Vancouver Mountain Majesty

Since I’m in Vancouver for the week, I’ve been thinking about my favorite Vancouverite cartoonist, Angela Melick of Wasted Talent!

Copyright Angela Melick

This is kind of like New York last week, nasty winter suddenly giving way to mild spring…  Though we don’t have the same sort of majestic natural setting…  One stereotype I’ve formed about Vancouver thanks to Angela is the importance of extreme outdoor sports…  so will bust out my hiking boots!  Or walking boots at least…

Maybe she’s the only Vancouverite cartoonist I know, actually…  But you can see her depiction of her town by looking through her Vancouver tag!

Putting the Canadian in Canadian Opera Company

So I’m in Vancouver, Canada for a week, and considering the last opera I saw was the Canadian Opera Company‘s performance of Semele at BAM last week it seems fitting to discuss their forthcoming season, which, fittingly, features the world premiere of a Canadian Opera!

In October, COC will give the world premiere of Barbara Monk Feldman‘s short 2010 opera, Pyramus and Thisbe.  It’s based on a tale from antiquity so the COC is presenting it alongside two short, similarly classically themed, pieces by the grandfather of opera, Claudio Monteverdi: a scena for three voices and an aria, which is the only fragment to survive from his second opera, L’Arianna, performed below by Italian soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci:

Here’s hoping I can make a return trip to Canada for this interesting early opera/premiere opera combo!

Alice’s Adventures in Opera

Another big anniversary this year is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland!  What better way for us to celebrate than with Unsuk Chin‘s opera Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?  Below, the Mad Tea Party scene performed by the Seoul Philharmonic:

The Los Angeles Philharmonic celebrated this sesquicentennial with a staged performance in collaboration with the Los Angeles Opera.  This was the work’s belated LA premiere, since the LA Opera was one of the original commissioners of the piece, which ultimately premiered at the Munich Opera Festival in 2007.

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho for Los Angeles Philharmonic

The reviews I’ve read have been excellent, which is pleasantly surprising as I’ve heard mixed things about the opera with its bristly, modern musical language and elliptical, playfully obtuse libretto by David Henry Hwang.

The production, by English director Netia Jones, matched that darker tone by animating illustrations from British satirist Ralph Steadman‘s 1972 edition of the book.  Jones has used this technique with the LA Phil before, animating Maurice Sendak’s own Where the Wild Things Are illustrations for a performance of Oliver Knussen‘s operatic adaptation of that work.

At any rate, an interesting recent development is that the Royal Opera House in London has commissioned a sequel opera by the same team of Chin and Hwang, based on Through the Looking Glass!  This is scheduled for the 2018/2019 season, so I wonder if that will add fire to the second wind that Wonderland seems to be having…

The Late Children Speak

Just a quick post about tomorrow’s New York Comic and Picture-Story Symposium event with Marguerite Van Cook talking about her new multi-generation autobiography The Late Child and Other Animals adapted into comic form by James Romberger.  Beyond the author’s own childhood, the book starts with her mother’s experience living through the Nazi bombing of the UK port city of Portsmouth, and subsequently having two children on her own when her soldier husband dies en route back home.

The Late Child and Other Animals by Marguerite Van Cook and James Romberger

It sounds like an interesting life story and story-story, and the team of Van Cook and Romberger have created some real lovely, trippy art before in 7 Miles a Second, another autobiographical comic created with artist David Wojnarowicz before his AIDS-related death in 1992.  I’ve been planning a separate post about that book for a while, so tomorrow’s event comes at a good time to learn more about Van Cook and Romberger’s collaborative process, and about this exciting new book too!

Costumes & Horror on Halloween

Girls with Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto

Halloween is usually a fun opportunity for webcartoonists to dress their recurring characters up, but I haven’t seen a whole lot of that yet among the comics I normally read!  Where’s the holiday spirit, guys?

That being said, Girls with Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto is a reliable source of Halloween themed story lines and this year it’s built around a librarian-organized, kids’-book-character-themed costume party!  Lots of great costumes so far, but I thought the comics-themed couple costume at left was especially appropriate for us…

Aside from Halloween story lines, here are two seasonally appropriate comics.

Little Ghost is a cute monster mash story by Kate Leth, and its the first ongoing fictional storyline she’s serialized on her own website, though she also has several new monthly print comic projects out, including the new, ultra-Halloweeny Edward Scissorhands comic from IDW!

