#Christine Reeves

[simplymariac]

From Season 1, Episode 101 Dark Knight - Nick Knight and Dr. Alyce Hunter. #ForeverKnight #GeraintWynDavies #ChristineReeves

Just having fun with these screenshots. Sony has all the rights to this screenshot set. 😉

[lohstandfound]

!The Poet's Garden au!

The show Jeremy and Christine are in is currently Hadestown because I just like that idea and the red carnations. Trading bouquets of carnations and Brooke always having something prepared for them

They met way before Hadestown through Michael and Rich and have since continued to cross paths with each other in various shows but this is their first major show as leads together and they make a damn good Orpheus and Eurydice because there is something there even though neither will quite admit it yet

[simplyalexk]

Alex Kingston as Ellie Lagden in Hope Springs (2009)

[themnmovieman]

Movie Review ~ Doc of Chucky

Doc of Chucky Synopsis: The ultimate account of the Child’s Play film franchise and Chucky, a horror villain for the ages. With contributions from cast, crew, critics, historians, and experts, as well as clips, photographs, archival documents, behind-the-scenes footage, and more, experience the making-of story that proves you can’t keep a good guy down in a series of films that have created an…

[nextwavefutures]

Young men and the problem with masculinity (Pt 3)

We need to finds new models of masculinity that are better for men’s health and tht women can also value. Otherwise ‘toxic’ and regressive versions of maleness will keep on filling the gap. New post at The Next Wave.

In two previous posts (Part 1 here, and Part 2 here), I have discussed the recent work about divergent political attitudes between young men and young women. The TL:DR version of that: loss of status, and lack of economic opportunity, breeds resentment. But this also has qualitative aspects: what does ‘good masculinity’ look like? —- My starting point here is a long article about masculinity in…

[cutexasxabutton]

|🎭| ❝I Guess- I Guess This Is A Tag Dump???❞ |🎮|

[still-alive-mp3]

Stuff I dislike in the Be More Chill fandom

(This is gonna be a long rant so yeah lmao)

1: Squipemy / Technical Difficulties is a horrible ship, you shouldn't ship it, and it is a PROSHIP.

The amount of people I see excusing it by saying that "the SQUIP is a computer he doesn't have an age!!" "The SQUIP isn't actually Keanu Reeves / Keanu Reeves' age he just looks like him!!" Is just gross

The SQUIP looks like an adult, speaks like an adult, and acts like an ADULT. Shipping him with a teenager is just so disgusting and seeing people ship them and giving lousy excuses makes me want to vomit

Squipemy shippers DNI block me you shouldn’t be allowed in the fandom

2: For the love of god can people PLEASE stop whitewashing Michael in fanart there so much art of him pale white and nobody talks about it!! The day that people stop whitewashing Michael is the day I can rest peacefully

3: Can the BMC fandom stop villainizing Jeremy please please please oh my god. Especially when it comes to that scene right before Michael in the Bathroom and the optic nerve blocking stuff

At the end of Upgrade / Loser Geek Whatever (depending on which production), Jeremy had already gone through tons of manipulation from the SQUIP, which heavily impacted his decisions, which weren’t really of his own volition anymore

Right before the dialogue before Michael in the Bathroom, Jeremy was assaulted (at least almost) by Chloe, causing him to run to the bathroom to avoid confrontation with Jake. During the dialogue with Michael, you can see that Jeremy’s honestly happy to see him, showing once again that he really didn’t want to leave Michael, but the SQUIP made him. However, Michael immediately goes into his dialogue talking about how bad the SQUIP is, and just generally bringing down the tone, making Jeremy increasingly upset, due to this plus what had happened right before this, eventually leading him to ditch Michael again and call him a loser.

TLDR; Can the fandom (especially the Michael defenders) PLEASE try to understand what Jeremy goes through during the musical and understand his actions are not from a place of malice

4: (this is the last take) Can people please stop infantilizing BMC characters

(specifically Jeremy, Michael, Rich, and Christine (Christine and Michael the most))

I know they are still minors, but they are 16-17 years old, there’s no need to act like they would have the maturity level of middle schoolers

Especially when people are like “[Insert character name here] shouldn’t curse!! They’re too innocent!!” And then it’s a character who’s either a late adolescent or a full grown adult

(I’ve seen that said about Christine mostly, which I get she never curses in the musical, but come on she still is 16 she can curse it’s not the end of the world)

Anyways thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

[broadwaydivastournament]

20th Anniversary Nothing Like a Dame Concert, Honoring Marin Mazzie

By sheer coincidence, out of the eight Divas in our tournament to appear in the luminous Nothing Like a Dame concert in 2016, six of them are in this week's round. So, let's talk Women.

