Die Zauberflöte
About a year ago, I saw the famous opera “Die Zauberflöte” of Mozart for the first time. It was a filmed performance shown in a cinema. Later I bought the complete piece on cd and because an opera has a big visual part, I also got it on dvd. The local theatre had a Zauberflöte last Saturday and we decided to see it for real too. The anouncement and information on the internet said that the “Nationale Reisopera” (”national traveling opera”) had a special way of playing it, and they sure had!
Before the opera started, there was an awfull introduction. A man stating that initiation in ancient times is what we now call “psycho therapy”, that the rites in “Die Zauberflöte” are rites de passage and that Freemasonry since Mozart also accepts women…
Fortunately the piece itself was a lot better. The people who have worked on the opera had quite a focus on the Masonic and especially on the alchemical symbolism of Mozart’s piece and there was no cutting in the tests and rites.
The ’speciality’ of this performance was that the singers/actors had to do their thing on an almost empty stage and there were serveral puppet theatres where the story was also shown with puppets. These theatres were filmed and projected on a big screen. The opera was sung in German, but subtitles in Dutch were also given. The puppet theatres sometimes added to what you could see from the actors, sometimes it was the other way around. The puppets also added a lot of humour to the part. One extra special thing was that one show has one Papageno made of two ‘half’ Papageno’s, since one actors couldn’t walk (so he stood singing on the side of the stage) and the other not sing (vocal cord injury).
All in all “Die Zauberflöte” remained a masterly opera and the performance was very nice as well. I noticed that it was the last performance of the travelling opera’s tour, so there is no change that you can go yourself. You will have to do it with photos then…
Last weekend we were in Antwerpen and while looking around a massive shop with sellout prices for cds and dvds (of course all crap), my eye fell on a booth with what seemed to be comics. There were a variety of book on the shelves with a strange format. Apparently they contained cds or dvds, so when I had the “Cinema Fantastic” in my hand, I had the idea that this was a book about music and fantasy films with a dvd with examples. There were also books about jazz and things I couldn’t quite make out. I decided to just buy two (they were cheap, so…) and I went home with “Cinema Fantastic” and “Left For Dead”, since most of the others had French texts. Well, the “Cinema Fantastic” is indeed a comic with some information about classical music used in fantasy films and contains two cds with parts of scores. “Left For Dead” is not really a comic, but a story about the suppression of the native American culture by the imported culture. There are some drawings, but mostly text. Also here two cds and however I expected (Amer)Indian music, there is actually a variety of some kind of 70′ies progrock, jazz, blues and soundscapes and here and there alternated or mixed with traditional Indian singing; not really bad actually, but there is always the monotous speaking voice with pro-Indian and anti-American texts.
For their hundreth release The Old Europa Café label has released a 7-cd compilation with a track of each band and project they have been involved in during the years. However looking around the internet it seems like the bands are featured alphabetically, this is not the case, the cds are ordered somewhat thematically / according to style. “Somewhat” I say, since it is not completely that there are industrial and folk cds, there is some overlap. That is only for the better, the compiler of the cds has a rather good ear for things. In the beginning I had the idea that there are alternally more industrial and more folky cds, but this is not entirely true. The compilation opens with a cd with mostly not too extreme noise, a nice cd. Then follows a cd with more (neo)folky music, but not the too typical sounds of a compilation that I reviewed a few days ago. Then we have cds with power electronics and the extreme, chaotic style that isn’t mine, but also more old industrial things, strange experimental soundscape music and more of an old neofolk cd that I find awfull (Ain Soph, that sort of bands). Having heard the whole thing, my temporary conclusion is that the first cds are the most interesting and towards the end are some cds that I will probably never play. I think that four out of seven cds are enough of my taste to put in the player every now and then, so the “price/quality balance” is not that bad. 
I don’t listen to dark ambient all that much. I do like the music, but I find it often too monotous or (nowadays) not dark enough. Loki has always been a label that tracked down the better industrial and ambient projects, also projects that have a nice twist in their sound. Incendium II is almost completely a dark ambient compilation. It has the maximum length and old and new bands on it. The tracks are certainly varried enough, most of them are pretty good as well and there is some pretty dark stuff here. Therefor I suppose that for the few euros that this compilation goes, you can get some of the better stuff here. Of course, this being a label compilation, all tracks can be found on other Loki releases as well.
Those of you who follow these pages will already know that I find the musical current called “neofolk” has been in a downwards spiral for quite a few years. There was an interesting thing when some bands started to experiment with poppy sounds, but after a short trend, also these poppy influences have already been removed. Judging the second half of the fourth Steinklang label compilation, “neofolk” is back to its minimalistic, unimaginable and boring sound. Unfortunately it seems that also kindred musical currents seem to have been infected by the virus of dullness, since the “industrial / noise / electronic” tracks of the first half of this cd are pretty boring as well. Besides a few good moments, this new compilation is an awfull compilation, a downwards trail since number II (I don’t have the first). There are a whole bunch of bands that I didn’t know or that I only knew by name, but this obviously was for the better. So now I wonder: does this compilation represent the poor state of the scene or is it another omen that I am growing away from it?