1/2/2023 0 Comments All time gal meaning![]() ![]() Both sing the aria “Se pietà di me non senti,” an F-sharp-minor beguiler, one of the best arias Handel ever wrote, in opera or oratorio. To hear Leontyne Price, in 1956, go here. To hear Beverly Sills (née Belle Silverman) in 1968, go here. My two favorite sopranos in the role of Cleopatra are Americans: one a Jewish girl from Brooklyn, the other a black girl from Laurel, Mississippi. Thinking of Cleopatra, I think of Shakespeare, sure, but I also think of Handel, and his opera Giulio Cesare (i.e., Julius Caesar). It is a fabulous skewering of a type of political correctness. Last season, Saturday Night Live had a sharp and funny sketch about actors in a game show - a show called “Can I Play That?” Contestants have to decide, “Can I play that particular role?” (The answer is probably no.) To watch the sketch, go here. The fundamental theme of my essay was that identity politics could be the death of art. Look at Liz Taylor in Cleopatra.” I commented that, “quite possibly,” Cleo and Liz looked rather alike - “not that it matters much when you are talking about art.” That’s because one of the Bristol protesters said, “Whitewashing still exists. I “left everything on the field.”Ĭleopatra entered into my essay, as it happens. I poured into my essay everything I think on the subject of identity politics and art. What was their beef? Egyptians and Ethiopians would be played by students who weren’t Egyptian or Ethiopian.Īy caramba, as they say on the streets of Cairo and Addis Ababa. Student protesters there forced the cancellation of a production of Aida (not the opera by Verdi but a musical by Elton John and Tim Rice, which is based on the opera). In 2016, I wrote an essay called “ Killing Aida: A mortal threat to art.” It was sparked by an incident at the University of Bristol, in England. ![]()
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