Pictured: Marin Mazzie with (L to R) Karen Ziemba, Tonya Pinkins, Judy Kuhn

Held as a benefit for the Actors Fund (now named the Entertainment Community Fund), the Nothing Like a Dame concert specifically went towards the Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative. The Entertainment Community Fund is an organization that provides "human services nationally for people who work in film, theater, television, music, opera, radio and dance." Many of our Divas have served on the board or various committees. Services include health and wellness resources, housing, financial assistant, senior care, etc.

Pictured: Marin Mazzie with (L to R) Donna Murphy, Karen Ziemba, LaChanze, Bebe Neuwirth, Ali Stroker.

Diva Bebe Neuwirth (of next week's polls) directed a lineup of women that included Tonya Pinkins, Judy Kuhn, Donna Murphy, Mary Beth Peil, Marin Mazzie, Karen Ziemba, and LaChanze (also of next week's polls) among many others. Oh, to have been in the room...

Pictured: (1, 2, 3) Donna Murphy, Mary Beth Peil, Marin Mazzie, Karen Ziemba. (4) Bebe Neuwirth, Marin Mazzie, Phyllis Newman, Donna Murphy.

Highlights of the night included the "Marinettes" (Donna, Mary Beth, and Karen) singing a medley of songs including "Wunderbar," "The Greatest Star," and “Wait Till You See Her,”; Judy Kuhn singing "Ring of Keys," and Tonya Pinkins giving a "chilling version of Dianne Reeves’ “Endangered Species.”

Pictured (L to R): Tonya Pinkins, Judy Kuhn, Erin Hill, ???, Phyllis Newman, Donna Murphy, Mary Beth Peil, Marin Mazzie, Karen Ziemba, LaChanze, Christine Ebersole, Julie Halston, Ali Stroker, Bebe Neuwirth.

Since 2016, the Nothing Like a Dame concerts, as far as I can find, have not proceeded. And what are we as a society doing to bring back concerts bursting at the seams with women?

The night ended with Marin Mazzie taking center stage on a little black stool with a field of sunflowers behind her as she sang Kander and Ebb's "But the World Goes Round." The song reached new poignancy for a woman fighting ovarian cancer. Less than two years later, the world stopped, and one of the brightest lights of Broadway went out for good. As the song goes, "and sometimes your heart breaks // With a deafening sound," but for the rest of us, the world really does go round.

(Was this just an excuse to post a lot of pictures of Marin? Maybe...)

Donate to the Entertainment Community Fund

[simplymariac]

From Season 1, Episode 102 Dark Knight: The Second Chapter - Nick Knight & Dr. Alyce Hunter on the phone. #ForeverKnight #GeraintWynDavies #ChristineReeves

Just having fun with these screenshots. Sony has all the rights to this screenshot set. 😉

[viceroyofeden-asks]

To Tobias:

You mentioned your other classmates, was wondering if we could know the full list of them? Also on their status whether they’re dead or not.

(...Goddamnit, now I have to come up with full names for every single one of his classmates.)

Well… I don’t see why not:

Hayden Dernier - Ultimate [INFORMATION REDACTED] (Victim #1)

Christine Dewhurst - Ultimate Novelist (Culprit #1)

Aaron Hudson - Ultimate Geologist (Victim #2)

Bryce Blumenthal - Ultimate Apiarist (which means beekeeper, you should know) (Victim #3)

Lexis Cicero - Ultimate Chessmaster (Culprit #2)

Mercedes Santos - Ultimate Funeral Director (Victim #4)

Jason Howell - Ultimate Guitarist (Culprit #3)

Sadie Hildegarde - Ultimate Psychologist (Victim #5)

Tamera Eardwulf - Ultimate Trackstar (Culprit #4)

Debora Reeves - Ultimate Interior Designer (Victim #6)

Alden Watson - Ultimate Journalist (Culprit #5)

Cedric Durham - Ultimate Botanist (Alive)

Marcel Holt - Ultimate Food Scientist (Alive)

Adrian Nolan - Ultimate Hacker (Alive)

Cara Koskinen - Ultimate Teacher’s Aide (Alive)

Tobias Zollo - Ultimate Comedian (Alive)

Does this suffice?

