Philip Glass pens Walt Disney opera
NYC Opera commissions composer
By GORDON COX
New York City Opera has commissioned composer Philip Glass ("Koyaanisqatsi," "The Hours") to pen an opera about Walt Disney, to be staged in collaboration with Brit legit troupe Improbable.

Opera, planned to kick off City Opera's 2012-13 season, will be based on Peter Stephan Jungk's German-language novel "The Perfect American." Story imagines the last months of Disney as seen through the eyes of a fictional Austrian cartoonist who worked for him.

Co-founded by the creators of "Shockheaded Peter," which played Off Broadway in 2005, London-based Improbable ("The Wolves in the Walls") recently staged a production of Glass' 1980 opera "Satyagraha" at the English National Opera and at the Met.

Preem of "American" is timed to celebrate Glass' 75th birthday. Before that, the composer's 1976 opera "Einstein on the Beach" will be staged by original helmer Robert Wilson during the 2009-10 season.



Commission was announced by City Opera's incoming general manager and a.d. Gerard Mortier, the current director of Paris' Opera National who will take the reins at City Opera beginning with the 2009-10 season.

Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117993057.html

I can't wait to hear Alberich the Nibelung sing " Schlafst du, Walt Disney, mein Sohn?"

NOTE: I have returned from my deaths’ door sickbed, and with copious thanks to my long suffering spouse who substituted for me. So not unlike Atlas shouldering his globe, I resume my daily burden.

Quiz: Gov. Rod Blogoyevich described the impeachment against him as “ The Fix is In.” Where did that term come from?
================================================
History for 1/29/2009
Birthdays: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Thomas Paine, Oprah Winfrey, William Claude Dunkenfeld known as W.C. Fields, Victor Mature, Paddy Chayefsky, Tom Selleck, Heather Graham, Ed Burns, Greg Louganis, John D Rockefeller Jr., Claudine Longet, John Horsely (1817) the inventor of the Christmas Card-1842*

*Horsley was a Victorian artist at the Royal Academy in London who refused to draw nudes because it offended his morality. This earned him the nickname- Clothes Horsely.

1775-the COCKPIT TAVERN, or BEN GETS his ASS CHEWED- Benjamin Franklin was postmaster general of the American Colonies and was feeling pretty good about his ability to represent his homelands interests in London. He successfully argued the American's opposition to the Stamp Tax in the House of Commons. He offered to pay back exporters who lost money from the Boston Tea Party. On this day he was invited to the Cockpit Tavern for what he thought was a private party. He was ushered into a secret room where he faced the entire King’s Privy Council. The royal ministers spent the next 4 hours dressing him down. Prime Minister Lord North finished by shouting in 70 year old Ben’s face:" Spy, Traitor, Rebel, Thief! " He was fired as postmaster and ordered home to America before they threw him in prison. Ben Franklin entered the tavern a loyalist and left a revolutionary.

1813- Jane Austin’s novel Pride and Prejudice first published.

1820- After spending the last ten years of his long reign as a blind insane shut-in, King George III died at age 82. His son the Prince Regent finally became King George IV. Furniture from this period is known as Regency Period. Americans remember George III as the tyrant of the Revolution, but Britons truly loved their old monarch and his simple family-man tastes. While his German grandfather George II was barely mourned at all, all the Empire lamented the passing of Old Shopkeeper George.

1842- The Republic of Texas authorized the raising of a company of rangers to keep the peace- the Texas Rangers. Stephen Austin had commissioned rangers as early as 1833, but from this date on their regular service began.

1845- Edgar Allen Poe's poem the Raven first published. Nevermore.

1886-In Karlsruhe Germany, Dr. Karl Benz patented the internal combustion engine. To prevent gasoline explosions it utilized a fuel distribution system based on a ladies perfume atomizer spray ( the carburetor ). He called his horseless carriage at first a Motorvagen, but later names it after his partner Godfried Daimler’s daughter, Mercedes.

1891- After the death of King David IV Kalakoua, Lilioukalani was proclaimed Queen of Hawaii. Besides being the last monarch of Hawaii, Lilioukalani composed the song "Aloha-Oi, Aloha-Oi, Until we meet Again."

