{"id":359,"date":"2009-08-01T23:40:49","date_gmt":"2009-08-02T03:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/curculio.org\/?p=359"},"modified":"2009-08-02T01:19:31","modified_gmt":"2009-08-02T05:19:31","slug":"a-stereotypical-canadian-in-rossini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/?p=359","title":{"rendered":"A Stereotypical Canadian in Rossini"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I saw for the first time Rossini&#8217;s first opera, the one-act farce <em>La Cambiale di Matrimonio<\/em> (<em>The Bill of Marriage<\/em>). It is set in England, and the most amusing character is the Canadian Slook, who has crossed the Atlantic to pick up his mail-order bride. The DVD version I saw, directed by Michael Hampe and conducted by Gianluigi Gelmetti, puts Slook (Alberto Rinaldi) in a delightfully primitive Canadian costume. He arrives on a cold day dressed in furs and carrying a gun in one hand and a pair of peacepipes in the other:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.curculio.org\/Slook1.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Once inside he takes off his fur coat and hat to reveal a buckskin jacket with fringes, plaid shirt, and something that looks like a more elaborate version of a bolo tie:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.curculio.org\/Slook2.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>How much of the costume is implied in Rossini&#8217;s score (1810) and how much is the director&#8217;s idea (1989) I do not know. I can heartily recommend the recording, which is well-sung, well-acted, and pleasingly free of Eurotrash pretensions. It is included in a very reasonably-priced <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Rossini-Early-Operas\/dp\/B001IMFHU2\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=dvd&#038;qid=1249188219&#038;sr=1-1\">box set<\/a> of four early one-act operas. I bought it for $20.99 a few days ago, though the current low price on Amazon Marketplace is $24.25 new. Not bad for four delightful works in one package. On the other hand, the picture of the composer on the box may deter some buyers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I saw for the first time Rossini&#8217;s first opera, the one-act farce La Cambiale di Matrimonio (The Bill of Marriage). It is set in England, and the most amusing character is the Canadian Slook, who has crossed the Atlantic &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/curculio.org\/?p=359\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":363,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}