(Note: Most of the above characters, with the obvious exceptions of Cara and Tobias, are characters from my fangan, Danganronpa: Trial By Media, who have been transferred over here as filler characters. There currently isn’t enough to fill out an entire cast, and the death order you see above is just randomly assigned and has nothing to do with how the death order will actually turn out. Also, all the names in bold are just fake characters I pulled straight outta my ass using a random name generator and whatever talents I could come up with. So please never ask questions retaining to the ones in bold.)

[in-newjersey]

So here are my thoughts on my first time seeing a live BMC production!

Making this non-rebloggable, I am not a real theater critic and I do not want to draw any attention to this actual cast on an anonymous blog to strangers on the internet

For starters, casting!

I respect the variety going on here and the degree of diverging from famous character appearance-tropes. Tiny Latino Jeremy who's as fit as a gymnast and can (and does) do acrobatic spin kicks sometimes? Love it. Plus-size butch-esque Brooke? 10/10. Genderfuckery long-haired Michael who gesticulates with a huge fan through most conversations? Hell yeah. Pink-haired Nirvana-grunge-style trans guy Jake? Now we're talking. Christine a head taller than Jeremy? Awesome.

I will not get too into describing actual real people on here much more than that but in general it was wonderful to see a wide range of character-actor types inhabiting these roles. As someone involved in The Fandom, even though I have frequently expounded upon the mutability of character traits per the text, you do still absorb a general idea of what the characters "look" like; so it was a fun twist to have literally none of the performers fall into those tropes.

I will also say - and this is not a read - that I am no longer going to assume I'm too old to play any of these characters, because I guess that's the magic of community theater lol

On to Thoughts, which I will loosely group by characters:

Rich was fucking awesome. Like I was impressed by the singing skill across the board, but this guy fucking killed it at every turn. I looked at my friend I went with after The Squip Song and we both were like OH OK. Rich also wore mostly KISS T-shirts? Like the shitty glam rock band? But yknow, work. Excellent voice (if casting were a little more 'stereotypical,' he probably would be an excellent Michael). Emotionally, he was on the more explosive side while SQUIPped, melting toward just charmingly cute once in 'real Rich Goranski' mode.

The aforementioned Jake was an interesting take on the character. Definitely leaned more into the kind of douchey side of things, but did at least at one point seem genuinely into Christine (although the actor was very much leaning into the interpretation 'yeah he has multiple interests and he honestly likes them all in the moment but gets bored quickly, and that includes girlfriends'). Is that kind of shitty? Yes. Is that a realistic take on what a rich popular 17 year old might be like? Also yes. Nirvana-fan Jake was not a concept I thought of before but I was down for it (though I discovered later on the cast instagram page that the guy playing Jake said that his version of Jake thinks Nirvana is a clothing brand which, like, galaxy-brain take lol).

THE SQUIP!!!!! Actually cycled through Keanu Reeves costumes, which I loved. Started out in Bill & Ted, then Matrix, then POINT BREAK of all things, before landing on a pretty-impressive-for-the-budget version of the light-up circuitry priest robe thing from the Broadway style. He had the hair and beard pretty close to present-day Keanu too, which made him both line up with the resemblance and seem significantly older than the other characters; voice-wise, this guy was clearly a skilled baritone, which meant his delivery on some of the more rock-style songs was a bit unusual, but not bad. This SQUIP was suave at the right parts but did NOT shy away from being scary: the 'take me inside you' part with Brooke during Upgrade was staged very menacingly with regards to how he was physically moving around/behind Jeremy. The Play was delightfully sinister, leaning HARD into the SQUIP as literally puppeteering everyone: saying their lines and moving his hands like marionnettes throughout, keeping things very creepy and villainous.

