"Thought you could! But why on earth would you want to?"
Three words: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. More specifically: The Nutcracker. Yet more specifically: this.
P.S. I know, I know: you've seen more impressive choreography, the scenery looks like it was cut out of construction paper (and is that a spaceship, a birds' nest, or the eye of Sauron in the upper left corner?), and the men's costumes are funky. (I was going to be wearing one of those poofy white skirts myself.) But this was the production I grew up watching, and there's a particular kind of magic in that. I'm still convinced that entering heaven will sound like 11:20.
2 comments:
And here I was all ready to listen to Mary Martin in green leotard; it's odd, but except for that segment of Walt D's Fantasia, essentially all my memory of Nutcracker is aural and in shadow, or else pictorial and silent; the music I know doesn't fit the story I know, hélas. For some reason this reminds me of how Nutcracker was written as the second part of a double-header; the first part was a short opera, Iolanta (which I still haven't heard... hmmm...) about a blind princess.
But that pas-de-deux is one of my favourites: shivers!
Mary Martin! Forsooth. She never convinced me she was a boy. But yes, that was the song I stole from.
A double header, truly? I had no idea--and I'm a bit of a Tchaikovsky fan. You should listen to Iolanta--it's much more tuneful that his other operas, and has a surprisingly happy ending ... as does the original Nutcracker, not that we ever get to see it done that way!
Yes, the pas-de-deux. If there is a more romantic piece of music, I have yet to hear it.
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