#zerbinetta

[opera-ghosts]

November 18. 1891 the Hungarian Soprano Maria Ivogün (1891-1987) was born. She was well known for Mozart and a favorite Soprano from Richard Strauss. Here we see two documents from her. A original letter she send to the Steinway and Sons 1922. The photo shows Ivogün as Zerbinetta and is signed by herself and the Greek Mezzo-Soprano Alexandra Trianti (1901-1977). The Music-Hall in Athen is named Alexandra Trianti Hall. A rare double autograph. Take a look on the biography from Maria Ivogün.

[youtubelog]

Sumi Jo - R.Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos - Zerbinetta

정말 감탄을 금할 수 없음

[kirbarts]

flcl inspired Zerbinetta from @divinecommandtheory

[peppermint-chocolate-cherries]

Earlier this evening, I had a wild thought that prompted some research on my end.

Out of all the operas I have bookmarked on my Spotify account, do any of them pass the Bechdel test? It's extremely rare to have women in an opera NOT talk about men, after all.

I pulled the operas from my favourited albums list on Spotify, and analyzed each below the cut. Some have grey areas that can be debated, others are absolute failures, and there's a surprising one that might pass with flying colours.

Bizet - Carmen

Failure on multiple accounts. First, the only time Micaëla and Carmen interact involves pleading with Don Jose to go home to his mother. Second, while the conversations with Mercédès and Frasquita do involve a bit of scheming for the thievery, it’s still about seducing men. Also, the fortune-telling scene has all three of their fates tied to men, so that fails too.

Donizetti - L’Elisir D’Amore

This is a newer opera on my playlist, so I haven’t had the chance to fully study it, but off the top of my head it fails the test. Aside from telling the tale of Tristan and Isolde at the beginning, and partaking in the duet for the wedding party later, I can’t recall Adina directly talking to any other women.

Donizetti - Lucia di Lammermoor

Lucia’s one substantial conversation with Alisa is in the first act, where Lucia tells her the ghost story behind a previous woman who fell in love with a Ravenswood man. Alisa tells her this is an omen to give up her relationship with Edgardo, but Lucia remains hopeful. This doesn’t pass the test.

Mozart - Cosi Fan Tutte

To be completely fair, the two sisters don’t cross paths on who they each love, which is very reasonable of them. However, they spend the entire plot adoring their beloved, weeping over their beloveds, and eventually letting other men win their hearts. Despina convincing them to sleep around just locks in the fail.

Mozart - Don Giovanni

All three women are seduced and/or sexually assaulted by the titular character, and join forces to hold him accountable for his misdeeds. Definitely doesn’t pass.

Mozart - Le Nozze di Figaro

This is debatable, since there are moments while Susanna and Rosina are scheming that they don’t directly talk about the men. However, all the schemes in this opera are about telling the Count to fuck off and let Figaro and Susanna get married and properly consummate it too. The interactions with Marcellina and Barbarina don’t give much else to work with either, and the whole Cherubino plotline ruins any other moments. I say fail, but a deep dive into the libretto could find something small to work with.

Puccini - Tosca

Tosca has no other women to talk to, it’s just her and her drama-queen woes while an evil police chief tries to take her from her beloved painter, who she suspects briefly is cheating on him. Tosca fails the test.

Puccini - Turandot

Turandot and Liu interact in one (1) scene, and it’s Liu convincing Turandot to give her heart to Calaf like she has. Another fail.

Rossini - Il Barbiere di Siviglia

There’s only the two women in the opera, and the only time they sing together is to talk about the troubles Lindoro (aka the Count) is causing in the house. Another fail.

Rossini - La Cenerentola

Perhaps the very ending of the opera counts, since the two sisters are begging for Angelina’s forgiveness after treating her so horribly. Then again, they’re forced to do this after being ridiculed for their vanity in trying to get the Prince to marry them instead, so I don’t think it counts. Another fail.

Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos

This one is very debatable, depending on which act is being looked at. In the prologue, the two actresses are being drama queens and contending over stage time, and the men are staying out of it for the most part. On stage during the play, Zerbinetta is telling Ariadne to get over Theseus (who is the absolute worst) and find romance with other men like she does.

