[lit-ideas] discuss

  • From: palma <palma@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 04:39:26 -0400 (EDT)

'Clubbable assertions about ordinary public language use can't break in on our 'sessions of sweet silent thought' to tell us that we are nto really doing what we think we're doing, not really thinking what we we're thinking. To suppose taht tey can is to make the great Wittgensteinina (or 'Wittgensteinian') mistake abotu teh nature of language and thought and metaphysics, the career swallowing mistake that makes it look (for example) as if a word like 'pain' can't be what it so simply and obvioulsy is - a word for a publicly unobesrvable or 'private' sensation, a word that picks out and means the private sensation considered just as such, i.e. entirely independently of any of its behavioural or other publicly observable causes and effects."


Strawson, SELVES (oxford, 2010)




On Mon, 27 Sep 2010, Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx wrote:

It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings
Solo and Duet
Taste: Good and Bad

In a message dated 9/26/2010  9:19:23 A.M. Coordinated Universal Time,
palma@xxxxxxxx writes:
to opera  musings, on which, while displaying
exceedingly bad taste, at least you talk  about a subject

-----

Possibly, for Kant, the idea of 'bad taste'  is inconclusive. In an
article, I argue that if the idea of 'bad taste' is  inconclusive, so is the 
idea
of 'good taste'.

Palma argues that my taste  in opera is bad. I agree!

-------- Opera is possible an Italian  invention. It was invented in
Firenze. The idea was to set to music the  tragedies of Ovid's Metamorphoses. 
One
problem they soon found about this is  that "Metamorphoses" contains no
tragedies.

The first opera 'ever' was  once called "Dafne". In Greek, "daphne" means
'laurel'. The 'opera' deals with  the rather idiotic story of this girl who
(in the proceedings of Apollo wanted  to rape her) is transformed into a
'laurel'.

"Opera" is NEVER used by  Italians. It is an expression used by what
Italians call "furriners". In  Italian, 'opera' means 'piece of work'.

The terms the Italians use are  other: 'melodramma' (In Latin it was
'drama', but the Italians multiply the 'm'  there), or 'dramma per musica', or
'azione tragica', or other stuff. They  usually refer to 'opera houses' as
'teatro lirico' --.

---- In parts  OTHER than Italy there are so called "Italian opera houses".
In Paris (Parigi,  as the Italians call it), there were two main "Italian
opera houses". One was  off the Boulevard des Italiens -- and it's the
current Opera Comique. But the  Italians left the building in 1840, and occupied
ANOTHER theatre, which is also  referred to as "Italian Opera". So beware.

---- My favourite Italian  opera composer is Bellini. I believe in
bel-canto tenor writing, and Bellini  supplied it. Donizetti is just as genial, 
but
his genius was too broad for me to  identify (he wrote "Don Pasquale" and
many other operas, whereas Bellini stuck  to a few, and so he needs more
publicity).

The other three composers that  make up for the '5 Italian masters of
opera' are Rossini (but only a FEW of his  'hits' have remained: one: "Ecco,
ridente in cielo", from Barbiere di Siviglia),  Verdi, of course, and Puccini,
who wrote 12 operas.

Mussolini used to say  that Wagner was a better composer than Puccini. But
his son (Mussolini's, not  Puccini's, or Wagner's) used to say that his
father (Benito) would often be seen  asleep during a Wagner opera. So you never
know.

Tomorrow is the opening  of the season at the Met in New York, with Das
Rheingold. This opened in Venezia  in 1883, as "L'oro del Reno". The Italians
were then pretty incapable of  digesting Wagner in _German_ (or "Deutsche").

Oddly, Wagner was the  responsible for the closure of the Royal Italian
Opera House in London. The  impresario who ran it approached Wagner with the
request to have his opera sung  in London in Italian. Wagner refused. The rest
is history: they staged the opera  in the vernacular (German) and opera was
never the same in London. They started  to stage operas other than in
Italian.

------ In Italy it is different.  Opera started as a courtly entertainment
for the Medicis of Firenze. Although  Peri was Roman by birth. After
Firenze, Mantova was another important centre,  with Monteverdi. To some 
(including
me) the real decay with opera (who had  started in 1600, with "Dafne") was
1635, when the first opera opened in  Venezia.

In Venezia, for the first time, people were 'charged' to attend  an opera.
The result was that the paying audience later thought they had a right  to
decide about 'taste'. And what is worse, the typical Italian opera composer
(e.g. Verdi) will argue that if the paying audience says an opera is BAD,
then  it IS bad.

Etc.

Kant possibly didn't like  opera.

Speranza

-----

It is a perception of Grand  Opera, typically overweight sopranos, and
perhaps Brünnhilda's final arias from  Die Walküre or Götterdämmerung in
particular, from an American working class  cultural perspective of the early 
20th
century.

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/begin/read__>sig.file: postal address
palma
University of KwaZulu-Natal Philosophy
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Tel off: [+27] 031 2601591 (sec: Mrs. Yolanda Hordyk) [+27] 031-2602292
Fax [+27] 031-2603031
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EMAIL: palma@xxxxxxxxxx

MY OFFICE IS A290@Mtb



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  Ratio, enim, nisi judex universalis esse deberet, frustra singulis datur.

  [ _Quaestiones Naturales_, Adelard of Bath ]



Signora granda, testa che massa
massa ne passa, che quasi schissa,
Dia dei sostegni de cese e palassi
Dia de le taje che su ne tien fissi
Dia de le onde che le ne fa grassi,
ne ingrassa de ogni grassia, Dia Venessia -

aàh Venessia aàh Venàssia aàh Venùsia

Andrea Zanzotto, Filò, (Sezione: Recitativo Veneziano)

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