http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=1330 The NewsBiscuit Community en-US Thu, 23 May 2013 01:28:37 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 q http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/search.php http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=1330#post-3677 Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:13:37 +0000 malgor 3677@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p>Oxy, re: post-post edit, when you're logged in, you see the EDIT button next to the # sign, but it's time-limited to a 6-hour window of opportunity. </p> http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=1330#post-3624 Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:52:36 +0000 Ostsee 3624@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p>Katherine Jenkins, you have me going now. Will I ever get to sleep again. </p> http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=1330#post-3595 Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:50:24 +0000 nealdoran 3595@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p>A fantastic rant, I hope to hear the best least-complicated bits sung by a second-rate tenor who your gran would think looks like a nice young man, on a ball-tighteningly bland multi-platinum CD. </p> http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=1330#post-3582 Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:08:53 +0000 curry muncher 3582@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p><blockquote>I think the Rise and Fall of Opera could form the basis of a new musical... </blockquote></p> <p>Andrew Lloyd Webber and Graham Norton will, presumably, be running a talent show to find the lead singer ... </p> http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=1330#post-3580 Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:02:49 +0000 Oxbridge 3580@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p>Thank you kind sir. Can you actually post-edit your stories? I haven't worked it out yet. </p> http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=1330#post-3458 Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:18:21 +0000 malgor 3458@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p>Love it, Oxy (especially the line '...heroines are built like power stations, screeching like doo-lally fishwives?' 'In German?' you might add.)</p> <p>I think the Rise and Fall of Opera could form the basis of a new musical... </p> http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=1330#post-3455 Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:44:29 +0000 Oxbridge 3455@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p>The English National Opera and its counterparts in great cities across the world will all shut their doors for the last time over the course of the next six months. According to industry insiders, this has been caused by the growing consensus that opera is actually unmitigated rubbish that has no chance of ever becoming popular.<br /> “In retrospect, I’m amazed we got away with it for so long,” admitted John Berry, artistic director at the ENO. “I mean, think about it for a second. Bloke’s about to be killed, he stands there singing. Woman has to marry man she doesn’t love, she stands there looking miserable and singing. Couple are blissfully happy, they look at each other and stand there singing. Spotted the pattern yet?”<br /> Whilst acknowledging that some productions continue to play to full houses, Berry and his colleagues have revealed that every opera company in the world is losing money. This, they say, is because the productions are ludicrously expensive, all the performers are overpaid salad dodgers and the whole format is basically tripe.<br /> “It will never take off,” warned Francois Garnier, chief executive of Paris’s Opera Bastille. “Here, in the world’s most romantic city, an art form where the heroes are fat middle-aged blokes and the heroines are built like power stations, screeching like doo-lally fishwives? You wouldn’t even want them to get their tops off. You’re having a laugh mate.”<br /> Added Garnier: “No, not even Katherine Jenkins. Seriously, no.”<br /> Some aficionados have argued that opera has survived for over 400 years from its origins in Italy’s Commedia dell’Arte through the golden years of Mozart and Strauss and enjoying occasional waves of renewed vigour through modern takes on it. However, Herbert Kampfert of the Bayreuth opera house will have none of it.<br /> “I’ve sat through more productions of Wagner than you’ve had hot dinners and it bores the pants off me,” he told reporters. “So some people like opera - well, people are strange, that’s all I can say. Some people like basketball. Some people like being pelted with cream buns by elderly women dressed as nurses. Apparently.”<br /> As the ENO prepares for conversion to a multiplex cinema and a ground floor wine bar, Berry has locked his office and is applying for teacher training. He hopes against hope that his life so far has not been a complete waste.<br /> “I feel terrible for taking so much money off so many people to deliver such garbage for so many years,” he told reporters. “I just hope I can repay my debt to society in some way. Hopefully the Royal Ballet’s next for the chop, that’s shit and all.” </p>