Since the play is clearly an act, and the prologue is what they’re actually like behind the scenes, I’ll give favour to the prologue and let it pass.

Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier

Marie Therese and Sophie only finally meet in the third act, and all they talk about are Baron Ochs and Octavian. Most of the other women with short lines in the opera all have issues surrounding men.

There might be a possible exception in our introduction to Valzacchi and Annina, since they are trying to convince Marie Therese to invest in speculation and buy their scandal sheets. Annina does get involved in the subplots and scheming in the rest of the story, and has a task to fulfill in each of the three acts, so we might have a pass here after all.

Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin

There are two parts of this opera where there isn’t just chatter about Onegin. The first is the very beginning, where we learn about Tatyana’s and Olga’s temperaments before the men can even walk on stage. The second is debatable, it’s where Tatyana is asking Filipyevna what it’s like to be in love (without directly mentioning Onegin just yet), and Filipyevna thinks she’s going crazy and sprinkles her with holy water. I’ll give it a pass.

Verdi - Aida

Absolute 100% fail. Even in the conversations where Radames is not yet directly mentioned, Amneris is plotting to make Aida reveal that she’s in love with him.

Verdi - La Traviata

There’s a few passing interactions in this. In the first act, before Violetta and Alfredo get together, she does interact with Flora at the party without mentioning any men. In the second and third acts, Annina is taking care of other matters for her, only mentioning Alfredo when it matters.

Verdi - Macbeth

Lady Macbeth doesn’t directly talk to any other women in this play, not even at the banquet where Banquo’s ghost shows up. The only other woman who really gets to speak is the nurse, who is with the doctor observing the sleepwalking scene where Lady Macbeth reveals that she’s been behind several murders. This is a fail.

Wagner - Die Walkure

Out of all the operas and composers on this list, how the fuck is it Wagner whose opera might rank highest in this test??

Brünnhilde and her Valkyrie sisters do not talk about specific men at all, apart from Wotan who is looking to punish her disobedience. The Valkyrie are singing about their exploits, in finding soldiers to bring to Valhalla. Brunhilde pleads for their help in protecting the pregnant Sieglinde.

Technically, this is all debatable, since Wotan is the reason the Valkyrie exist and who these soldiers brought to Valhalla will serve. Brünnhilde is protecting Sieglinde because the unborn child will be the future hero of this entire four-opera saga that Wotan is already a primary actor in.

A plus in favour of passing the Bechdel test is that Brünnhilde’s punishment is to no longer be a Valkyrie and to be an obedient wife to a man, which is a horrifying concept to the Valkyrie.

Really, the context for the entire third act is “I disobeyed the Warfather, help me get this pregnant woman to safety before he can have her killed too”. It’s still about a man, but it’s a vastly different context than all the romance on the rest of this list, which is why I will give it a pass.

[werewolvesandaccordions]