On the topic of the play, the fight choreography kicked ass. Mr. Reyes's ALL THE WAY TO BROADWAY rant was delivered while he yanked Jeremy off the ground by his shirtfront and then threw him furiously across the stage, genuinely concerning and upsetting to watch (especially as the SQUIP was miming the same actions and lines behind him, obviously in control of Reyes's body) (I literally said 'oh fuck' out loud when it happened and got a Look from the presumably-grandma in the row ahead lol). The fight choreography during Two Player Game Reprise was also solid: the guy playing Jeremy was FIT and did a lot of impressive acrobatic kicks and such, and the person playing Michael being a lot taller and larger worked well with letting him like bounce off, lift him up for spin kicks, etc.

And in general, I respected how much this production was willing to let certain moments be dark. The Play in general was pretty horror-movie-climax; I also respected that the costuming did indeed look like so-so high school mockups of a modern zombie movie. But the whole number was eerie, SQUIPPED character movements and voices became unnervingly smooth and robotic, and positioning the SQUIP as the puppetmaster in the middle, literally moving the characters around, just sold the whole thing wonderfully. Very appropriately leaning into the horror part of horror-comedy.

Similarly, Do You Wanna Hang? was scary. AS IT SHOULD BE. My friend who came with me compared it favorably to the car scene in the movie 8th Grade, where you're just On Edge the whole time you're watching. The actress playing Chloe did a good job with it, that's an uncomfortable thing to portray but she went for it and it paid off in the moment.

Chloe and Brooke had a fun dynamic: the styles of the costuming/performers did add some interesting dimensions. Chloe was, as usual, pink and perfect and feminine, head-cheerleader vibes; Brooke was short haired and dressed a lot more masculine. Brooke had a very earnest sense of vulnerability to her, and excellent comedic timing during Do You Wanna Ride and The Smartphone Hour, as well as just the minor background-acting moments. They leaned pretty hard into the 'Chloe will take things just because Brooke wanted them, because she likes that Brooke is always a little jealous of her, and thinks that that's friendship' and, like the portrayal of Jake: is that a shitty thing to do? Yes. Is that a realistic thing teenagers might do, especially poisoned by toxic ideas about femininity and power? Also yes.

Which is a good spot to add, the ensemble was small (4) but they were serving it. The band appeared to be octogenarian church volunteers (oh, yeah, this was at a church??? Wesleyan Methodists, so the cool liberal branch of American Christianity) so I will say that with what they had, they were making it work. It would have been served well by a second keyboardist and/or guitarist to do the trumpet parts (it was drums, bass, guitar, and piano). One of the ensemble members, a tall goth-femme person with hot pink hair, played the role of the theremin by doing the melodies in remarkable and ethereal bel canto. And honestly, work.

Jenna Rolan was fun: could belt for the gods, had some pretty-intense Crazy Eyes thing going on that really sold the comedic moments and made her appropriately frightening as the Final Boss in the squipped battle at the end, styled like an early 2000s-lesbian-coded-soft-goth best friend archetype. No notes, 11/10.

The actor playing Mr. Heere/Reyes/Stockboy did a fantastic job of making those three seem separate, and as I mentioned above, really made Mr. Reyes come to life in a dynamic way. Sidenote, this production changed all references to Hobby Lobby to Michaels, which I found both funny and appropriate. Fuck Hobby Lobby, we all hate Hobby Lobby.

Back to characterizations, Christine was sweet and straightforward. Not as quirky or dynamic as Stephanie or a lot of other actresses make her, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Very gentle and smooth voice, she just really likes theater and wants someone to like the real her. They went with ballet-style choreography to introduce her during More Than Survive, which is always a wonderful touch for the way the music swells. There were points where I think a little more creative movement or a wider emotional range might have worked well, but the take on the character was consistent.

I am going to keep that positive thread through the next sections: while I might not have agreed with the interpretation through the text, I do respect going in a starkly different direction to how most productions and fans usually take such things.