Little Ghost by Kate Leth

Also, Abby Howard, who I learned about through the Strip Search webcomic reality show and her hilarious comics at Junior Scientist Power Hour, is a big fan of horror as evidenced by her other webcomic, The Last Halloween!  I believe it was launched about a year ago after a successful Kickstarter…  At any rate, I started reading it, but it was  way too scary for me!  So that means it should be appropriate for anyone over, like, age 10 😛

The Last Halloween by Abby Howard

Even Abby’s latest autobio JS Power Hour comic is Halloween themed, about the big farm home she moved into as a kid and the mysteriously threatening happenings that followed…

Alright, hope you all enjoy these alternately cute and horrifying comics on this spoOoOoky Halloween!  Anyone dressing up as a comic character?

Muslims in America, Italians in Russia

In catching up on some NY Times arts coverage this weekend I found two Bizarro-Twins-appropriate articles I thought I’d merge into one…

Chronologically first, Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli has a new album of baroque operatic arias called St. Petersburg.  Not a city we associate with baroque opera, but as Bartoli’s latest musicological excavation effort points out, as was the case all over Europe, the Russian court was home to several Italian composers patronized by emperors and empresses, alongside other artists from across Europe.  The pieces they composed basically followed Italianate opera conventions, though they were occasionally performed in Russian, but all 11 tracks on the CD are world premiere recordings so it’s certainly a rare set of materials.

 

Bartoli herself went to the Mariinsky Theater archives to peruse these scores, which were sort of hidden especially during Soviet times to suppress the history of Russia looking to Western Europe, a binary that’s relevant to this day.  I’d certainly like to know a bit more about those archival adventures!  (NYT article)

The other story I wanted to share was a conversation between three Muslim-American artists on how being Muslim, and depicting Muslim characters, influences their work.  The trio included Ayad Akhtar, creator of the Pulitzer-winning play Disgraced, currently on Broadway, Sundance award winning filmmaker Musa Syeed, and of special interest to us, writer G. Willow Wilson, creator of Marvel’s best-selling Ms. Marvel comic, of which the first trade paperback came out earlier this month!  It’s an interesting conversation in its own right, and Wilson talks to how the themes of assimilation and representation pop up in Kamala Khan’s own hero’s journey. (NYT article)

Ms. Marvel by Adrian Alphona, Copyright Marvel Comics

Apparently the new Ms. Marvel, a Pakistani-American teenager from Jersey City whose own comic debuted in February of this year, is now Marvel’s top-selling female character, and that’s with competition from titles like Black Widow, Storm, She-Hulk, Elektra, and even her inspiration, Captain Marvel!  Not bad kid, not bad…

Panter & Kalman in New York

Two comics-ish events today and tomorrow featuring two interdisciplinary art, comics, & illustration luminaries.

At tonight’s New York Comics & Picture-Story Symposium the underground-influenced painter, illustrator, and cartoonist Gary Panter will…  Actually, I’m not really sure what he’ll be doing, so here’s the official NYCPSS description of tonight’s 7pm event at Parsons The New School, 2 West 13th Street:

Gary Panter attempts to invoke the unfolding lotus of the 1960s by thumbing through an old magazine missing pages – LOOK, Jan 9, 1968.

LOOK magazine, January 9, 1968, subject of Gary Panter’s talk(?) tonight

If you want something a little more structured, idiosyncratic illustrated book creator Maira Kalman will be at the New York Public Library for Books at Noon in light of her latest releases, Ah-Hah to Zig-Zag and My Favorite Things, both of which were inspired by items in the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum‘s collections.

My Favorite Things by Maira Kalman

And in conclusion:  Hello again faithful readers!  Sorry for abandoning the blog!  Not sure if anyone noticed, but since I haven’t been thinking of comics & opera any less since my last update (all the way in June!) I figured I’d try to revive this hobby blog!

Since we last spoke, I’ve launched my own little webcomic at SebaSM Comics!  It updates twice a week with mostly autobio-ish gag comics, so I’ll be sure to plug those here too 😀

Ok, see you around!