Strauss – Overture for the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos (1912) I keep coming back to Richard Strauss’ less ‘popular’ operas. During his lifetime many of them were somewhat dismissed for their ‘conservative’ writing. It seems that Strauss was going into a more jarring and angst ridden Modernism with his operas Salome (1905) and Elektra (1908), but then betrayed that direction with the very gushy romantic Rosenkavalier (1910). I think this lower opinion of Strauss has more to do with the time he lived in rather than the music itself. Not to mention that this ‘heavy/lighthearted’ florid style continued through both World Wars. It’s hard for me not to love his music because of it’s unusual mix of being hyper-romantic and also clear and easy to follow. What Strauss did was the seemingly impossible task of synthesizing Wagner (free floating harmonies, thick orchestral textures, and long scale structure) with Mozart (clarity, grace, lyricism, and more grounded functioning tonality). This is the opening of Strauss’ comic opera Ariadne auf Naxos. The confusing title for this post is due to the opera’s structure; It is an opera within an opera. The opera is in two parts, first part is the prologue which gives us the backstory where a composer has been hired to stage one of his operas at some very super rich Viennese man’s house. He is deeply offended to learn that the patron has also hired a burlesque dance troop to perform after his opera. Offended because (and I’m pretty sure Strauss is satirizing the Romantic-minded young artist who takes his own work too seriously) his opera, Ariadne of Naxos, is supposed to be a super serious tragedy and having a burlesque dance afterward shows how the patron and audience don’t care that much for ‘serious’ art, and may even look forward to the half naked women more than the Grecian music-drama. The opera company and dance company argue over who gets to play first. The situation gets worse when the patron’s butler informs everyone that his dinner party ended up going later than expected, and since he’s paid for both acts already and wants them to perform, he decided he wants the opera and the burlesque to happen at the same time. The composer is angry but his teacher encourages him to comply. And the lead of the burlesque show, a risqué comedian named Zerbinetta, charms him into changing the opera to include scenes for her. The second part is the opera Ariadne of Naxos, where Ariadne has been abandoned on the isle of Naxos by her former lover and hero Theseus. Zerbinetta and other nymphs (the burlesque dancers) try to sing and cheer Ariadne up but they can’t get her out of her depression. Zerbinetta tells her the best way to get over one man is to find another, and encourages her to flirt with a clown Harlequin. But then a stranger comes to the island, who turns out to be Bacchus the god of wine, chaos, and ‘hedonism’. Ariadne and Bacchus fall in love, the end. Despite how this opera is somewhat minuscule (in comparison to all opera ever, let alone Strauss’), it is the genius combination of Wagner (a ‘super-serious’ philosophical music-drama based on classical antiquity where love transfigures the soul), Mozart (lighthearted comedy, flirting between men and women who don’t understand each other, and an optimistic idealization of a classical pastorale) and Strauss (a metafictional story about an opera within the opera where characters discuss the nature of opera and relationship between artist and audience, the kinds of themes that would be best exemplified in Capriccio). But really the only reason I’m sharing this is because the main melody is stuck in my head, the perfect Straussian melody; optimistic and upbeat, goofy-sounding accidentals, very sentimental writing based on subtle diatonic dissonances, and coming back again and again in different waves of great orchestral writing.

mikrokosmos: Strauss – Overture for the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos (1912) I keep coming back to Richard Strauss’ less ‘popular’ operas. During his lifetime many of them were somewhat dismissed for their ‘conservative’ writing. It seems that Strauss was going into a more jarring and angst ridden Modernism with his operas Salome (1905) and…

[tinas-art]