I have enormous respect for the performer playing Michael for radically making it their own. The cast bios had pronouns, and Michael's performer was they/she/he, which as a fellow they/she/he who would love to play Michael someday was rad to see. They kept the CREEPS shirt and a hoodie with a lot of patches (albeit a black one with red accents), but that was about it. Michael had light-up cat ear headphones and a huge black fan which he used throughout, alternated between baggy sweatpants or just a floor-length hippy skirt, usually high-heel ankle boots, and some kind of green bathrobe thing for The Pants Song? Characterization, again, respect for making such an iconic character so heavily different. This Michael was not....very emotional. He was usually snippy and sarcastic in a very erudite and matter-of-fact way, at pretty much all points in the show. Not a lot of emotional range going on: this is a Michael who is in some combination of 'doesn't give a shit' and 'not going to let this bother me,' which came off....interesting. The chemistry this created with Jeremy was a starkly different one than we usually see. The original productions - and most since, and the majority of fandom depictions - imagines a Michael and Jeremy who, at their core, love each other a lot. However that manifests of course varies, but you Usually get the impression that (even with a little bit of codependence), these two genuinely love each other and spending time together, which makes moments in the show either heartwarming or devastating to see happen between them.

Not these versions of the characters.

Which didn't make it bad, but it did shake things up. This Michael and Jeremy didn't give deep-love-friendship so much as they gave 'we sat next to each other in 1st grade and don't have other friends. so. I guess we're best friends, huh.'

Which is an INTERESTING and somewhat bleaker, but not unrealistic, take on them. That, sadly, summarizes a lot of friendships, especially at that age and with the sort of vacuum of suburbia on your social sphere (nevermind how a lot of society discourages boys from emotional connection with their friends; if anything, the fact that this Michael was definitely queer might suggest that Jeremy even pulled back emotionally because he didn't want to seem gay or give this Michael the wrong idea). It definitely sells Jeremy feeling lonely, even with his best friend hanging around. Two-Player Game came across a LOT better than I was prepared for - I have waxed about how it's a hard number to pull off - not in spite of, but almost because of this. Like, sure, they've played through this game a million times before, they know every beat, they love it like they love each other, right? even though they seem.....kind of bored. Or at least like they're waiting for something else to happen. College? Girlfriend? Different friends? Just wait two years. Whatever.

To get critical, I will say that this dynamic did not really help Michael in the Bathroom. The fight beforehand and the song itself did.....not really lend themselves to a not-very-emotional friendship between them. The singing was perfect, so not faulting that: it's THE big song of the show, so that's a lot of pressure and the performer had a splendid voice, but the snarky-not-caring-that-much attitude didn't quite do it for me - Michael didn't seem sad or upset so much as pissed off, but still fully keeping it together (despite the lyrics saying otherwise). Tonally, the 'wish I'd offed myself instead' just sounded sarcastic ("wow, SORRY I CARED AT ALL, could've just killed myself for all you seem to care" kind of vibes) THAT SAID, it was consistent with the rest of the characterization, so I admire it as a very specific acting choice. There were also characters on stage - presumably outside the bathroom door, listening in - that turned a good portion of MITB into a comedic number; as I have said before, not my personal take on how that should go, but the audience was laughing along with it! So that's the wonderful mutability of theater.

Strangely enough, this actually made Michael and Jeremy's relationship at the end of the story work out just fine? The SQUIP experience kind of sparked a "wow we really do care about each other, huh" realization from both of them. Again, mad respect for taking such a different approach to such a well-worn character relationship.

So, overall, I am very happy I got to see this. Love to support live theater, love to be surprised by a story that I thought I knew pretty well inside and out, came away with plenty to think and talk about. If you can, go support your local community theater!

[dollecitta]

resources blog curated by yours truly. please do not redistribute my content, copy or claim as your own. please consider liking & reblogging to support me.

♡ currently giffing. hayden christensen in life as a house; kim taeyeon in recent works; jeon jungkook in recent works; queen latifah in last holiday; ♡ gif pack directory.

est. october 2023

♡ full giffing list under the cut. suggestions closed.

alexander koch

andy allo

archie panjabi

arifin putra

ashley judd

ashley newbrough

benicio del toro

choi seungcheol ( in progress )

christine baranski

daniella pineda

debra messing

duckie thot ( suggested )

gabriel basso ( in progress )

hayden christensen ( in progress )

kang hyewon

kayla ewell

kiersey clemons

kim taehyung

kim yugyeom

lalisa manoban

mark tuan

ning yizhuo

nhung hong ( complete )

omar sy

penélope cruz ( in progress )

queen latifah ( in progress )

reeve carney

rosamund pike

yvette monreal

zainab johnson

[opera-ghosts]

D’ALTON, Helen [SHEA, Mary Ellen] (b South Terrace, Cork, c 1850; d 5 Curlew Street, Horsleydown, London 16 March 1893)

'One of the purest contraltos to which the sister isle ever gave birth' (The Standard, 1874).

