Category: Music

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Modern Opera for Modern Times!

Event: Les Chansons Macabres

Date/Time: October 31, 2008 at 9:00PM

Location: AvantGarden, 411 Westheimer Rd., Houston, TX 77006

Price: Suggested donation of $10

Opera Vista Presents Les Chansons Macabres Halloween Night

Start your Halloween at AvantGarden with Opera Vista’s Les Chansons Macabres, featuring special guest actor Mischa Hutchings from Nova Arts Project. Come listen to a night of fantastical tales and howling arias. The “night wind” will howl as we “bewitch, bother, and bewilder” you with arias by Menotti, Rogers, and Sondheim, to name a few. Opera Vista performers will include Joe Carl White, Shelley Auer, John Weinel, Kinga Skretkowicz, Michael Walsh, and Misha Penton, with Roger Keele accompanying. Come dressed up: prizes will be awarded for the best costume!

Opera Vista was founded in 2007 with the aim of bringing “modern music to modern audiences”. Led by Artistic Director Viswa Subbaraman, Opera Vista has already made a name for itself with its critically-acclaimed fall productions at Bayou Bend and its annual Opera Festival in May. Opera Vista is a 501(c)3 organization.

I’ll buy tickets for all the members of Congress. They don’t have to be there for the whole show; they could skip the entire first act, if need be (though they’d miss the great Act I finale). As long as they are there to hear the last verse of Lord Mountararat’s song “When Britain Really Ruled the Waves”:

And while the House of Peers withholds
Its legislative hand,
And noble statesmen do not itch
To interfere with matters which
They do not understand,
As bright will shine Great Britain’s rays
As in King George’s glorious days!
As bright will shine Great Britain’s rays
As in King George’s glorious days!

Glorious Return for Lone Star Lyric by David Dow Bentely III, The People’s Critic

If operetta (as diva Beverly Sills famously observed) is “pure whipped cream,” then Houston’s annual Lone Star Lyric Theatre Festival must surely be the cherry on top. […] Bouncing between New York and Houston, [LSL founder Kelli Estes’] youthful sparkle and boundless energy have now propelled Lone Star into a second season scheduled for this June. If the group’s elegant Sneak Preview Gala and fundraiser (held last night at Houston’s Ovations Theatre ) was any indication of the quality to come, readers should get their tickets early.

Click on the link for the whole thing.

[originally from 2.14.2007]
From Café Hayek:

Hmmmm:
What a world we live in. At Midomi, you can hum or sing a few bars of a song and it will find a recording of the song for you along with a bunch of amateur renditions. It’s a great time waster and a way to amaze your kids. It actually works which is marvelous and beautiful, though it may not have your song in the database, yet. Why is it called Midomi? Check out the logo.

(HT: MyDigiMedia)