Strauss – Overture for the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos (1912) I keep coming back to Richard Strauss’ less ‘popular’ operas. During his lifetime many of them were somewhat dismissed for their ‘conservative’ writing. It seems that Strauss was going into a more jarring and angst ridden Modernism with his operas Salome (1905) and Elektra (1908), but then betrayed that direction with the very gushy romantic Rosenkavalier (1910). I think this lower opinion of Strauss has more to do with the time he lived in rather than the music itself. Not to mention that this ‘heavy/lighthearted’ florid style continued through both World Wars. It’s hard for me not to love his music because of it’s unusual mix of being hyper-romantic and also clear and easy to follow. What Strauss did was the seemingly impossible task of synthesizing Wagner (free floating harmonies, thick orchestral textures, and long scale structure) with Mozart (clarity, grace, lyricism, and more grounded functioning tonality). This is the opening of Strauss’ comic opera Ariadne auf Naxos. The confusing title for this post is due to the opera’s structure; It is an opera within an opera. The opera is in two parts, first part is the prologue which gives us the backstory where a composer has been hired to stage one of his operas at some very super rich Viennese man’s house. He is deeply offended to learn that the patron has also hired a burlesque dance troop to perform after his opera. Offended because (and I’m pretty sure Strauss is satirizing the Romantic-minded young artist who takes his own work too seriously) his opera, Ariadne of Naxos, is supposed to be a super serious tragedy and having a burlesque dance afterward shows how the patron and audience don’t care that much for ‘serious’ art, and may even look forward to the half naked women more than the Grecian music-drama. The opera company and dance company argue over who gets to play first. The situation gets worse when the patron’s butler informs everyone that his dinner party ended up going later than expected, and since he’s paid for both acts already and wants them to perform, he decided he wants the opera and the burlesque to happen at the same time. The composer is angry but his teacher encourages him to comply. And the lead of the burlesque show, a risqué comedian named Zerbinetta, charms him into changing the opera to include scenes for her. The second part is the opera Ariadne of Naxos, where Ariadne has been abandoned on the isle of Naxos by her former lover and hero Theseus. Zerbinetta and other nymphs (the burlesque dancers) try to sing and cheer Ariadne up but they can’t get her out of her depression. Zerbinetta tells her the best way to get over one man is to find another, and encourages her to flirt with a clown Harlequin. But then a stranger comes to the island, who turns out to be Bacchus the god of wine, chaos, and ‘hedonism’. Ariadne and Bacchus fall in love, the end. Despite how this opera is somewhat minuscule (in comparison to all opera ever, let alone Strauss’), it is the genius combination of Wagner (a ‘super-serious’ philosophical music-drama based on classical antiquity where love transfigures the soul), Mozart (lighthearted comedy, flirting between men and women who don’t understand each other, and an optimistic idealization of a classical pastorale) and Strauss (a metafictional story about an opera within the opera where characters discuss the nature of opera and relationship between artist and audience, the kinds of themes that would be best exemplified in Capriccio). But really the only reason I’m sharing this is because the main melody is stuck in my head, the perfect Straussian melody; optimistic and upbeat, goofy-sounding accidentals, very sentimental writing based on subtle diatonic dissonances, and coming back again and again in different waves of great orchestral writing.

mikrokosmos: Strauss – Overture for the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos (1912) I keep coming back to Richard Strauss’ less ‘popular’ operas. During his lifetime many of them were somewhat dismissed for their ‘conservative’ writing. It seems that Strauss was going into a more jarring and angst ridden Modernism with his operas Salome (1905) and…

[hushilda]

Strauss – Overture for the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos (1912) I keep coming back to Richard Strauss’ less ‘popular’ operas. During his lifetime many of them were somewhat dismissed for their ‘conservative’ writing. It seems that Strauss was going into a more jarring and angst ridden Modernism with his operas Salome (1905) and Elektra (1908), but then betrayed that direction with the very gushy romantic Rosenkavalier (1910). I think this lower opinion of Strauss has more to do with the time he lived in rather than the music itself. Not to mention that this ‘heavy/lighthearted’ florid style continued through both World Wars. It’s hard for me not to love his music because of it’s unusual mix of being hyper-romantic and also clear and easy to follow. What Strauss did was the seemingly impossible task of synthesizing Wagner (free floating harmonies, thick orchestral textures, and long scale structure) with Mozart (clarity, grace, lyricism, and more grounded functioning tonality). This is the opening of Strauss’ comic opera Ariadne auf Naxos. The confusing title for this post is due to the opera’s structure; It is an opera within an opera. The opera is in two parts, first part is the prologue which gives us the backstory where a composer has been hired to stage one of his operas at some very super rich Viennese man’s house. He is deeply offended to learn that the patron has also hired a burlesque dance troop to perform after his opera. Offended because (and I’m pretty sure Strauss is satirizing the Romantic-minded young artist who takes his own work too seriously) his opera, Ariadne of Naxos, is supposed to be a super serious tragedy and having a burlesque dance afterward shows how the patron and audience don’t care that much for ‘serious’ art, and may even look forward to the half naked women more than the Grecian music-drama. The opera company and dance company argue over who gets to play first. The situation gets worse when the patron’s butler informs everyone that his dinner party ended up going later than expected, and since he’s paid for both acts already and wants them to perform, he decided he wants the opera and the burlesque to happen at the same time. The composer is angry but his teacher encourages him to comply. And the lead of the burlesque show, a risqué comedian named Zerbinetta, charms him into changing the opera to include scenes for her. The second part is the opera Ariadne of Naxos, where Ariadne has been abandoned on the isle of Naxos by her former lover and hero Theseus. Zerbinetta and other nymphs (the burlesque dancers) try to sing and cheer Ariadne up but they can’t get her out of her depression. Zerbinetta tells her the best way to get over one man is to find another, and encourages her to flirt with a clown Harlequin. But then a stranger comes to the island, who turns out to be Bacchus the god of wine, chaos, and ‘hedonism’. Ariadne and Bacchus fall in love, the end. Despite how this opera is somewhat minuscule (in comparison to all opera ever, let alone Strauss’), it is the genius combination of Wagner (a ‘super-serious’ philosophical music-drama based on classical antiquity where love transfigures the soul), Mozart (lighthearted comedy, flirting between men and women who don’t understand each other, and an optimistic idealization of a classical pastorale) and Strauss (a metafictional story about an opera within the opera where characters discuss the nature of opera and relationship between artist and audience, the kinds of themes that would be best exemplified in Capriccio). But really the only reason I’m sharing this is because the main melody is stuck in my head, the perfect Straussian melody; optimistic and upbeat, goofy-sounding accidentals, very sentimental writing based on subtle diatonic dissonances, and coming back again and again in different waves of great orchestral writing.