Irish mezzo-soprano who found success as a ballad singer in the 1870s and 1880s.

Mary Ellen Shea was born in Cork, the daughter of John Shea, Esq., JP (b St John’s, Newfoundland 2 July 1803; d St Anne’s Hill, Blarney, Cork 9 October 1858), a merchant, magistrate and sometime mayor of Cork, and his wife Mary Agnes née Corbett (m 21 April 1836). Shea and his father-in-law, Dan Corbett ‘of South Mall, Cork), were leading lights in the organization of Cork’s National Exhibition of 1852, and Corbett was also known locally as a ‘jovial’ amateur actor and vocalist.

Mrs Shea ‘of Buckingham Place’ gave birth to a son, Henry John Francis on 14 June 1837, another on 24 May 1842, another on 18 July 1843, lost an Edward C (‘fourth son’) 5 October 1844 aged 2 1/2 … but doesn’t seem to have gone to the press with the birth of her ‘?only’ daughter.

Miss Shea studied singing with Mrs Charlotte [Sims] Reeves, and came out, for what seems to have been the first time, under the name of Mlle Hélène D’Alton (an improbable, but Irish high-society, surname), at an Ash Wednesday Concert at Drury Lane, 10 February 1869. She gave ‘Il segreto’, ‘O Rest in the Lord’ and joined the Doria sisters in the Athalie music. 

Later in the season (31 July), she sang at the Crystal Palace, alongside Christine Nilsson, Clarice Sinico, Vernon Rigby and Foli, and was favourably noticed as ‘a young lady with a very pleasing contralto voice who sang touchingly the devotional air ‘O Lord, Thou hast searched me out’ from The Woman of Samaria and ‘Gentle troubadour’. The Morning Post confirmed ‘[she] ‘sang her two airs most beautifully. She has a remarkably touching quality of voice and her style is polished and confident; her voice, a mezzo-soprano of unusual clearness, travelled to the extremity of the transept with brilliant effect’.

Mlle D’Alton was engaged to appear at George Wood’s Saturday Evening Concerts at Exeter Hall in the new year, alongside Reeves, Santley, Foli and Mlles Sinico and Monbelli (‘The Gipsies Home’, Barnett’s ‘Old Familiar Friend’), after which she accompanied Santley, Mlle Sinico and another pupil of Mrs Reeves, Annie Edmonds, to Ireland (‘the Santley concerts’) and on 17 February 1870 made her first professional appearance in her home town (‘The Gipsies' Home’, Levey’s ‘Baby Mine’ and ‘Come Home, My Sailor Boy’, Blumenthal’s ‘When we are parted’, ‘Sainted Mother’ with Miss Edmonds). The reviews paid homage to her late father, and Ireland confirmed: ‘This young lady has a voice of great richness, uncommon compass and fine free tone. She sings with judgement, proves a good education, and excited a genuine admiration. She is likely to be very successful.’ ‘She always sings with truth, has admirable restraint, never exaggerates, and is sure to please’.

Back in London, Miss Helen D’Alton was billed with another young Mrs-Reeves-trained vocalist, the Scottish Jane Allan Stephen, in Sims Reeves’s Benefit concert (18 March), and over the following seasons, the said Miss D’Alton would appear, on frequent occasions, on concert bills in which Reeves was starred, both in London and in the provinces.

