Original Art Sundays (Friday) No. 256: THAIS: MN Opera!

I come and go on Disney stuff. I love the animation and the storytelling is always well-crafted, but sometimes the unsubtle subtext is too creepy for words.
Now and then, however, they get it just right.
There's a number in the animated Hunchback of Notre Dame that sends chills through me. The self-righteously pious Judge Frollo is confessing his obsession with Esmeralda.

His torment and the imagery around sensuality and obsession just captivate me. I found that number to be the best part of that morally haphazard outing.

Spoilers abound from this point on. Read at your own risk.

Pre-show warm-up sketch

This was on my mind as I arrived at Media Night for THAIS. Jules Massenet's 1894 interpretation of Louis Gallet's novel, Thais tells of a sensuous performer, the title heroine, and the Cenobite monk, Athanael, whose obsession with her leads him to attempt the salvation of her soul. Set in Egypt during Roman occupation, the work poses numerous challenges. Staging is complex, costuming is challenging, and most significantly, the title role has a reputation of being one of the most difficult to sing. The roles, especially said title role, are also physically demanding, to the point at which one is exhausted watching the work!
I'm pleased to report that Minnesota's own Kelly Kaduce more than rose to the occasion, in every sense. Her rendition of every theme was achingly beautiful and her physical approach to the role was spot on. I regret that the circumstances of sketching during a dress rehearsal (AKA Media Night) are not conducive to portraiture, so my hasty scrawl does not do her beauty justice.

Lucas Meachem's turn as the obsessed Athaneal was equally moving and profound.  He bought a torment and love to every aspect of the story, from the initial obsession and violation of Cenobite isolation to reform Thais through his own ambivalence as he adopted secular splendor to encounter Thais in that world.
Athaneal's insistence on wearing his hair shirt beneath his camouflage of golden robes, courtesy of the impresario Nacias (also obsessed with the titular heroine), speaks volumes as to who he is and who he must be. The key to drama is the absolute and irrevocable change in values of a character. In that sense, both the principals are classic examples of good drama. Consistent with late 19th Century morality plays, one change arrives too late, as Athaneal learns the converted Thais is dying and resolves that he was wrong to change her soul at the cost of his life.

Thais reflects, in every sense, on the nature of true beauty.

The morality of this work is clearly a challenge for a contemporary audience, as it seems to put piety and the will of a Deity ahead of a woman's self-determination. Perhaps this is a flawed or incomplete reading of the work's complex text. Athaneal truly believes he is putting Thais' best interests at heart as he fights aggressively for her conversion. But isn't conviction true of all zealots? 

Thais dreams as the classic Meditation is exquisitely played.

Once again, MN Opera is remarkable in its staging. Use of transparent/translucent curtains, an angled bed with an impassioned painting on it (!), and delicate use of rains of rose petals and silver shards serve to make the production visually lush. I'm struck by the innovative staging at every new work. Lorenzo Cutuli has earned accolades for this design and its execution. He won the International Opera Award for set design in 2014. If there's justice, he will win again for THAIS. MN Opera is blessed to have him on this production.

As Athaneal and Thais cross the desert to reach the nunnery that is to be her new home, the set is alarmingly sparse. There is only a shiny mound. It took me a minute to realize that the mound was a pile of broken mirrors.

I must write of the impassioned and beautiful dancing that dominates this production. As one of my colleagues from the Black Hat Collective remarked, it felt more like a ballet in spots. This is a compliment. The play within a play model provided wonderful opportunities to explore movement and music. This production took full advantage of them, to my delight.

Usually, just to try to keep balance, I try to find some aspect of a production that was wanting. In MN Opera's current production of THAIS, there is none.  Every facet of the work is impassioned and professional.
Go. I cannot offer any stronger encouragement. This production is beyond language. It will fill and devastate you. THAIS runs 3 hours and 11 minutes, but I was so sorry when it ended.
It is at the MN Opera May 12- 20.

Next: back to the Graphic Memoir.

Original Art Sundays (Thursday) Nos. 218-219: Speedy Recovery, pp. 14 - 15

Before I teach my Comic Book Writing class tonight, I wanted to update the blog. I've had some decent scanning time, at last!
Here are the next two pages of Speedy Recovery and His All-Girl Orchestra.