mikrokosmos: Strauss – Overture for the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos (1912) I keep coming back to Richard Strauss’ less ‘popular’ operas. During his lifetime many of them were somewhat dismissed for their ‘conservative’ writing. It seems that Strauss was going into a more jarring and angst ridden Modernism with his operas Salome (1905) and…

[dariaandjanelanefanboy]

Strauss – Overture for the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos (1912) I keep coming back to Richard Strauss’ less ‘popular’ operas. During his lifetime many of them were somewhat dismissed for their ‘conservative’ writing. It seems that Strauss was going into a more jarring and angst ridden Modernism with his operas Salome (1905) and Elektra (1908), but then betrayed that direction with the very gushy romantic Rosenkavalier (1910). I think this lower opinion of Strauss has more to do with the time he lived in rather than the music itself. Not to mention that this ‘heavy/lighthearted’ florid style continued through both World Wars. It’s hard for me not to love his music because of it’s unusual mix of being hyper-romantic and also clear and easy to follow. What Strauss did was the seemingly impossible task of synthesizing Wagner (free floating harmonies, thick orchestral textures, and long scale structure) with Mozart (clarity, grace, lyricism, and more grounded functioning tonality). This is the opening of Strauss’ comic opera Ariadne auf Naxos. The confusing title for this post is due to the opera’s structure; It is an opera within an opera. The opera is in two parts, first part is the prologue which gives us the backstory where a composer has been hired to stage one of his operas at some very super rich Viennese man’s house. He is deeply offended to learn that the patron has also hired a burlesque dance troop to perform after his opera. Offended because (and I’m pretty sure Strauss is satirizing the Romantic-minded young artist who takes his own work too seriously) his opera, Ariadne of Naxos, is supposed to be a super serious tragedy and having a burlesque dance afterward shows how the patron and audience don’t care that much for ‘serious’ art, and may even look forward to the half naked women more than the Grecian music-drama. The opera company and dance company argue over who gets to play first. The situation gets worse when the patron’s butler informs everyone that his dinner party ended up going later than expected, and since he’s paid for both acts already and wants them to perform, he decided he wants the opera and the burlesque to happen at the same time. The composer is angry but his teacher encourages him to comply. And the lead of the burlesque show, a risqué comedian named Zerbinetta, charms him into changing the opera to include scenes for her. The second part is the opera Ariadne of Naxos, where Ariadne has been abandoned on the isle of Naxos by her former lover and hero Theseus. Zerbinetta and other nymphs (the burlesque dancers) try to sing and cheer Ariadne up but they can’t get her out of her depression. Zerbinetta tells her the best way to get over one man is to find another, and encourages her to flirt with a clown Harlequin. But then a stranger comes to the island, who turns out to be Bacchus the god of wine, chaos, and ‘hedonism’. Ariadne and Bacchus fall in love, the end. Despite how this opera is somewhat minuscule (in comparison to all opera ever, let alone Strauss’), it is the genius combination of Wagner (a ‘super-serious’ philosophical music-drama based on classical antiquity where love transfigures the soul), Mozart (lighthearted comedy, flirting between men and women who don’t understand each other, and an optimistic idealization of a classical pastorale) and Strauss (a metafictional story about an opera within the opera where characters discuss the nature of opera and relationship between artist and audience, the kinds of themes that would be best exemplified in Capriccio). But really the only reason I’m sharing this is because the main melody is stuck in my head, the perfect Straussian melody; optimistic and upbeat, goofy-sounding accidentals, very sentimental writing based on subtle diatonic dissonances, and coming back again and again in different waves of great orchestral writing.