In between, she appeared at the Crystal Palace (14 May 1870) with the stars of the Italian opera, at the Glasgow Saturday Evening Concerts (‘Scenes of youth’, ‘Rich are rare were the jewels’, ‘Looking Back’), and made a single Ash Wednesday appearance at the Boosey Ballad Concerts (22 February 1871, ‘The Blind Girl’s Dream’ with ‘genuine feeling and expression’, Hawes’s ‘I’ll speak of thee’ and ‘O’er shepherd’s pipe’ with Santley). She gave her ‘Blind Girl’s Dream’, alongside Reeves and Santley, at Leicester, and, on 29 April 1871, she sang the title-role, alongside Mme Lemmens-Sherrington, Reeves and Patey, in Roeckel’s cantata The Fair Rosamund at the Crystal Palace and, the following year, his The Sea Maidens ('Maiden Muriel'). At Mr Austin’s concert she sang ‘I dreamed I was in heaven’ from Naaman, and she ventured wholly into oratorio with a Messiah with the National Choral Society, the Rossini Stabat Mater at the Covent Garden proms, an Israel in Egypt with Reeves at the Sacred Harmonic Society and in Carter’s Evangeline at the Albert Hall.

The oratorio experience was evidently not wholly convincing. Over the years that followed, Miss D’Alton would appear, on occasion, in oratorio – from The Messiah (‘scarcely seemed equal to the contralto music’, Manchester, 'scarcely powerful enough for so large a hall' Birmingham) to The Light of the World and The Prodigal Son (Manchester, 7 February 1874), Judas Maccabeus at Bristol, Jephtha/Last Judgement at Cardiff  -- in the provinces, but her frequent London engagements were almost entirely in concert, where her evident speciality was modern ballad music. Pieces such as Mme Sainton-Dolby’s ‘He thinks I do not love him’, Sullivan’s ‘Golden Days’, The Distant Shore’, Looking back' and ‘Will He Come?’, Odoardo Barri’s ‘Mizpah’, ‘Love’s Golden Past’ and ‘The Shadow of the Cross’, Virginia Gabriel’s ‘A Shadow’, Gounod’s ‘Oh that we two were maying’, ‘Meeting Again’ by Cotsford Dick or Charles Salaman’s ‘Eva Tual’ and ‘Loved One’ were delivered in her ‘tuneful contralto voice and unobtrusive style’, her ‘excellent contralto voice and unaffected style’, to good effect. Very occasionally an operatic piece – ‘Ah! s’estinto’, 'Araby, dear Araby' or ‘Quando a te lieta’ – would appear alongside the new ballads, and the classic ones ('The Harp  that once through Tara's Halls, 'O, Erin my country', Samuel Lover’s ‘What will you do, love?’, 'John Anderson, my Jo', 'By the sad sea waves'), a little more frequently an item from oratorio (Hiller's 'Lord, whom my immortal soul'), but rarely did Miss D’Alton venture into the world of the dramatic. I spot her, in 1874, singing in a selection from The Bohemian Girl at the Albert Hall, in 1875, during a modest appearance at the Norwich Festival, as a late replacement, she sang in some pieces of a local operetta, The Science of Love, and in 1878 she took part in a concert performance of Il Trovatore at the Royal Aquarium.

Miss D’Alton, in fact, became quite a regular at the Royal Aquarium where, apart from ballads and the ephemeral operatic experience, she also sang several times in the Stabat Mater (alongside the fireworks and freak shows), and she became an equally familiar presence at the promenade concerts staged annually at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. She took part in these ‘proms’ as late as 1887. On several occasions, too, she appeared in the prestigious Boosey Ballad Concerts (‘My Love has gone a sailing’ by Molloy, Linley's ‘Primroses deck the bank's green side’, ‘The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington’), but without becoming a regular participant.

For a number of years, the 'clever and popular young vocalist' went on the road with Sims Reeves, in varying concert party combinations, alongside Gertrude Cave-Ashton, Foli, Agnes Larkcom et al – and again with Edith Wynne – but her name appeared, it seemed, most frequently on the ballad sheet-music which flowed from the various publishers’ lists: Cowen’s ‘The Better Land’, 'Love and Duty' and ‘A Song and a Rose’, Molloy’s ‘The Old Street Lamp’, ‘The Harbour Bar’, Ignace Gibsone’s ‘The Missing Ship’, Roeckel’s ‘Poppies in the Corn’ and 'A Midnight Song', Stephen Adams’s ‘In heart we both are young’, ‘The Children of the City’ and ‘True Hearts’, ‘I cannot forget’, Blumenthal’s ‘The Old, Old Story’ and ‘Lucy Gray’, Moulton’s ‘Beware’ and ‘I love my love’, Fanning’s ‘Something sweet to tell you’, Campana’s ‘Her Faithful Heart’, Milton Wellings’s ‘Young love that slumbers’, Owen Hope’s ‘In Happier Days’, Caroline Lowthian’s ‘Gates of the West’, Malcolm Watson's 'A Winter Story', as an adjunct to Antoinette Sterling on ‘The Lost Chord’ and to Mme Sainton-Dolby on a number of songs, and, latterly, on the songs of Isidore de Lara ('The Garden of Sleep', 'Once and For Ever'). As late as 1889, Miss D’Alton appeared on the bills of the Monday pops, with a new song by Maude Valerie White.