This page is the text dump. The back story is explained, and the villain's master plan is revealed.
When doing this kind of page, it's important to keep it visually interesting. The top tier deals with the reality of the situation. The second and third tiers are visualizations of the plan, images that support the text. They're also the character's imagination, so quotation marks are used rather than word balloons, though it's still just Toby talking.
The page has curved panel borders, formed by rolling notes. That rolling rubber stamp was just what I needed to make this story what I wanted!
Sidebar: rubber stamps are cool. In the mid-70s, experimental filmmaker Ken Brown did a short done entirely with rubber stamps, called STAMPEDE. I searched for it online, but came a cropper. Brown is still very active, and occasionally there's a retrospective of his film work.
Ahem. Back to the issue at hand.
Info dump is tricky. How much is too much? In general, it's a good idea to treat text blocks like word balloons. Old school comic writing held that no word balloon should exceed a word count of 30. Let's look at that:
Toby, panel 1: 25 words
Toby (offscreen), panel 2: two balloons, 27 words and 18 words.
Teir 2, sonic explosion text: two captions, 62 words and 18 words.
Bottom tier, ruler of the world fantasy: two captions, 21 words and 13 words.
Clearly , the most problematic is the first caption on the center tier. In retrospect, it would have been better to break that up in thirds. The places for the text breaks are obvious- the ends of each sentence- but that poses some layout challenges if the image is still to read uninterrupted.
On to the next page.
 This page requires almost no text. It's just Toby Continued putting the last steps of his mad plan into action. Visually, I wanted the POV of his hands hitting the keyboards followed by a reverse shot of him in action. The intent of the "eye ellipses" was to show the dimensional portal mentioned on the previous page starting to open. I'm not sure how well it works visually. If the notes emanating from it increased in size as they did so, it might have been more visually clear.
The music in Toby's body was fun to do. I took some of my favorite sheet music, twisted it around on a Xerox, scanned and reversed it, then used a light table to find shapes that matched the form needed. Then it was on to the light table with the x-acto knife, followed by some glue stick work! By finding pieces that echoed the form, I added to the dimensionality of that form.
Was there a faster way to do it? Maybe. But as with the rocks, I wanted to do as much hand work as possible. As Charles Schulz said when asked why he didn't use assistants on Peanuts, I don't want to give up that much fun!
Next: more Speedy, as events build to a crisis.

Review: Gentle Giant: The Power and the Glory 5.1 Remix

Considering the vast role music has played in my life, I've usually had sound systems that range from adequate to slipshod. Part of this is my being a technophobe. Part of it is me being miserly about big ticket investments (to this day, I put off buying shoes as long as I can due to the cost of decent ones!). Another factor is that I can't always tell the difference between the moderately priced systems and the high-end stuff.

Currently I'm primarily using a Crosley combined turntable and CD player. I like the look of it and the sound serves. I can burn CDs from LPs. It doesn't kick out the jams the way some of my past systems have, but living in a modest space in a garden apartment, having a compact unit with decent sound is okay.

So in light of that, what business do I have reviewing a 5.1 mix of any album, let alone one as iconic as Gentle Giant's The Power and the Glory?

Well, it speaks to the quality of the work that even on this modest system, the difference is noticeable and remarkable. The instruments are distinct, yet the work retains its cohesion. This doesn't come across as five masters playing their instruments as much as five masters playing TOGETHER. There are some subtle changes, extended intros and exits on certain numbers, and the added instrumental track of Aspirations (a perennial favorite) just shines. This album, which I've heard countless times and revered for over 30+ years, has taken on new life for me. The intertwining vocal lines on No God's A Man are clear and precise like never before, but none of the magic of Giant hocketing is lost.
This album has been held in high regard as much for its lyrics as its complex music. When I saw the booklet containing NO lyrics, I was quite let down. But then I popped the DVD into my player. And there they were, embedded in some (mostly) clever and effective animation of every song on the album!

Ironically, the animation I find most disappointing is the one for the aforementioned Aspirations. By associating the song with a fairly generic family, it loses some of its impact for me. The other pieces are all either animated text and symbols or silhouettes, and the universal aspect of that makes them compelling.
In contrast, my favorite animated bit is associated with the album's original closer, Valedictory. Using simple lines and shapes in appropriate position for each of the instruments, it feels like a performance by an invisible band. Very compelling!
Credit where it's due: the animation was done by Gentle Giant founding member Ray Shulman, who's made a respectable career in sound and DVD production.

A word must be said as regards packaging. The original LP had die-cut top corners, reinforcing the image of the playing card. Sadly, not the case here. Despite a lavish gatefold box for the CD/DVD set (slightly different image on the Blu-Ray DVD than on my plain old one, according to some fellow GG aficionados) and a booklet containing a comprehensive and engaging interview/essay, the the cover was not properly, ahem, rounded. In fairness, that might have caused a great many production issues. There's only been one CD release that actually had the rounded corners, the one on Derek Shulman's own DRT Records a few years back (though the Japanese mini-LP set also, ahem, followed suit). The album does come with a charming promotional postcard, which I'll scan and add to this post when I get home from work I'm happy to post here.

