Carl Rosa Opera: The Pirates of Penzance

Saw a fantastic production of The Pirates of Penzance.

I like Musical and Gilbert and Sullivan is great fun - I know this has been out of fashion for some time but maybe it's on its way back!?

This production was fantastic, the costumes, the make-up, great comic timing, the orchestra and most of all the singing!

I think I first saw Gilbert and Sullivan aged 15, as an amateur production done at the local all girls private school (my mother taught physics their). I remember being really impressed - I think they teamed up with local boys private school. This was elite schooling at it best, teenagers doing something quite remarkable.

Today's production was cracking again - I was really impressed with the Carl Rosa Opera company! Mabel (lead soprano) trilled beautifully, a soaring wonderful voice. Samuel was sung by a well-rounded and deeply comfortable voice.

This is sung nearly perfectly by a very talented ensemble, complemented by some excellent individual performers, including two members of the original cast of Phantom of the Opera. Everyone sang well with brilliantly clear diction too, something so very necessary in getting across the full humour and cleverness of the lyrics. Rosie Ashe as pirate wench Ruth was superb, dexterously handling her exposition-heavy lyrics yet still hitting all the right comedic notes; Barry Clark’s Major General and Bruce Graham’s Police Sergeant were both nicely bumptious and Katy Batho impressed with a piercingly clear voice, hitting those top notes with a beautiful sound.

http://www.thepublicreviews.com/pirates-of-penzance-theatre-royal-brighton/

Music Hall - a most capacious form of performance

The following usage of capacious had me reaching for my dictionary:

It [Music Hall] was a most capacious form of performance - people would come up and perform a turn... acting, comedy, song...

I like the idea of free space it conveys!

It also makes me think of one favourite books - Tipping The Velvet by Sarah Waters. This is a wonderful tale of closeted Victorian society. I love the lesbian and gay characters, it is shocking in parts and deeply romantic too.

capacious |kəˈpā sh əs|

adjective

having a lot of space inside; roomy : she rummaged in her capacious handbag.

DERIVATIVES

capaciously |kəˈpeɪʃəsli| adverb

capaciousness |kəˈpeɪʃəsnəs| noun

ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from Latin capax, capac- ‘capable’ + -ious .

Another great tla film: Latter Days

This is a truly amazing gay love story. 100% drama, 100% romantic and 100% gay and so so sweet.

Not only is this a wonderful tail of true love with a very well paced plot but it has a serious side.. it is easier to forget the insanity and sinister side of religion.

I'm not sure why gay and lesbians are attract to spiritual movements? However I will be staying clear of the Mormons:

Having grown up a Mormon and grappled with the church's bigotry towards Blacks (they were not allowed to hold the church's priesthood when I was a member) -- I wasn't aware of the organizations policy of excommunicating gay men and women until after I left the church in 1966 -- (I was 20.) I was stunned when I learned that friends who were gay were excommunicated even after serving on missions. LATTER DAYS exposes the Mormon's persecution of gay members. The film is LONG overdue. It does an excellent job of showing how the two lead males come to terms with one another, while managing to grow up and develop more fully as individuals. LATTER DAYS has great heart, wonderful original music and an added touch of class from Jacqueline Bisset. The film brilliantly tells the story of an individual who leaves behind the confines of organized religion and reclaims his very soul.

62 out of 75 people found the following review useful:
Heartwarming Story; Long Overdue, 22 November 2004

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0345551/usercomments

Demotic Street Language - The Telegraph on the Money?

I stumbled across the following blog post, and while I rarely agree with The Telegraph's view on the world (rather to conservative/establishment-friendly for my taste), this "Telegraph blog post" makes a very interesting point/parallel:

Call me old-fashioned but should the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition in the run-up to an election (or at any other time for that matter) say that people are “gagging for change”? As we all know only too well, Dave has had the advantage of one of the finest educations money can buy. Is it too much to expect that somewhere along the way he may have acquired a vocabulary that would allow him to make a trenchant political point without reaching into the demotic depths?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidhughes/100032397/demotic-dave-cameron-should-mind-his-language-and-remember-kinnock/

I like his usage of the term demotic - 100% correct but a very old fashioned formal term for Street Language.

I think politician should avoid try to be cool or expressing too much emotion, they will need to stay calm and focused under intense pressure, winning the general election is only the beginning not the finish line!

demoticadjectiveKnox picked up her demotic style of writing when she worked for a newspaper in Madison popular, vernacular, colloquial, idiomatic, vulgar, common;informal, everyday, slangy. antonym formal.