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Apr. 29th, 2019 11:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI drove down to Wilmington Delaware early morning after davening. I don't think I've ever been to Wilmington before! The opera was at 2PM, I got there around 10:30. I really enjoyed Wilmington. It's not that far away, I want to make more plans to do stuff there.
First I went to the Delaware Art Museum, which was small but interesting. They have a labyrinth in the back! I kind of want to run a D&D adventure set there. The main special exhibition was on children's story illustration, the private collection of a local doctor. Particularly neat was a set of different illustrations of the Pied Piper. There was also an interesting 'experimental' recuration of the exhibition rooms dedicated to the museum's Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood collection, with easel paper hung on the walls with sharpied colloquial explanations of the revolutionary anti-establishment significance of some of the artistic choices. And some stunning Rossettis. I also liked the Howard Pyle gallery of late 19th century adventure story magazine illustrations. And a portrait of Absalom Jones was a pleasant surprise.
There's an entrance to Alapocas Run State Park right behind the museum, and I'd brought my bike along for the purpose of going for a ride in the park. The main trail through the park opened with a fairly long, steep climb and so I wore myself out earlier than I'd anticipated, but it was a pretty trail and I enjoyed myself, though I didn't enjoy the reminder that I'm not as fit as I'd like to be.
I then drove to Wilmington's only kosher restaurant, a vegan place on the riverfront where I had my first bread since erev Pesach. Yum bread. :D
Then I biked to the opera house to meetghost_lingering and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gingerrose for the show.
Trial by Jury by Gilbert and Sullivan
The premise is that they're trying a case where the defendant was engaged to the plaintiff, but he backed out and the putative bride is trying to force the nuptials to go forward or be paid for breach of contract. Everyone spends the whole playing shouting about lack of bias, and then being utterly shameless about their biases, and it is screamingly funny. The final resolution is that the Judge, having divorced the 'elderly, ugly daughter of a rich attorney' he married to attain his judgeship, agrees to marry the plaintiff.
Scalia/Ginsburg by Derrick Wang
Jews Dance in this Opera!!!
The music, and the plot for that matter, was super-pastichey. Very little of the music was original. But that was very forgivable both because the new contextualization was so extreme, and because there seemed to be an idea behind the pastiche: The opera was interrogating the way in which opera formed part of the basis for the inexplicable friendship between Scalia and Ginsburg, and using the operatic tradition to help explore that question. At the end, the story reconnects to the idea of the power of opera and music and story in fulfilling their dreams- specifically, Scalia and Ginsburg's dreams, not some generic idea of the power of opera.
The opera opens with Scalia in his chambers, criticizing other judges for their limited vision of the force of Constitutionality. He is greeted by a statue come to life a la the Commendatore from Don Giovanni, the "Commentator". After some faffing around, the Commentator tells Scalia that he is subjecting him to three Trials a la Sarastro's trials from The Magic Flute.
That Don Giovanni/Magic Flute combo was interesting, I'm still thinking about it.ghost_lingering and I concluded that it worked because of the combination of Scalia's Catholicism and his devotion to Enlightenment-style Constitutionality.
In general the opera was very aware of the silliness of an opera about constitutional theories, but it was also serious and fully committed to its premise, and it used an awful lot of their own words and citations to the cases they have been involved with. The drama at the heart of the opera is in taking Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, these two absolute fucking heavyweights of the American experiment, and setting them against each other and ultimately in support of each other, because both of those things are true. American constitutionalism works on good faith opposition, even extreme opposition. And that drama works. It works so well.
Afterward I droveghost_lingering back to Jersey, giving us lots of time to rant about all of our issues with Endgame.
First I went to the Delaware Art Museum, which was small but interesting. They have a labyrinth in the back! I kind of want to run a D&D adventure set there. The main special exhibition was on children's story illustration, the private collection of a local doctor. Particularly neat was a set of different illustrations of the Pied Piper. There was also an interesting 'experimental' recuration of the exhibition rooms dedicated to the museum's Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood collection, with easel paper hung on the walls with sharpied colloquial explanations of the revolutionary anti-establishment significance of some of the artistic choices. And some stunning Rossettis. I also liked the Howard Pyle gallery of late 19th century adventure story magazine illustrations. And a portrait of Absalom Jones was a pleasant surprise.
There's an entrance to Alapocas Run State Park right behind the museum, and I'd brought my bike along for the purpose of going for a ride in the park. The main trail through the park opened with a fairly long, steep climb and so I wore myself out earlier than I'd anticipated, but it was a pretty trail and I enjoyed myself, though I didn't enjoy the reminder that I'm not as fit as I'd like to be.
I then drove to Wilmington's only kosher restaurant, a vegan place on the riverfront where I had my first bread since erev Pesach. Yum bread. :D
Then I biked to the opera house to meet
ghost_lingering and gingerrose for the show.Trial by Jury by Gilbert and Sullivan
The premise is that they're trying a case where the defendant was engaged to the plaintiff, but he backed out and the putative bride is trying to force the nuptials to go forward or be paid for breach of contract. Everyone spends the whole playing shouting about lack of bias, and then being utterly shameless about their biases, and it is screamingly funny. The final resolution is that the Judge, having divorced the 'elderly, ugly daughter of a rich attorney' he married to attain his judgeship, agrees to marry the plaintiff.
Scalia/Ginsburg by Derrick Wang
Jews Dance in this Opera!!!
The music, and the plot for that matter, was super-pastichey. Very little of the music was original. But that was very forgivable both because the new contextualization was so extreme, and because there seemed to be an idea behind the pastiche: The opera was interrogating the way in which opera formed part of the basis for the inexplicable friendship between Scalia and Ginsburg, and using the operatic tradition to help explore that question. At the end, the story reconnects to the idea of the power of opera and music and story in fulfilling their dreams- specifically, Scalia and Ginsburg's dreams, not some generic idea of the power of opera.
The opera opens with Scalia in his chambers, criticizing other judges for their limited vision of the force of Constitutionality. He is greeted by a statue come to life a la the Commendatore from Don Giovanni, the "Commentator". After some faffing around, the Commentator tells Scalia that he is subjecting him to three Trials a la Sarastro's trials from The Magic Flute.
That Don Giovanni/Magic Flute combo was interesting, I'm still thinking about it.
ghost_lingering and I concluded that it worked because of the combination of Scalia's Catholicism and his devotion to Enlightenment-style Constitutionality.In general the opera was very aware of the silliness of an opera about constitutional theories, but it was also serious and fully committed to its premise, and it used an awful lot of their own words and citations to the cases they have been involved with. The drama at the heart of the opera is in taking Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, these two absolute fucking heavyweights of the American experiment, and setting them against each other and ultimately in support of each other, because both of those things are true. American constitutionalism works on good faith opposition, even extreme opposition. And that drama works. It works so well.
Afterward I drove
ghost_lingering back to Jersey, giving us lots of time to rant about all of our issues with Endgame.