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I have tickets for Oklahoma! at the Lyric Opera in Chicago in May!!! WOOHOO!!! I'm super, super excited; it looks like a pretty awesome production, they're using the original orchestrations and Agnes deMille choreography, and real ballet dancers for the Dream Ballet, and the cast is amazing: Ashley Brown is playing Laurey, and Curly is played by JOHN CUDIA. *SQUEE!!!* One of my Favorite Phantoms Ever, mind you. His voice is so beautiful, I think he sings the best 'Music of the Night' I've ever heard. (Well, it's a toss up between him and Howard McGillin, sometimes you feel like a tenor, sometimes you feel like a baritone... how can you choose between perfect and perfect?) So I'm just keeling over at the prospect of actually hearing him live, especially since Oklahoma! is one of the more gorgeous scores in existence. C'mon, that voice singing 'Oh What A Beautiful Mornin'?' or 'People Will Say We're in Love"? Yes, please! (And that's him in my icon, by the by, with the equally awesome Jennifer Hope Wills. That photo always makes me giggle!)
(In the back of my mind I'm horribly and terribly afraid that something will come up and prevent me from going though, since last time I had tickets for something out-of-town, my car broke down beforehand, and I had to miss it. I'm trying not to worry until it happens though, nor to worry about the prospect of staying at a hotel in one of the worst cities for bedbugs in the country [insert screams of terror here], because if a horrible disaster happens, there'll be plenty of time to tear my hair out afterward. For now, I'll try to focus on the awesomeness. And to figure out what to wear, since Lyric Opera = ritzy. I think the pearls need to get busted out for this one. Heehee!)
In TV viewing news, I can't believe American Experience is finally doing The Abolitionists! It's long, long overdue, if you ask me. Such an important chapter in American history that shouldn't be overlooked. And Civil War reenactors can only do so much! I'm not even technically 'the abolitionist' of my group, but as 'the women's right's reformer' much of what I talk about is inextricably bound up with abolitionism, because the two issues were very closely linked before the Civil War. The stories of people in both struggles have interested me since I was a child, and as someone who cares about these issues not just in the past, but as they relate to the progress toward equality in the world even today, I think it's so important that we move toward perceiving the fight for civil rights for women and minorities not as just 'women's history' or 'black history' but as mainstream AMERICAN history, pure and simple. While I do wish this documentary were a little bit more inclusive, since the casual viewer will probably get the impression that William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass were the only abolitionsts out there from this show, nonetheless, the very fact that it's on PBS at all will at least get people interested to hopefully learn more. (And they'll be shocked to learn that Garrison wasn't the zen-like soft-spoken gentle soul he's portrayed as here. Seriously, who cast this thing?? Anyone who's read any of Garrison's writing would know he wasn't like that! But at least he gets more airtime than Sarah and Angelina Grimke. It's like "we better stuff some Token!Women in there! But downplay them, 'cuz you know, they were into that pesky feminism!") We've still got a long way to go, but if people in the 19th century could hang in there and fight and win in the face of such unbelievable opposition, so can we. :)
(In the back of my mind I'm horribly and terribly afraid that something will come up and prevent me from going though, since last time I had tickets for something out-of-town, my car broke down beforehand, and I had to miss it. I'm trying not to worry until it happens though, nor to worry about the prospect of staying at a hotel in one of the worst cities for bedbugs in the country [insert screams of terror here], because if a horrible disaster happens, there'll be plenty of time to tear my hair out afterward. For now, I'll try to focus on the awesomeness. And to figure out what to wear, since Lyric Opera = ritzy. I think the pearls need to get busted out for this one. Heehee!)
In TV viewing news, I can't believe American Experience is finally doing The Abolitionists! It's long, long overdue, if you ask me. Such an important chapter in American history that shouldn't be overlooked. And Civil War reenactors can only do so much! I'm not even technically 'the abolitionist' of my group, but as 'the women's right's reformer' much of what I talk about is inextricably bound up with abolitionism, because the two issues were very closely linked before the Civil War. The stories of people in both struggles have interested me since I was a child, and as someone who cares about these issues not just in the past, but as they relate to the progress toward equality in the world even today, I think it's so important that we move toward perceiving the fight for civil rights for women and minorities not as just 'women's history' or 'black history' but as mainstream AMERICAN history, pure and simple. While I do wish this documentary were a little bit more inclusive, since the casual viewer will probably get the impression that William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass were the only abolitionsts out there from this show, nonetheless, the very fact that it's on PBS at all will at least get people interested to hopefully learn more. (And they'll be shocked to learn that Garrison wasn't the zen-like soft-spoken gentle soul he's portrayed as here. Seriously, who cast this thing?? Anyone who's read any of Garrison's writing would know he wasn't like that! But at least he gets more airtime than Sarah and Angelina Grimke. It's like "we better stuff some Token!Women in there! But downplay them, 'cuz you know, they were into that pesky feminism!") We've still got a long way to go, but if people in the 19th century could hang in there and fight and win in the face of such unbelievable opposition, so can we. :)