To Know to Know to Love Her So

A saint is one to be for two when three and you make five and two and cover.  Source

Four Saints in Three Acts premiere performance with sets by Florine Stettheimer

The other night I had a chance to speak to Gertrude Stein at a party at Pablo Picasso’s home (I’ll explain…), and I regret not asking her about her collaboration with American composer Virgil Thomson, for whom she wrote two opera librettos in the last two decades of her life.  They were classic Stein, meaning they didn’t make any logical “sense”, but as the introduction to the 1947 CBS radio broadcast of their first collaboration, Four Saints in Three Acts, says…

Gertrude Stein’s words made no sense to anyone. …  Afterwards however, people went away with an embarrassed feeling that the thing made more sense than they thought.  They began to see that the authors wanted them to understand not illogical words, but a fine symbolism of the gaiety and strength of spiritual and consecrated lives.  Source

Four Saints in Three Acts premiered in Connecticut in 1934 and went on to Broadway later that same year.  The thought that a modernist, non-linear opera ran on Broadway is confounding enough, but to add to that, the opera was also performed by an all-black cast.

At any rate, you can judge the opera for yourself thanks to a digitized 1947 CBS Radio broadcast, conducted by Thomson a year after Stein’s death.  Reading the libretto may not make sense, but hearing it sung, it certainly has a good rhythm to it…

Set design for 27 at Opera Theater of Saint Louis by Allen Moyer

From writer of librettos, to the subject of a libretto herself, Gertrude Stein‘s 27 Rue de Fleurs Paris apartment, the site of her celebrated salon, is the setting and namesake of the forthcoming opera 27, by Ricky Ian Gordon, another American composer, to be given its premiere by the Opera Theater of Saint Louis this summer.  Here’s an article in Opera News in anticipation of this premiere.

And most importantly!

If you want to meet Gertrude Stein in person, then don’t miss the last few performances of A Serious Banquet, a Cubist dinner party featuring such luminaries as Stein, Picasso, Braque, and Rousseau among others, hosted by This is Not a Theater Company.  The Rave reviews are in, the company is legendary, and dinner is included!  What’s not to love!

MoCCA Fest Review

Hopefully any of my followers who would’ve gone to the Society of Illustrator’s annual Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art convention that happened this weekend didn’t need me to remind them about it, because I am off my game as a blogger lately; sorry!

Vacationland Book 1, by Jon Allen

Anyway, in lieu of a MoCCA Fest announcement, I thought I’d do a quick review of just some of the amazing artists I got to know!  In no particular order (besides alphabetical):

Mercworks, by Dave Mercier

Jon Allen has a pretty depressing funny-animal comic, Ohio is for Sale, up on his website, and I was also very interested in his 3-part book Vacationland, about an in-the-family affair in a Maine vacation town.

Rachel Dukes‘ journal webcomic doesn’t update too frequently, and is mostly about her cat, but it’s adorable, and she has other comic stories up on her website too.

Dave Mercier’s Mercworks webcomic is good clean irreverent fun.

L. Nichols has an earthy style, appropriate for his Gardening Comics; I was especially interested in his Free People comic, combining images from a clothing catalog and found text for a new comic.

Toril Orlesky is a RISD alum and the creator of Hotblood!, a webcomic about centaurs in the old west (genius!).

Also, two poster designers!  Spur Design of Baltimore are the pretty high-brow, Society-of-Illustrators-award-winning illustration firm, whereas Matt Chic of Brooklyn brings his cartooning sensibility to his punky gig posters.

Hotblood!, by Toril Orlesky

And finally, I’ll plug tomorrow’s New York Comics and Picture-Story Symposium, featuring Sophie Yanow and Sam Alden, both published by Uncivilized Books which exhibited at MoCCA Fest.

Sophie Yanow will discuss her comics, especially her engagement with urban design, evident in her memoir and collaboration with Canadian Center for Architecture, and Sam Alden will discuss the effect of materials on comics narratives.

from Annie Gave Me Noise (2012), by Sophie Yanow

Graduation in February

Two of my favorite webcomics are now set in college graduation ceremonies as principal characters have to navigate their loved ones’ rite of passage, and awkward family reunions.  For no other reason than my love of coincidences, let’s talk about them!

TJ and Amal, Copyright E.K. Weaver

In the case of The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal, the whole story, structured around a cross-country road trip,  has  been leading to this point, when Amal sees his parents for the first time since he came out and called off his planned marriage.

Over in Octopus Pie, the ceremony marks the graduation of Hanna’s boyfriend, Marek, and has snuck up on readers a bit more…

Octopus Pie, copyright Meredith Gran

How will Amal’s family reunion go?  Does the end of his cross-country journey signify the end of the comic, and his unexpected relationship with his travel mate, TJ?  And what does Marek’s graduation signify for the rest of the admittedly kind of stagnated Octopus Pie crew?