mikrokosmos: Strauss – Overture for the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos (1912) I keep coming back to Richard Strauss’ less ‘popular’ operas. During his lifetime many of them were somewhat dismissed for their ‘conservative’ writing. It seems that Strauss was going into a more jarring and angst ridden Modernism with his operas Salome (1905) and…

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

also: Zerbinetta definitely gives off “closeted queer woman” vibes and I’d love to see a production where the Composer is a woman and they kiss

[opera-ghosts]

Glass Shatterers! Erna Sack - J. Strauss II: Voices of Spring, 1937 Live, High F6, G6, B6

THE SONGBIRD: Erna Sack (1898 - 1972) was born in Berlin and studied music in Prague. She was signed by Bruno Walter to sing small roles at the Berlin State Opera in 1928 but it wasn't until 1930 that her stratospheric high notes helped her become a star soprano across Germany as Norina, Gilda, and Zerbinetta (Richard Strauss composed a new cadenza for her that seems to have been lost). In 1935 she made her first series of concert tours — to Austria, the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom — and signed a recording contract with Telefunken. Sack appeared in German operetta films and continued to concertize internationally until she retired in 1957. I didn't think I'd be able to post any selections of Erna Sack since all of her recordings seemed to be on YouTube already and I only post unique content, but I did not find any listing of this live rendition of the “Voices of Spring” waltz, with her signature flourish from High G up to a series of staccato volleys on High B6, as well as a final High F.

THE MUSIC: Johann Strauss II wrote "Frühlingsstimmen" (Voices of Spring) in 1882 for German soprano Bertha Schwartz (aka Bianca Bianchi); she premiered this concert piece at a charity performance in Vienna. The German lyrics about the sounds of nature and warbling birds are by Richard Genée. Strauss came from a family of Viennese composers in the 19th century who specialized in sophisticated waltzes and light music, but Johann II's music was (and remains) the most popular. He was known as "The Waltz King" in his time and most of the Viennese waltzes we hum now were composed by him -- not to mention his enormously successful and genre-defining operettas such as "Die Fledermaus."

[extradct]

[blackhistoryiseverywhereperiod]

Black History All Year 2021 . . Dobbs began singing and playing the piano as a child. As a young adult, she studied voice under Naomi Maise while attending Spelman College. She graduated in 1946 as valedictorian, then moved to New York to study music under Mme. Lotte Leonard; she also enrolled at Columbia University, where she earned an M.A. in Spanish in 1950. While in school she received several musical scholarships, and after graduating in 1950 she went to Paris on a two year fellowship to study with Pierre Viernac. In 1951 she won first prize at the Geneva Competition in Switzerland. . . In 1952, Dobbs began her professional career with appearances as Stravinsky’s Nightingale at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam. She also performed several other prestigious leading roles between 1952 and 1954 including the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute at Genoa, Zerbinetta in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos at the Glyndebounce Opera Festival, Gilda in Rigoletto, and Olympia in The Tales of Hoffman at the Royal Opera House in London, as well as the Queen of Shemakhan in Le Coq d’Or. For this last performance, she was awarded the Swedish Order of the North Star by King Gustav VI. Dobbs sang the role of Zerbinetta again in her first appearance in the United States at New York’s Town Hall on March 8, 1954 and received great critical acclaim. Throughout her career, she received praise for her exceptional range and skill at interpreting her roles, as well as her pioneering appearances as the first black singer to sing at La Scala in Italy and the first black soprano to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, where she appeared as Gilda in 1956. . . #Funfact-Dobbs aunt of Maynard Jackson, the first African American mayor of Atlanta, sang at his inauguration in January 1974. . . #singersspotlight #dobbs #maynardjackson #jackson #mattiwildadobbs #italy #Legendary #Zerbinetta #LaScala #MetropolitanOpera #Zerbinetta #valedictorian #spelmancollege (at Peace Gardens) https://www.instagram.com/p/CO3oTi9pXk4/?igshid=1txr31dxlgpda

