What an extraordinary divertissement in the plunge from an exhilarating day with pianists and Rachmaninov experts/enthusiasts in Manchester (more anon) back into work on the script for next Saturday's Martinu 4 Building a Library. I wanted to share the above with the distant beloved and this seemed like the best way to do it.
My gratitude to whoever first posted this on Parterre for giving me such a laugh in the middle of the heavy workload. Usually singing dogs are, well, enough already after ten seconds. But this spaniel is really listening to Maria, trying to match her pitch when he can - and the film-maker, obviously someone with a camp taste in furnishings as well as music, lets it run to the end (do I detect a would-be dizzying homage to the room revolving around Tom Hanks as the aria takes wing?)
Don't get me wrong - I do think the original is an amazing use of an aria in a film, dangerously close to kitsch but that's the point. And this is something else.
You may have gathered that doggies don't have to do very much to make me chortle. We've just been touched by the latest in our fast-growing collection of John Burningham masterpieces, the tale of an ugly mutt with a stumpy tail who found salvation as a cannonball.
The illustrations are High Art, believe me. On now to Trubloff the balalaikaing mouse and Borka the featherless goose.
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2 comments:
David Damant writes
In his series "Our Man in America" P G Wodehouse reports that Mr Ernest Crowley of Watkins Glen, N.Y., has a singing dog, Buster, which he takes to hospitals "to entertain the aged and mentally ill". And if, says Wodehouse, he was lying in bed and a dog came in and suddenly started singing the Jewel Song from Faust, he would shoot straight up to and through the ceiling.
Thanks awfully, Wooster. More jolly japes from that. But I've now watched this film four times and I do find it almost as affecting as La Divina's performance. Immense pathos at her quietest and most beautiful phrase - would have to look again to check which - at which Buddy gives out his only little whimper.
And the major tonality seems to calm our cocker down a bit.
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