1920- Walt gets a job. Nineteen year old Walt Disney was hired by a local Kansas City commercial art studio to draw ads for newspapers and slides for theaters.

1935- The first inductees to the new Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown announced- Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Matthewson and Walter Johnson. Hall of Fame dedication ceremony was on June 12th 1939.

1936- Dictator Benito Mussolini lays the first stone of Cinecitta’ Movie Studios.

1943- Fredrich Von Paulus was the commander of the German Sixth Army, now totally surrounded at Stalingrad. The few survivors were huddled in basements in the destroyed city, freezing, starving and being wiped out by superior Russian forces. Paulus and his men prayed for a miracle to save them. This day he heard via radio that Adolf Hitler had promoted him to Field Marshal, with a suggestion that no German Field Marshal should ever be taken alive…..

1957- Patsy Cline recorded "Walkin' After Midnight."


1964- Stanley Kubrick's nuclear comedy "DR STRANGLOVE –OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB." premiered. It was based Red Alert, a serious novel about the nuclear annihilation, that Stanley Kubrick decided to rewrite as a comedy. It's use of hand held camera for action sequences and cutting inspired by the European New Wave ushered in a new style in Hollywood cinema. So, who was Tracey Reed? She played Miss Scott, George C. Scott’s bikini clad secretary and the only woman in the entire movie.



1975- The Weather Underground set off a bomb in the US State Department. They were a violent offshoot of the Student Anti-Vietnam War protest movement,

1977- Comic TV. star of "Chico and the Man " Freddy Prinze (23) blew his brains out. Some said he suffered from a survivor's depression about why he had succeeded in life while all his friends from the Barrio were dead from gang killings or drugs. Family members said that he was just stoned on Quaaludes and was clowning around with a gun.

1979- President Jimmy Carter commuted the jail sentence of Patty Hearst.

2002-THE AXIS OF EVIL- In his State of the Union speech President George W. Bush coined the term " The Axis of Evil". He labeled as charter members Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Iran is a Shiite religious theocracy, Iraq a Sunnite secular fascist dictatorship and North Korea an atheistic Communist state- all with nothing in common and little mutual contact. The speechwriter originally wrote "Axis of Hate" but the Bush people like the Good vs. Evil thing. They also substituted North Korea for Libya because they wanted a non-Moslem power included so they didn’t want to seem biased.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Questions and Answers will resume tomorrow.

Yesterday’s quiz answered below:
---------------------------------------------------------------
History for 1/28/2009
Birthdays: King Henry VII Tudor, Jose Marti, Colette, Jackson Pollack, Claus Oldenburg, Arthur Rubenstein, Ernst Lubitsch, Connie Rasinski, Susan Sontag, Alan Alda, Barbie Benton, General George Pickett, William Burroughs (1855) the inventor of the calculator, Mo Rocca, Elijah Wood is 29

1393- DANSE MACABRE- At a masquerade ball given at the French court King Charles VI 'the mad' and several of his closest friends dressed up as 'wild men' to amuse the court. They had fur and hair attached to their bodies with tar. While everyone was enjoying the capering of these strange anonymous creatures a torch touched their tar covered bodies and the group exploded into flame. While the court watched these beings writhe in agony, one duchess screamed" Oh My God! That's the King!" King Charles was saved when that same duchess smothered his flames in her skirts and petticoats. Another duke saved himself by diving headlong into a vat of Beaujolais, but the others roasted to death. The common people weren't sympathetic. One duke liked to step on your neck while sneering 'Down Peasant!". As his barbecued remains were carried through Paris, people laughed and sang 'Down M'Lord!" Edgar Allen Poe wrote a poem called “Hop Frog” about the incident and Roger Corman put it into his 1964 film- Masque of the Red Death.

1782- The Congress called for the use and funding of the Great Seal of the United States, even though no one had designed one yet. But the British had one and so...uh, we had to have one too !

