It’s a Banner day!
Test your musical knowledge of Flag Day favorites with this week’s Classic Ross Amico crossword.
To fill out the puzzle, follow the link and select “solve online” at the bottom of the page. You’ll then be able to type directly into the squares. Once you feel you’ve exhausted the puzzle, you’ll find the solutions by clicking on “Answer Key PDF.”
Earn your stripes, or see see stars at:
https://www.armoredpenguin.com/crossword/Data/2020.06/1406/14063828.520.html
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.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” you’ll be spellbound (I hope) by an hour of musical selections from movies about wizards and sorcerers.
Gandalf and Saruman duke it out in Peter Jackson’s frenetic, yet somehow ponderous adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” films so bloated and poorly paced that anyone who did not read the books probably wondered what all the fuss was about. Its abundant defects didn’t keep the screen trilogy from making over a billion dollars and garnering 30 Academy Award nominations. Three of those were bestowed upon composer Howard Shore. We’ll be sampling from his music to “The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001).
Made for a fraction of the budget, much less self-serious, and arguably way more fun is “The Sword and the Sorcerer” (1982), which holds no pretense to be anything beyond what it is: a schlocky B-movie sword and sandal swashbuckler. However, the composer, David Whitaker, aspired for something greater. Against tremendous time pressures, he turned in a marvelous score, which sounds like Erich Wolfgang Korngold on a shoestring. If this film had been made by George Lucas, Whitaker would be world famous.
After creating one of his greatest scores for Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus,” Alex North had his music for Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” rejected – and not in a nice way. (North didn’t find out about it until the lights went down at the film’s premiere.) Fortunately, the composer was able to salvage the best material for “Dragonslayer” (1981). The plot, about a bumbling sorcerer’s apprentice who faces a seemingly impossible challenge, is serviceable at best, but the dragon may yet be the most amazing committed to film. Also, the score is terrific.
Finally, John Williams kicked off another billion dollar franchise with “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001), which in England was released (as was the book) as “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” Who ever heard of a sorcerer’s stone? I guess the publishers were nervous that Americans would be put off by any association with philosophy.
Prepare to be charmed! It’s music for wizards and sorcerers this week, on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
PHOTO: Saruman vexes Gandalf with the exquisite whiteness of his beard
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/.
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