Talk:Powder Her Face
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[edit] Date of opera's setting
The Duchess depicted in the opera is the notorious Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll|Duchess of Argyle]] whose scandalous behaviuor in Britain in the early 1960s helped to discredit the Premiereship of Harold MacMillan and bring an end to 13 years of Tory party rule in the 1964 general election.
In the 1963 divorce action brought by the Duke, photos of variopus sexual acts were introduced into evidence. I'll add these dates to the article.
Vivaverdi 17:35, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Who is Barry Drogin??
He is quoted in the article as follows:
- "The conceit of the first act is laughter, and the orchestra develops a language that evokes the varied sound of it. In the second act, all of the homage is swept away, and we are left only with the laughter music, which is actually Ades own musical voice. I think Ades figures that if anyone can't stand it hidden in the first act, they'll leave during intermission. The Dutchess is a kind of mirror Blanche DuBois, rich, spoiled, prejudiced, defined by her sex and her class. Her fame comes not from being rich, or even from sleeping with the servants, but from performing fellatio on them, which was scandalous perversion in 1955. Even in 1995, the young Ades would have found creating an opera around blowjobs to be naughty and titillating, and he delivers a humming fellatio aria (recipient's back to the audience and lights dimmed) that he challenges reviewers to mention. In this post-Lewinsky and gay-conscious world, there is no shock left to mine. Despite all the laughter (the maid gets many forms), the use of drag and falsetto, the playful quotes and homages, even the straight-out 30's song (the program annotator misclassifies it as Cole Porter on drugs, but I fear he is the drug taker), the piece doesn't amuse that much – comedy is hard, and the piece is too sympathetic to its central character." (Barry Drogin)
Does anyone know who he is, and is this a quotation from a publication??
Vivaverdi 19:05, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