Like many GG fans, I eagerly await the next Steve Wilson 5.1 mix of a Gentle Giant album. I'd love to see him do justice to the group's final album, Civilian, an album I've always held was a neglected masterpiece.

Original Art Sundays No. 139: oddments: surfer and Whoopi

Bit behind on the next page, but fear not.
Haven't posted oddments for a while, so here are a couple older pieces.
First up, a piece intended for an article on surfing.

The central image was back painted like an animation cel, and the background was a Photoshop manipulation of a scan of a Hawaiian shirt.
I was drawing on obvious Kirby influences, and though I was fairly happy with it, the editor didn't care for it.
The decision to violate the image border for dramatic effect worked against me in this case.
Object lesson: what works in comics doesn't necessarily work in editorial art.




Next up, a piece I thought I had previously posted but cannot locate in a quick search: a coquille board of Whoopi Goldberg, something done just to do a portrait.

I've always really liked this piece. There are only a few of my own works that I'd consider framing and living with them, and this is one.
The textures, the facial features, the pose: it all works. There's a strength and a vulnerability to this piece. Coquille board is such a great medium. It all comes together.
Well, except the smoke.
I could not get the smoke to behave the way I wanted it to.
I tried white colored pencil, but couldn't get it to overlay the ink. I considered scratching it out, but I was leery of ruining the work.
I finally decided on white ink, applied alternately with a small brush and a crowquill pen.
Like my Billie Holiday scratchboard portrait, one of the first pieces I posted here, the emotional resonance of the subject matter comes through.
Next week: the Cowgirls ride back.

Marvel-ous Disney?

I would be a bad toad if I neglected to comment on the purchase of Marvel by Disney.
Well, I'm not too sure what to say.
Truth is, the jury's still out on the impact (if any) this will have on creative output from Marvel. I do hope it improves the visual quality of Marvel animation!
But I can't help but reminisce about past similar deals.
DC acquired Captain Marvel decades after suing to prevent publication of the character. And DC became a subsidiary of Time-Warner, allowing for the flawed but interesting Bugs Bunny/Superman teamup of a while back.
Now Disney controls over 5000 Marvel characters, including Howard the Duck, a character over whom Disney once threatened suit. This resulted in numerous alterations to Howard's appearance, some of which were ludicrous. I mean really. Disney cornering the market on round-eyed, ill-tempered ducks is every bit as silly as Harley-Davidson attempting to patent the sound of its choppers, or Donald Trump attempting to trademark the phrase "you're fired", or the greatest irony of all, Fox News attempting to trademark the phrase "fair and balanced."
Well, now Howard is a Disney Duck. It remains to be seen whether he will be welcomed to the fold, or tolerated with embarrassed silence.
However, one can take hope in the crossover of so many copyrighted characters in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? This remains the only time a Warner Brothers toon (Daffy) appears on screen with a Disney toon (Donald).
Of course, that's now also a DC- Marvel crossover! Well, after a fashion.
The bind moggles.
Special thanks to the immensely talented Amanda Zima for permission to repost her wonderful Aurora/Black Cat image!

Wrong in so many ways

Offered without comment, other than to say it's fun.

Bugs Bunny in "Glen or Glenda"

The Princess and the Princess?

Okay, I confess I'm quite excited about Disney's return to traditional feature animation.




However.
Snow White: boy gets girl. Sleeping Beauty: boy gets girl. Little Mermaid: boy gets (fishy) girl. Beauty and the Beast: (fuzzy, scary) boy gets girl. Hunchback of Notre Dame: (handsome) boy gets girl. Lady and the Tramp: boy gets girl.
Okay, that last one is just too wonderful for words.
Great stories all, but isn't there more than one note to played in the symphony of LOVE?
The closest animation has come to gay issues is the Showtime series Queer Duck. There are gay characters in Drawn Together, currently in rerun on Logo, which also has a gay anime' series and Rick and Steve, which is puppet animation a la George Pal.
But it's mostly pretty bad animation. It's what the great Chuck Jones called "illustrated radio", for the most part. Also,most of what is out there is pretty guy-with-guy centered.
There are a great many gay male stories in anime', and much about transgender cahracters, but few lesbian stories. Also, call me a snobbess, but something about the visual style of anime' leaves me cold at times. Not that I don't love Tezuka, but I'd rather read it than watch it.
I like traditional Western animation. And I'd like to see a braver use of the art form.
There are beautiful and sensual stories of men and men, and women and women, and people everywhere on the gender and sexuality spectra, hooking up for physical pleasure, affection and just plain sharing life.
Some studio is missing a bet by not trying to tell a genuine love story about GLBT people in good animation.