1829- BURKE & HARE- In the early nineteenth century scientific experiments on cadavers were still outlawed as desecration of the dead so doctors secretly hired grave robbers to get them specimens to experiment on. Burke & Hare were the most infamous of Edinburgh's "ressurrectionists" because they didn't always wait for the subject to die, but murdered them in their boardinghouse. To Burke someone became slang for suffocating them. Doctors and later police became suspicious of the freshness of their specimens and Hare finked on Burke to save himself. On this day Burke was hanged before a crowd of thousands and his body later medically dissected. The notoriety of this case helped pass laws allowing doctors more legal use of mortal remains. Their story was the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's story "The Body Snatcher."

1878- First commercial telephone switchboard.

1902- Andrew Carnegie was a rough crude tycoon with a ruthless streak that saw him ruin his competitors and pay vigilantes to murder his striking employees and their families. But after all the rough and tumble of the Gilded Age business world he showed a new side of his character in retirement. He set up the Carnegie Institute in Washington and resolved to give away the bulk of his $350 million dollar fortune in philanthropic causes like concert halls and orphanages. He was born a Glasgow orphan who grew up laboring in a coal mine. “A man who dies rich dies disgraced!”

1926- Composer Kurt Weill married his Pirate Jenny- Lotte Lenya.

1930- Warner Brothers Cartoons Born. Leon Schlesinger, the head of Pacific Art and Title, signed a deal with several unemployed Disney animators who had left Walt to form their own studio but had been stiffed by their contacts. Schlesinger had connections with the Warner Bros. since he helped them get funding for the 'Jazz Singer'. They create Leon Schlesinger's Studio Looney Toons, in imitation of Disney's Silly Symphonies. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and more result. Schlesinger sold to Warners Bros. and retired in 1943.

1949- The Admiral Broadway Review premiered on television. The one and a half hour comedy review starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. The show was so popular Admiral was swamped for orders for new televisions and ironically was forced to cancel the show to focus on their production needs. The show was revived as Your Show of Shows, one of the great shows of early television.

1956- Young singer Elvis Presley first appeared to television audiences on the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show.

1958- Brooklyn Dodger catcher Roy Campanella paralyzed in an auto wreck. He spent the rest of his life as a spokesman for the rights of the handicapped.

1978- Premiere of Hanna Barbera's the Three Robonic Stooges.

1982- Danny DeVito married Rhea Perlman.

1986- THE CHALLENGER DISASTER- As the world watched the Space shuttle Challenger exploded 74 seconds after takeoff killing twelve crew members. They included New Hampshire schoolteacher Christie McAuliffe who had won the ride in a contest.. It was blamed on defective O-rings in the rocket booster.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Yesterday’s Question: Has there ever been a 'President for a Day?'

Answered: I should have specified ‘U. S. President for a Day’. This also isn’t a job for an amateur apparently. Hello everyone, Pat Sito here. Our fearless blogger is under the weather and asked me to handle ‘history duties’ for a day or two while he recovers. My first foray into trivialand has landed me in some treacherous waters. I didn’t do my due diligence thoroughly enough! Snopes.com neatly blows to bits my bit of trivia. When the time came to take the oath of office after winning the election, Zachary Taylor refused to be sworn in on Inauguration Day 1849 – a Sunday. Taylor and his new Vice-President didn’t want to be sworn in on the Sabbath and delayed the taking of their oaths until the next day. I thought that left David Rice Atchison, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, in charge or “President for a day”. It’s on his grave marker but snopes.com says False!
My deepest apologies to all!
Your humble author TS will be back soon with authentic quiz questions.
Thanks,
Pat Sito

Quiz: Has there ever been a 'President for a Day?'

Yesterday's quiz answered below

History for Jan. 27, 2009

Birthdays-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is 254, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Charles Dodgson-better known as Lewis Carroll, Eduard Lalo, William Randolph Hearst, Samuel Gompers, Jerome Kern, Skitch Henderson, Donna Reed, Bridgette Fonda, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Kate Wolf, Ross Bagdasarian a.k.a. David Seville- creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks, James Cromwell, Mimi Rogers , Keith Olbermann

Today is celebrated as Thomas Crapper Day, when we recognize the inventor of the indoor toilet. Besides making life more comfortable his systems of valves and vents preventing waste odors and germs from re-entering the home. This did a lot to combat disease in the 19th century.

