it is but gratitude in us to encourage poetical merit wherever we find it. The muses, contrary to all other ladies, pay no distinction to dress and never partially mistake the pertness of embroidery for wit; nor the modesty of want for dullness.
This is from a reader James who says in his profile he is from Bafflin, Vancouver. If you google Baffin, it's basically the Yukon. Canada. We're talking Inuit native Canadians actually above Canada, tusked whales, white water rafting. Sapphires. Diamond exploration. We're talking opera on ice. Almost in Greenland.
I found James' profile at the Telegraph, a UK publication. http://my.telegraph.co.uk/james_wolfe
Actually I also found a beautiful story about an Innuit. He must go from his barren land of Baffin (Bafflin, if you are in James' world) to Quebec City and the world of concrete and pavement, to be treated for tuberculosis. It's a study in overcoming alienation or solitude, says the writer Chris Knight so articulately. So why not a Bafflin opera? The film is called The Necessities of Life.
Who to write it if not James or myself? How about science fiction fantasy opera writer David Scott Marley of the Berkeley Opera? Chris says science fiction often tries to grapple with the reaction of humans to the complete unknown . . . such as Jupiter. And Scott wrote Riot Grrrl on Mars. It's an adaptation into English of Italian Girl in Algiers, which I saw about eight times at SFO.
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Contact the writer at SFOperaExaminer@Yahoo.com
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