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I have a lot to do, so my LJ posting and general procastination is increasing proportionally.
recent amazon purchases i've gotten excited about:
-Chandos Opera in English CDs. Apparently a large reason I don't like opera much, despite being a classical music geek in general, is that it's in random foreign languages I don't understand. Anyway, these are Just Totally Awesome. The best bits are the fast patter-like back-and-forths and the ensembles, which are hard enough to parse in English that my halting Italian and French can't do it, and good luck with Anything in German. And yet they are hysterically funny and I've been missing out on it the whole time! I have Magic Flute and Don Giovanni and as soon as my Amazon rewards comes back I'm gonna get Marriage of Figaro, and then I plan to start in on Wagner.
-Chandos's The Magic Flute gets its own separate bullet because I am in desperate love with it, even though it has as far as I can tell no plot, or more precisely it starts out with a plot and then kind of turns into something else. But. LOVE. Papageno! The Three Nice But Not Terribly Bright Ladies! The Queen of the Night! I am unconvinced by the Sarastro in this recording, however. Oh, the deliciously slimy Monostatos! The "Hm! Hm! Hm! Hm!" quintet! I mean, really, how can you not utterly love a piece that has a bit called "Hm! Hm! Hm! Hm!"?
Also, Tamino's opening scene includes the stage direction "Enter Tamino, chased by a dragon." Awesome.
-Solti's Die Zauberflote, which I do not love to quite the same degree as the Chandos version, because I do not understand German and so I don't actually understand the best bits, but this is probably a better recording, and still, the music just rocks like utter crazy. I mean, Mozart! And Mozart not bound to having to produce random arias (arie?) and recitatives in specific places! And, you know, still, Papageno! And Tamino! Sigh.
-Samson CO1U USB microphone - Recording myself practicing is turning out to be really useful ("I do that? Yuck.") The sound card on my laptop is, well, let's just say, this is not really in its capabilities. I love this microphone, which is basically designed for me: I'm not serious enough that I need, like, a proper preamp/mixer and dedicated microphone, but I need something better than a general podcast thingie, which this is. I have been having problems with it sometimes spazzing at high vocal frequencies ( ~ 1 kHz) which is kind of weird (it should be good up to 14kHz)... I need to play around with it some more, because that really shouldn't happen. Maybe I need a better mounting.
recent amazon purchases i've gotten excited about:
-Chandos Opera in English CDs. Apparently a large reason I don't like opera much, despite being a classical music geek in general, is that it's in random foreign languages I don't understand. Anyway, these are Just Totally Awesome. The best bits are the fast patter-like back-and-forths and the ensembles, which are hard enough to parse in English that my halting Italian and French can't do it, and good luck with Anything in German. And yet they are hysterically funny and I've been missing out on it the whole time! I have Magic Flute and Don Giovanni and as soon as my Amazon rewards comes back I'm gonna get Marriage of Figaro, and then I plan to start in on Wagner.
-Chandos's The Magic Flute gets its own separate bullet because I am in desperate love with it, even though it has as far as I can tell no plot, or more precisely it starts out with a plot and then kind of turns into something else. But. LOVE. Papageno! The Three Nice But Not Terribly Bright Ladies! The Queen of the Night! I am unconvinced by the Sarastro in this recording, however. Oh, the deliciously slimy Monostatos! The "Hm! Hm! Hm! Hm!" quintet! I mean, really, how can you not utterly love a piece that has a bit called "Hm! Hm! Hm! Hm!"?
Also, Tamino's opening scene includes the stage direction "Enter Tamino, chased by a dragon." Awesome.
-Solti's Die Zauberflote, which I do not love to quite the same degree as the Chandos version, because I do not understand German and so I don't actually understand the best bits, but this is probably a better recording, and still, the music just rocks like utter crazy. I mean, Mozart! And Mozart not bound to having to produce random arias (arie?) and recitatives in specific places! And, you know, still, Papageno! And Tamino! Sigh.
-Samson CO1U USB microphone - Recording myself practicing is turning out to be really useful ("I do that? Yuck.") The sound card on my laptop is, well, let's just say, this is not really in its capabilities. I love this microphone, which is basically designed for me: I'm not serious enough that I need, like, a proper preamp/mixer and dedicated microphone, but I need something better than a general podcast thingie, which this is. I have been having problems with it sometimes spazzing at high vocal frequencies ( ~ 1 kHz) which is kind of weird (it should be good up to 14kHz)... I need to play around with it some more, because that really shouldn't happen. Maybe I need a better mounting.