1307- The poet Dante Alighieri got his ass kicked out of Florence. At least being exiled from politics left his mind free to concentrate on his poetry, like the Divine Comedy.

1649- King Charles Ist of England was condemned by trial in Parliament to be beheaded.

1671- Buccaneer Henry Morgan and his pirates cross the Isthmus of Darien and attack Panama City by land. Morgan captured the city despite the Spaniards stampeding a herd of bulls at him. However the attack wasn't much of a surprise and most of the population had already fled with their valuables. I guess a coupla' hundred Englishmen with peg legs and patch eyes growling "Arrr, YoHo, Matey’s!" isn't a common sight in a rainforest.

1888- The first magazine published of the National Geographic Society.

1900- Italian opera composer Guiseppi Verdi died. On his instructions no music was to be played at his funeral.

1918- Warner Bros. Pictures incorporated. The Brothers Warner- Sam Albert, Harry and Jack were the sons of Jewish immigrants who had moved from Poland in 1882 and set up a bicycle repair shop in Ohio. Their first movie was Five Years in Germany. Throughout the 1920’s their little studio survived making pictures with dog star Rin Tin Tin. They called him the Mortgage Lifter, because the profits from his pictures paid their bills. Later they bought Vitagraph and gambled with the new Sound technology. When they made the Jazz Singer with Jolson, Warner Bros became a major studio.

1926- Englishman John Logie Baird demonstrated his televisor system- the first true television image.

1927- Charlie Chaplin’s short comedy The Circus premiered.

1944- WAS WALT A RED? Walt Disney donated money and may have attended a tribute to leftist cartoonist Art Young in New York. Art Young was a close friend of John Reed and Louise Bryant, founders of the American Communist Party. The F.B.I. noted the event was sponsored by the radical socialist newspaper The New Masses and other attendees included progressives like Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway and Carl Sandburg.
Disney was already a founding member of the Hollywood Society for the Preservation of American Ideals, a grouping of conservative Hollywood celebrities meant to counteract the rampant Hollywood Liberals. Disney later became an F.B.I. informant, but like Reagan, it may have been after the F.B.I. reminded him of his attendance at this little soiree'....

1948- The Wireway Company announced the first tape recorder for sale using the new magnetic tape. It cost $150.

1967- Three Apollo I astronauts Gus Grissom (veteran of the third Gemini flight), Ed Young and Roger Chafee died in a flash fire in their capsule. In those days the hatchways were literally screwed on from the outside and there was no way to open it from the inside. The fire occurred during a routine rehearsal probably from static electricity igniting an atmosphere of pure oxygen and feeding on velcro. The three men burned to death while engineers frantically struggled with the hatch. After this episode the future Apollo capsules were fitted with a hatch with exploding bolts. Grissom had once said: “If we die people must accept it. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”

1973- Henry Kissinger and Li Duc To sign the Paris Peace Accords ending U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. President Nixon hailed the agreement as Peace with Honor but the defeat traumatized a generation of Americans and confused the public as to just what the American role in the world really was. Kissinger and Li Duc To won the Nobel Peace Prize for that year. Li Duc refused to accept it because his country was still at war. “if there's no peace, it would be hypocritical to receive a prize for it!" Henry the K didn’t have a problem accepting it and went to Oslo. North Vietnam overran South Vietnam two years later.

1992- Presidential candidate Bill Clinton was denounced by a woman named Jennifer Flowers of having a 12 year extramarital affair with her when governor of Arkansas. He goes on 60 Minutes with his wife Hilary and calls her a liar. Of course we now know they did have an affair, but hey, that’s politics.

1997- First day shooting on the Cohen Bros. film The Big Lebowski- The Dude Abides.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday's Question:
Why is a team of Presidents' or Prime Ministers' officials called a cabinet?
Answer:
In Medieval times, the most trusted kingsmen met with him to talk in secret, in a small enclosed room nicknamed a 'cabinet'. When states went democratic the name for such a privy council remained.