[fanchonmoreau]

Have I ever told you about my opera OTP? 

It’s Zerbinetta and Komponist (the Composer) in Strauss’s opera Ariadne auf Naxos. He’s written a serious opera, she heads up a commedia dell’arte troupe, and they unexpectedly have to perform their acts at the same time. He’s young, passionate, self-important-- and absolutely livid. She’s game, she’s an improviser by trade, but he won’t agree with it and she knows she has to do something.

Here’s where the dynamic can go one of two ways. She can manipulate him by seducing him and becoming exactly the kind of woman he’d want. Or she finds herself drawn to him, and in a few short minutes is honestly telling him that underneath all of her coquetry and good humor, she’s really lonely. She wants a real connection. 

The latter interpretation is always the more interesting one. And this performance, with Natalie Dessay as Zerbinetta and Susanne Mentzer as Komponist, is very clearly making the choice that there’s something real between them.

And yes, Komponist is a trouser role. But of all the trouser roles I can think of, this is one where you can change the character’s gender and have the story be essentially the same (but obviously with different nuances and complexities). There are already productions that are full on presenting Komponist as a woman. 

Anyway, whatever gender you like, I love them so much.

[addictedtobrits]

WHAAAAAT??? WHY AM I SEEING THIS ONLY NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME. DIANA AS ZERBINETTA AND JOYCE THE COMPOSER IN A STAGE VERSION

What is air.

[gigantomachy1916]

Hi! I'm sending this to all my fave L/Misa authors because I trust your taste: what are you favourite Lawmane fics posted outside of Ao3? Alternatively, is there some old stories you remember reading but can't find again? 👀

I'm actually currently working on a pretty exhaustive list of L/Misa fics that I like on AO3 and FFN (don't know any from any other sites), so I'm gonna wait until the list is done to post all my recommendations. But to name a few, some stories I like on FFN are:

Dynamism by keem (~51k words, smutty, one of the bigger influences on me when I was writing Liability)

Serious by Zerbinetta (~68k words, no smut, never finished but most of the plot is wrapped up so it's not as frustrating as Rewrite, basically a mashup of Death Note and Legally Blonde, with Misa as Elle Woods)

Breathless by thinking of england (~15k words, smutty, they write L a bit OOC and honestly kind of like a fuckboy, but it's still pretty decent stuff)

Before the Storm by Tokebi211 (~3k words, no actual smut but still kinda risque, Misa is released from custody and returns to her apartment to find L waiting for her, and they have a bit of a confrontation)

Arbitrium by MissDementia (~5k words, focuses on Misa's character and her thoughts about L and Light)

The Case He Could Only Watch by Sorentense (~5k words, mostly platonic with some interest from L, the most serious exploration I've found of the possibility that Misa has borderline personality disorder)

Believe by MiyakoHasegawa (~16k words, left unfinished, the setup isn't very clear or believable (for some reason, Light isn't there anymore, it's never explained, but Misa is still spending time with L and they start a relationship), but I like it because it gives a lot of cute/funny moments about what L and Misa trying to date would actually be like)

I know some people also like End Games. I enjoyed the first 15 chapters but had to stop reading because it hit a major trigger for me, but if you don't share my particular trigger, you'll probably enjoy it.

[kirbarts]

Zerbinetta, Harvey, Tooth, Vincent, and Lionel (in my clothes) from @divinecommandtheory by @zitboy