Wednesday, December 29, 2010

to be (funny) or not to be

i've never felt like a funny guy...what do i mean by that? in my personal life i think i'm funny, or at least i think i'm lighthearted, i try to be. and, as i've just read and ionesco points out, laughter is the one escape from the absurdity of man's condition. and yet, in my work on stage, i've also tended towards the serious, not having much use, or to be more honest, not feeling at home and/or edified by comedy. and yet, not i'm faced with a difficult problem for me...aureliano in palmira.

this is an early rossini opera seria. the libretto is definitely seria, and it has strong political parallels to today, dealing with cultural clashes of east and west and cultural imperalism, and all the things i love to deal with. but, rossini hadn't quite found the mature voice he later would in works like zelmira...no, this is classic 21 year old rossini, like barbiere, infact even lifting a lot of the that music. it is funny music, and i don't know if that is because contemporary sentiment has made it that way or rossini wrote it that way, but it verges towards a sort of om-pah-pah formalism that is funny. well, that takes me into the land of satire, or absurdity, maybe farce. and then i feel a bit lost - how do i move in that direction (where the music seems to want to go) and still retain my own voice, my own clarity that i value so much. i'm not sure...it is turning over and over in my brain and no distillation has made it out yet. help...

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