Quiz: Why is a team of Presidents' or Prime Ministers' officials called a cabinet?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 1/26/2009
Birthdays: First Lady Julia Dent Grant, General Douglas MacArthur, Stephan Grappelli, Angela Davis, Maria Von Trapp, Wayne Gretsky "The Great One" is 48, Eartha Kitt, Paul Newman, Roger Vadim, Jules Feiffer, Henry Jaglom, Anita Baker, Edward Abbey, Scott Glenn, David Straitharn, Randy Rhodes, Ellen DeGeneres is 51

404 A.D.-Today is the Feast of Saint Paula, who built the first abbey and monastery where all the monks and nuns wore identical uniform sackcloth, demonstrating that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

1788-AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL DAY.- A small fleet of ships carrying 700 convicts and 200 soldiers and families lands in Australia at Sydney Cove. The aboriginal people met them on the beach with calls of "Warra-warra!" which means "Go Away!" After a century Australians began to form their unique character. The Aussie nickname for British people is Poms or Pommies. This was for the initials printed on British prison shirts POM- or Prisoner Of his Majesty. Another version has it that British sailors regularly picked the pomegranate trees clean of fruit to ward off scurvy.

1865-Despite his Civil War victories General William T Sherman had been criticized for having a hard attitude towards black slaves, This day he answered his critics by issuing his General Order # 15, stating that every freed black American has the right to "40 acres and a mule".

1875- Late at night Pinkerton detectives on the trail of Jesse James threw a bomb into the window of the James family home. The explosion killed Jesse's 18-year-old mentally challenged stepbrother who had nothing to do with the outlaws and blew the right arm off their mother. The James Gang were nowhere near the farm that night.

1911- Richard Strauss’ opera Die Rosenkavalier opens in Vienna. Kaiser Wilhelm was offended by the E.T. Hoffman story about aristocrats sleeping around with servants. He called it "A dirty little play".

1934- Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn bought the rights to L. Frank Baum’s book the Wonderful Wizard of Oz to develop into a movie.

1939- The first day of shooting on the film Gone With the Wind.

1945- The Soviet Army finally liberated the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps. The first soldier to reach the camp was a Mongolian scout on a horse which led one Jewish survivor to wonder if the Nazis now had intended to hand them over to the Japanese! The Russians later hanged Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Hoess in front of the villa in camp he and his family lived in. He was not the Rudolph Hess who flew to London in 1941 and died in Spandau Prison. Rescued survivors include the future Nobel Laureate Primo Levi, and the founder of Commodore Computers Jack Trammel.

1979- Nelson Rockefeller found dead in his office" en flagrante delicto" with Meaghan Marshak, his young female director of the Rockefeller Foundation. His second wife Happy Rockefeller had also been one of his office staff once. The method of the 70 year old billionaire former Vice President's death was an open secret in New York City. I had a friend at art school at the time who was a receptionist for a Park Ave. doctor who was Rocky's physician. She said the paramedics found him with his pants down but his tie still in place. His will left $50,000 and a Manhattan townhouse to Ms Marshak.

1979- The Dukes of Hazard tv show premiered.

1983- the software LOTUS 1-2-3 premiered that helped make IBM’s PC into the most popular business computers in the US.

1984-HELP ME TITO! During the filming of a Pepsi commercial a magnesium flash ignited singer Michael Jackson’s jericurl hair gel causing him 3rd degree burns,

1988- Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical Phantom of the Opera premiered.

1996-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies to a grand jury, the first "first lady" to do so. The only earlier incident that comes to mind for me was in 1862 when a senate committee convened to investigate whether Mary Todd Lincoln was a Confederate spy.

1998- The Japanese town of Ito was attacked by a pack of berserk monkeys, injuring 26.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yesterday Quiz:Composer Phillip Glass is currently writing an opera about the last days of Walt Disney, for the 2011 Season. Has there ever been an opera written before about someone connected to Animation?

The Photographer is a chamber opera by composer Philip Glass that is based on the homicide trial of photographer Eadweard Muybridge. The opera is based on words drawn from the trial as well as Muybridge's letters to his wife. Commissioned by the Holland Festival, the opera was first performed in 1982 at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam.