An opera based on an '80s remake of a '50s sci-fi classic. Conducted by Placido Domingo. Music by Howard Shore and directed by David Cronenberg, both of whom worked on 1986 classic. Currently playing in Paris and set to hit in Los Angeles in September. Well, that takes care of the what, when and who. All that leaves us is the how and the why why
why? The original story is pretty melodramatic, but opera? Color me ignorant, but I didn't realize until reading the
Guardian's review of
La Mouche (if only it was an opera about
La Bouche) that Broadway wasn't the only place good movies go to be turned into dancing and prancing.
Dancer In The Dark and
Lost Highway were also transformed into operas, and the New York City Opera hopes to give
Brokeback Mountain the same treatment in 2013. But hey, who cares about the source material if the final product is good, right? Well, it doesn't look like
La Mouche is knockin' 'em dead in Paris.
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Idolator
Today's list that's going around some blogs that I read: List the albums you like most from each year that you've been alive. It sounds simple, right? But in making a list like this, you realize things about yourself, like how Aerosmith's peak for me came right around the year I was born, even though I didn't really hear them until many years later. And how 2004 was something of a weak year for my personal canon, while 1989 was a really huge year for it, one where I had to pick between Like A Prayer, Doolittle, Cocked & Loaded, Full Moon Fever, and the album I finally wound up selecting. Anyway, peruse my list after the jump—Anthony made one too—and feel free to pick mine apart/make your own, although I should warn you that it took me a while to do. (I'm usually loath to use Wikipedia as a source, but its lists of album releases were helpful to cross-reference with Amazon, as were the Pazz & Jop rundowns on Robert Christgau's site.) If people enjoy this exercise, maybe we'll do singles lists next week! Or, hell, runners-up lists, since some of these "best" decisions were a lot harder than others.
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"Which rock star's mother-in-law said about him this week? 'He looks like a rat but he's a good father to the kids... But he's a miserable, rat-faced man.' " [