By the middle of the 1880s, however, she was appearing much less in public and, apart from the Covent Garden proms, largely in charity concerts and on fashionable society programmes. By the time, in 1889 (14 August), that she became the wife of Mr Fallon Percy Wightwick MD MRCS LRCP MB, a well-known medical man, she was appearing only a handful of times a season.

Helen D’Alton’ died just a few years after her marriage, and her obituary insisted that she was ‘a few years ago a highly popular contralto vocalist’. Which was more or less true. ‘Tuneful contralto voice and unobtrusive style’ had probably described her better.

It also insisted that she was thirty-eight years of age. Which was not true at all.She (vocalist, aged 20) and widowed mamma (52) can be seen lodging in Salisbury Street, Westminster in 1871 …

[whitney-alysse-young-blog]

HEROES AND ZEROES!!

HEROES

(clockwise: Renee Richards, M.D, Opth, Lili Elbe, Christine Jorgensen, Kayla Autumn Ward, Avery Jackson, Jazz Jennings)

ZEROS

(clockwise: former President Donald Trump, FL Governor Ron DeSantis, GA U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, TX Governor Jim Abbott, MS Governor Tate Reeves, Kid Rock)

[sydneyofalltrades]

BMC swap AU!! I’ve had this lovely idea in my brain for a while now, it’s a full character swap AU and it doesn’t make full sense but here we go!

[Jeremy] Christine Canigula, the dorky loser of Middle Borough. She tries to find a way to fit in but always manages to stick out due to her quirks and ADD

[Michael] Jenna Rolan, who could care less about popularity and fitting in and cares more about technology and old fashion trends. She and Christine bond over their love of vintage fashion and music

[Christine] Jeremy Heere, the romantic theater kid who will talk about theater and how it revolutionized his life and how the evolution of live theater is truly a masterpiece.

[Rich] Chloe Valentine, the popular girl in school who’s nothing but mean, she had a SQUIP since freshman year and convinced Christine to get one herself

[Jake] Brooke Lohst, a girl of so many talents and such few original ideas. She takes a liking to Jeremy until the Halloween party where she just ghosts him and leaves him alone all night

[Brooke] Jake Dillinger, he’s a nice guy with a big heart who got roped into the wrong crowd. Falls for Christine over time and just appreciates her company until she’s caught with Rich at Brooke’s Halloween party

[Chloe] Rich Goranski, more dramatic, more into gossip, more obsessive, he’s just the same as canon but he traps Christine in a bedroom and tries to.. you know.

[Jenna] Michael Mell, Jeremy’s best friend who’s a little too knowing about all that goes around in the school. Christine ends up getting him SQUIPped and he takes the other SQUIPs and gets everyone else SQUIPped

[The SQUIP] Depends on who Christine would admire in this AU, so I’ll leave that up for debate. Could still be Hillary Clinton (Two River) or Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Broadway) or whoever you really want it to be, hell it could still be Keanu Reeves and that would make sense

[lornrocks]

Listen I know it’s been a while but I still refuse to pronounce Constantine the way they do in the Sandman show.

What, do they say “Christine” like “Chris-tie-n” too? “Maga-zie-n”?

Why are we rhyming it with “eye” as in eyeball??

Can’t do it, man. I’m too American. And also if I recall correctly they pronounce it “constant-teen” in the Keanu reeves movie, the (sadly canceled) NBC show with Matt Ryan, on the CW arrowverse shows, and in any animated movies he’s in.

I’m just saying.