Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Wizards Sci-Fi Movies This Friday

Start your weekend with an irascible, grey-bearded necromancer and a half-mad seeker of arcane knowledge.

That’s right, it’s me. I’ll also be talking about Gandalf the Grey and Dr. Hans Reinhardt, Disney’s Captain Nemo in space.

Join me for a Friday double-header:

At 6:00 EDT, it’s “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, featuring superior scores from films about wizards and sorcerers – including “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (Howard Shore), “The Sword and the Sorcerer” (David Whitaker), “Dragonslayer” (Alex North), and “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (John Williams) – on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Then at 7:00 EDT, I’ll be donning Reinhardt scarlet, as Roy Bjellquist and I delve into “The Black Hole” (1979), on the Facebook live-stream series “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.” You’ll find more information on that, when you follow the link.

https://www.facebook.com/events/649274212291005/

It’s a journey that begins where everything ends. Except minutiae.

Open up a cold one, and tag along.

June 12, 2020
Strauss’ “Love of Danae” Rare Opera Online

On Richard Strauss’ birthday, enjoy this production of the rarely-heard opera “Die Liebe der Danae” (“The Love of Danae”), a comedy after Hugo von Hofmannsthal (libretto by Joseph Gregor), steeped in Greek mythology.

The powerful god Jupiter and the lowly donkey driver Midas compete for the love of the beautiful Danae. According to the promotional material, “The story is a Mozartean blend of comedy, romance, and drama on the themes of transformation and the acceptance of life’s changes, all brilliantly illuminated by Strauss’s orchestral mastery.” The production is a collaboration of stage director Kevin Newbury and architect Rafael Viñoly.

True to the mission of Bard SummerScape, this is the first time the opera has ever been staged in New York. The performance took place at Bard College in 2011. The American Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Leon Botstein:

Some background and a brief synopsis of the opera:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Liebe_der_Danae

Unfortunately, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s Bard Music Festival, which was to have focused on Nadia Boulanger and her world, has been postponed until the summer of 2021.

You’ll find more information at the website of Fisher Center at Bard, https://fishercenter.bard.edu/summerscape/.

June 11, 2020
The Black Hole Disney’s Mad Sci-Fi?

What is this I’m watching?

Is it speculative fiction?

A Gothic melodrama?

An all-star disaster flick?

A zombie horror movie?

A retro, 1950s throwback?

A metaphysical mind-trip?

Or just another shameless, post-“Star Wars” cash-grab?

Toss these seemingly disparate elements into Maximilian’s mixer, and you’ll be drinking deep from the craziest smoothie ever!

Join Roy Bjellquist and me tomorrow evening, as once again I will be the guest co-host for “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.” Roy and I will take the plunge into Walt Disney’s WTF intergalactic whirlpool, “The Black Hole” (1979).

“The Black Hole” is a product of Disney’s maddest fever dream ever, a barely sustainable period during which the studio repeatedly girded itself for an icy plunge into relevance, only to get cold feet and yank its creative team back from the brink. This is the same psychotic pattern that yielded such potentially bold gambits as “The Watcher in the Woods,” “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” “Tron,” “The Black Cauldron,” and “The Return to Oz.”

Too violent and scary for kids (to whom the films were marketed), and too compromised for adults, the result is a cabinet of curiosities full of freakish specimens that are neither fish nor fowl. Hard to believe, now that Disney owns the world, but there was actually a precarious decade or more when the studio was more off-the-charts than Hans Reinhardt’s “Cygnus.”

I hope you’ll join us for another lively discussion, in many ways launching off of last week’s autopsy of “Starcrash” (1978). John Barry wrote the music for both.

“Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner” will be live-streamed this Friday at 7 p.m. EDT. For more information, follow the link.

https://www.facebook.com/events/649274212291005/

PLEASE NOTE: On Sunday, Roy’s guest will be Nick Tate, who will return to share more behind-the-scenes stories about his time on the classic TV series “Space: 1999.” Sunday’s show will air at a special time, 4 p.m. EDT.

June 11, 2020
Strauss’ Lasting Message of Love & Music

“Our future lies in art, especially in music. In times when spiritual goods are rarer than material ones, and egotism, envy and hatred govern the world, music will do much to re-establish love among mankind.”

– Richard Strauss

This is the last music Strauss ever conducted, as part of his 85th birthday celebration. He also stipulated that the music be performed at his funeral. On that occasion, a 36 year-old Georg Solti conducted, and the three singers, in turn, broke down, overcome by emotion. Its message is, simultaneously, one of valediction and renewal. In a performance like this is, it can be almost unbearably poignant.

June 11, 2020
Richard Strauss Documentary Birthday Tribute

Happy birthday, Richard Strauss! Fans of the composer will enjoy this two-hour documentary I found on YouTube, featuring commentary by prominent musicians, interviews with people who actually KNEW him, narration by Sir John Gielgud, and, not least of all, footage of Strauss himself. Strauss described himself as “a first-rate second-class composer.” He certainly lived a remarkable life.

June 11, 2020

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