The soundtrack of our lives
By Old Grumpy Guy on September 23, 2010 at 7:30 PM in Current Affairs, OldGrumpyGuy
I believe that a society’s musical soundtrack is a good indicator of its cultural health. While a lot of good and exciting music can still be heard in some of the better movies, I am depressed by the banality of most of the music being pumped out by radio stations and also on Broadway. Its banality is on a par with Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton with a lot of aggression thrown in. And it’s not just nostalgia for “the good old days” that makes me feel this way. It’s about human values.
Apart from a very few Public Radio stations, you hear very little music from the great composers of the past. “Narrowcasting” in radio means that radio stations stick to a very narrow playlist. Yet when the general public is given the chance to hear the great classics, the results can be amazing. One example of this was during the soccer World Cup in the 1990. British television adopted Luciano Pavarotti’s version of “Nessun Dorma” as their theme for the world cup coverage and it became the most often played football anthem for the next 18 years. It also reached number one on the pop charts.
Which just shows what a little exposure to the classics can do.
I am now glad to say that I have become the center of an international initiative that aims to bring the music of the great classical composers to a wider audience through a series of stage musicals designed to appeal to a wide demographic. I have been working closely with Opera Manhattan in New York and the theater department at Ashland Community and Technical College in Kentucky in developing four new shows that feature the music of Mozart, Beethoven and many other classical composers, as well as Gilbert and Sullivan. These works are also being promoted in England, Ireland, Australia, Germany and Japan.
“Snow White and The vil Queen”, which I have just finished recording in Kentucky (scenes from which are in the accompanying video) has generated a lot of interest and it was great to see the enthusiasm with which this cross-section of the community (ranging in age from 14 to over 60) embraced the music.
“The show is hilarious, creepy, brilliant, with great characters and great lyrics. Beethoven’s music works so well with the libretto,” says Lindsay Saltsman Taylor (no relation) who sings the role of Malexandria (the Evil Queen) on the CD recording of the show.
The show will open with a production by Opera Manhattan near Times Square in New York in February and my German agent is hiring the country’s top opera translator to do the German translation (see http://att-agentur.de/_temp/_pages/newsletter.php).
The musicals are all based on well known stories and are sung in English.Three of four new works have so far been completed – “The Marsh King’s Daughter”, based on the Hans Christian Anderson story with music by Mozart, “Snow White and The Evil Queen” with music by Beethoven, and “The Corporate Pirate of Penzance”, a modern story based on the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.
I am now half-way through a fourth new musical, based on the Cinderella story and featuring works by a variety of classical composers as well as songs, with input from Professor Edward Figgins, Associate Professor of Theatre and Communications and Director of Theater at Ashland.
Each show has a totally revamped story. For example, the Snow White musical borrows elements from different traditional fairy tales – including The Emperor’s New Clothes” and “The Briar Rose” – and gives a bigger role to he Evil Queen, who steals the show with her villainous ways and songs like “So Insipid” and “Snow White Must Die!”. Instead of a “Mirror Mirror on the wall”, she has a personal stylist, Cedric the Hairdresser, who acts as her vanity mirror.
In the Cinderella story, the fairy godmother is replaced by a talent scout who gives Cinderella a makeover for a reality show. She is then taken to a ball where she meets Prince Nicholas, who is smitten by her. But Cinderella is disturbed by his obsession with a glass slipper and she ends up with a courtier who rescues her after she is sold by her stepmother to slave traders.
My inspiration for these shows arises partly from the fact that while I love a lot of operatic music, I have never been a great fan of opera in general. Half of the reason is that they are usually based on obscure stories and are sung in languages I don’t understand. For example, take Mozart’s most popular opera, the Magic Flute. It’s based on an obscure story rooted in 18th Century German Masonic mythology. I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to relate to 18th Century German Masonic mythology. Particularly if I don’t understand the language.
The other half of the reason is that opera in general tends to have one or two good numbers while the rest of the music is not all that inspiring. Particularly recitative. I have always hated recitative – where they sing dialogue in a very mannered and, to me, rather boring way.
I have long thought how wonderful it would be to have an opera packed with some of the great composers’ most beautiful and memorable pieces, so I decided to have a go at it myself. I was then greatly encouraged by the reactions I got from Opera Manhattan, Professor Figgins and my British publisher Stagescripts UK (who will be promoting the works in Britain and Ireland) and my German and Australian agents.
by Ronald Scott
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