Sex. Death. Siberia.
I had a last-minute invitation to see Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto this week. From their description: The frustrated and lonely wife of a wealthy man falls into a passionate relationship with one of his workers. Fuelled by lust and a need to escape her bleak existence, Katerina risks all [...]
BarCamp for another generation
I was talking with a late-50′s American today about the whole BarCamp/TorCamp environment. “So why are you so excited about it?”, he asked. I fumbled around trying to find an answer that would fit his context, and finally came up with “It’s like the 60′s, only with results”. He seemed satisfied with that.
The Robber Bride on film
If you’re a fan of Margaret Atwood, as I am, you’ll want to catch the movie adaptation of her book The Robber Bride on CBC this Sunday. Mary Louise Parker‘s in it. Hey, it’s passive, but it’s CanCon so I’m counting this as part of the arts challenge.
The chick flick effect
The good thing about an unconference like EnterpriseCamp is that it doesn’t attract too many of the testosterone-laden alpha geeks that many tech conferences do, so although there were only 3 women in about 40 attendees, I had a pretty good time on Saturday. Also, there was no chance of a line-up in the ladies [...]
Men in tights, packing flutes
Going from Mozart’s Requiem a week ago to his Magic Flute last Friday was really looking at the extreme ends of the Mozart spectrum, and I haven’t crammed that much culture into one week since my last marathon weekend at the Shakespearean festival in Stratford. Concerning the operetta, I don’t know what the prince was carrying [...]
Mozart’s Requiem
Saturday night, Pat and I headed uptown to hear Mozart’s Requiem sung by All The King’s Voices at Our Lady of Perpetual Help church. For $15, definitely the best concert deal in town, and the choir was very good. They were fronted by four (I assume paid) soloists – Kimberley Briggs (soprano), Carolynne Godin (alto), Martin [...]
Helen Mirren fan club
I adore Helen Mirren. I’ve seen her on both American and British TV, and in movies such as Gosford Park and Calendar Girls (where she utters that sublime line “I think we’re going to need bigger buns”). Last night, I saw her in The Queen, and it definitely did not disappoint. Even Damir, who I had [...]
The Rocky Horror Show, live
Friday night found me at something considerably lower-brow than the Cirque du Soleil’s presentation of Corteo that I attended the night before: a live stage production of the Rocky Horror Show (apparently, it’s only called the Rocky Horror Picture Show in the film version). It’s playing at Stage West, a dinner theatre in the suburbs [...]
Cirque du Soleil
Last night I attended the new (Cirque du Soleil) show, Corteo. As with every other Cirque show that I’ve seen, it was magical — a visual and aural phantasmagoria of acrobatics, comedic and dramatic acting, costumes and music. There’s a slight plot thread twisting through it, really more of a theme than a plot, but [...]
100 Prints, and I took home none
I went to Open Studio‘s “100 Prints” event earlier this year, an event that I have been attending for about 10 years. It’s a fund-raiser for Open Studio wherein 100 artists each donate an original work of art (made with printmaking techniques such as lithography, silk-screening, giclée), and 100 people each buy a ticket for [...]
