Opera Cabal: too crazy? Definitely. Yes.

As proof positive of Nick's theories detailed below as points A. and B., I hereby submit my director's summary of the aborted New York production, upon receipt of which I received notice of having been fired from the production.


"In rendering this Cantata what we need is an account in which Apollo and his cohort constitute a social scene that is young and libidinally transparent, à la Hollywood glamour..."

[Notice here, my use of the British spelling, "glamour," which meets very criteria of pretentious game-talk according to section XIX.a.ii. in the Chicago Manual of Style under the heading "Talking the Talk: More Pretentious Than Thou in Scholastic Writing."]

"The message at stake is of youth, youth culture, and the manufacturing and management of desire."

[Ah-ha! That was so smart, I bet you thought I stole it--I did, from a working dramaturg. So there.]

"Paradoxically..."

[The very essence fast academic talk: the ability to cut quickly to the paradox.]

"while we (the audience) recognize that such a scene thrives in a tabloid/popular/vulgar register we nevertheless experience Apollo's upper-crust in-crowd..."

[N.B.: a hyphenated noun and its modifying adjective in the very same sentence? Get out!!]

"...as elite, inaccessible, hence enviable. In a self-preserving gesture..."

[Hyphenated adjectives, need I remind you = awesome.]

"...this social echelon's own aesthetic inclinations are (predictably) characterized by a hypocritical aversion to anything arising from an egregiously popular/smut/mass-commercial world (hence Pan's music is experienced as devoid of content; Midas is framed as envoy to the aesthetically deaf). My argument will be for the basic transparency and recognizability of this hypocrisy while making no claims either for the coherence or defensibility of this posture, or for Pan's/Midas's."

[Need I say more? "Echelon," "smut," "envoy to the aesthetically deaf"?! Come, on: this is brilliant stuff.]

Too cool for New York? I believe I rest my case.

-m.