a southern gal in the north

From my backyard …

That was at 1 pm… it hit 100 at 4 pm. at least the humidity went down a bit from the 80% it was at 6 am this morning (yes I was up and watering all the plants)

That's what the garden looked like at high noon (1 pm EDT)

See those plants in the yard?

Those are the herbs that should be planted in the herb garden (see below). 

Guess THAT will be done after the heat breaks.  Have watered them three times already today and will give them another good dosing later . if it cools down a bit i might try to plant some of them tonight.  or early in the morning

Or not.  They seem to be fine.  This heat wave is supposed to break wed-thu -ish.

A ‘Ring’ at Bayreuth, as Beauty Shines Through Newness By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Published: August 2, 2006

BAYREUTH, Germany, Aug. 1 — During the curtain calls for any new production here at the Bayreuth Festival, it is practically a tradition for the audience to greet the creative team with a lusty chorus of competing boos and bravos. On Monday night the audience in the Festspielhaus honored that tradition at the end of “Götterdämmerung,” which concluded the festival’s new staging of Wagner’s four-part epic, “Der Ring des Nibelungen.”

Before agreeing to take on the “Ring,” Tankred Dorst, the eminent 80-year-old German playwright, director, filmmaker, storyteller and actor, had done just about everything one could do in theater with one exception: direct an opera.

“My advantage is that I don’t have to continue a career as an opera director,” he said when his appointment was announced. Judging from the audience response and the initial buzz in the opera world, his debut will be heatedly debated for months. I found his work fresh, provocative and mostly effective. But more on that later.

The real hero of the Bayreuth “Ring” is not Siegfried or Brünnhilde, but the conductor Christian Thielemann. Whether the Bayreuth Festival can still claim to be the world’s premier Wagner house has long been an open question. But whatever one’s take on the production, Mr. Thielemann drew a probing, radiant and exhilarating musical performance from this orchestra of dedicated instrumentalists (drawn from top-tier German orchestras), as well as from the robust festival chorus and an involving, if vocally uneven, cast.

Mr. Thielemann, who is not the most articulate talker, has a way of getting into trouble when he speaks of national tradition in German culture. What he means, though, it seems from reading some of his most recent comments, is that German orchestras in the first half of the 20th century brought a natural pathos and a traditional connection to their playing of Wagner. In striving to recapture this quality today, musicians are in a bind. The struggle comes through, and the pathos seems strained. Moreover, Mr. Thielemann, 47, is a conductor with a contemporary sensibility who also wants playing to be incisive and up to date.

This is a difficult balancing act. But he pulled it off in the “Ring.” His tempo for the stormy opening music of Act 1 in “Die Walküre” was on the slow side. The tension came from the clarity he brought to the strangely overlapping lines and riffs. By revealing the complexity of this driving, frightful episode, he made the music seem interesting as well as hypnotic.

rest at link below

A ‘Ring’ at Bayreuth, as Beauty Shines Through Newness – New York Times.

Wednesday Special (begins noon eastern, 9 am Pacific; repeat Saturday noon and Tuesday 6 pm eastern, 3 pm Pacific )–By popular demand, a repeat of last fall’s performance from WFMT & the EBU of Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes –and the “Brazilian national opera,” Il Guarany,  featuring Placido Domingo.

Wednesday Evensong Special (8:03 pm eastern, August 2nd, 2006, 5:03 pm Pacific; repeats Sat. 8:03 am, 5:03 am Pacific):

The Vocal Scene with George Jellinek: “The Songs of Tchaikovsky”

On Wings of Song (PREMIERE—8:58)—From the Marilyn Horne Foundation, a celebration of the art song and the young singers who aspire to be the next generation of interpreters—this week, Jessica Jones.

Millennium of Music (9:56) “Paradiso Armonico”—The Italian influence on the evolution of 17th century music in the Lowlands. (Also at 10:22—John Rutter’s Mass of the Children). 

Wagner Thursdays (begins noon eastern, 9 am Pacific Aug. 3rd–SPECIAL REPEAT Saturday at 6 pm, 3 pm Pacific)—A reprise of the first of our Birgit Nilsson tribute specials–the Georg Bohm/Bayreuth Tristan und Isolde,  plus another Richard Strauss, the famous performance of Salome.

Vox Populi  (begins noon eastern, 9 am Pacific)—Additional time—the Great Experiment!

From Robert Aubry Davis, Program Director, VOX

More small and fuzzy photos, this time from the 2006 Bayreuther Festspiele Tankred Dorst production of Götterdämmerung, and I’m becoming just a bit suspicious vis-à-vis the Eurotrash question. We non-German-speakers who can’t read the German press’ descriptions of the production will just have to wait for Anthony Tommasini’s New York Times review of the entire cycle to make more clear what it is that’s shown here.

Sounds & Fury: Will Wonders Never Cease: 2006 Bayreuth Götterdämmerung.

This is a daily journal while he attends – he says his review will be after Monday’s Gottermdamerung

Anthony Tommasini at the Bayreuth Music Festival

ARTS / DANCE   |  July 30, 2006
Dancers Learn to Get By on Aspirin, Coffee and Grit
By BLAIR TINDALL (NYT)
Dancers face the pain of performing without the illegal boosts that some athletes use.

Review by MEGAN MARSHALL
Published: July 30, 2006

ORCHESTRAS, opera companies, chamber groups and solo pianists have been celebrating Mozart’s 250th birthday all year, but surprisingly few writers have aimed to capitalize on the surge of interest in the composer considered by many to be music’s greatest genius. I’m reminded of the reaction I once got from an editor when I suggested writing a group biography of the Romantic trio Clara and Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms: “Books about musicians don’t sell!”

From ‘‘The Librettist of Venice’’ A British cartoon (1791) satirizing rival opera impresario

THE LIBRETTIST OF VENICE
The Remarkable Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s Poet, Casanova’s Friend, and Italian Opera’s Impresario in America.  by Rodney Bolt.   Illustrated. 428 pp. Bloomsbury. $29.95.

Mercifully, this injunction doesn’t seem to apply to the great composer’s librettists. At least not in the case of Lorenzo Da Ponte, the man who provided the texts for “Le Nozze di Figaro,” “Don Giovanni” and “Così Fan Tutte.” Already two biographies have appeared in 2006: Anthony Holden’s “Man Who Wrote Mozart,” so far available only in a British edition, and Rodney Bolt’s engaging “Librettist of Venice,” which found a publisher capable of peddling the book on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Librettist of Venice, by Rodney Bolt – The New York Times Book Review – New York Times.

and now WALKUERE….

Sounds & Fury: Will Wonders Never Cease: 2006 Bayreuth Die Walküre.