A Sneak Peek!

These beautiful opera glasses were being offered for sale on the website: vintagesparkles.net. They feature a detachable lorgnette handle. Opera glasses were supposed to be compact and convenient for use. These particular glasses actually offer adjustable lenses to focus the picture. Of course it seems like these glasses may have been used to check out the "fresh meat" on display courtesy of the newly debuted women of the rising middle class.

"Happiness is the sublime moment when you get out of your corset at night."- Joyce Grenfell

I found on the Victoriana website this picture of young Victorian ladies dressing themselves. The picture is copyrighted in 1900 and the photographer was William H. Rau.

Good luck trying to sing well in that corset. I often wonder about the particular vocal quality of woman during this time period. There are not many recordings from the Victorian era, but there are from just afterwards when woman still wore this tight corseted clothing. How could they ever have any real depth to their voice when a low breath was virtually impossible? I'm thinking of the fluttery voice of Adrianna Caselotti, aka the voice of Disney's Snow White. Although that was filmed in 1937, tight undergarments were still worn. It seems probable that the light, fluttery voices of females during the early part of the century were related to the corsets that were popular during this time.

Typical Victorian Music Room

This is a photo of a typical middle class Victorian music room from 1890 Arizona. The photo is obviously not from the Victorian era, but the house was preserved and the photo was taken in 2008. This is a room that clearly was of great importance to the family it once belonged to, there was a great deal of care in creating this space; appropriate considering the fact that the piano was such a vital part of the family unit.

The photo is from Flickr-photo sharing from Yahoo and was posted by theellsworth.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/theellsworth/2249886563/in/photostream/#/photos/theellsworth/2249886563/in/photostream/lightbox/

A Picture Worth a Thousand Words

This is a link to an image I found that in my opinion, sums up a great deal of what we have discussed in class, specifically in regard the role of music in the home. I thought it was pretty telling. I'm assuming this is a married couple, the woman is at the piano while the man plays the oh so masculine violin.

This photo is from photobucket entitled, "Black and White Vintage Photography Victorian Edwardian Music," and was posted by niascissorhands.


http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m176/niascissorhands/Vintage%20Pictures/il_430xN129927534.jpg

I found another Victorian blog!

http://unlacethevictorians.blogspot.com/

Very cool. See my latest blog post for the full story, but this blogger has read some of our blogs and found them really interesting!

Small world.

Riders to the Sea

I wanted to share this video and information I found about Ralph Vaughan Williams' opera Riders to the Sea. Though he actually composed the opera after the Victorian era, there is an interesting similarity between Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Irish playwright, John Millington Synge that spills over from our class discussions. Synge held a deep pride for Ireland and wished to write plays that appealed to the people of his homeland and was true to his country. As a young man, he returned home from living in Paris to write about his own country and countrymen. This struck me as very similar to Vaughan Williams as he traveled around England to collect folk songs. He wanted Great Britain to have its own musical sound and for the people to be proud of it. Many critics believe this commonality between composer and playwright is what has made Riders of the Sea so beautiful and Vaughan Williams' most successful opera.

In program notes of a recent performance in Boston of the one act opera, I found this excerpt that I would like to share. Thoughts anyone?

Hugh Ottaway, in writing about Riders to the Sea, imagines it as a metaphor for Vaughan Williams’s life:

"If struggle is called for, then so is resignation: beneath the outward cataclysm of their lives is a strange repose, a tragic faith in a merciful and benevolent God. It is easy to see how this would appeal to Vaughan Williams the Christian humanist; indeed, at bottom, it is a situation in which he, too, has found himself. If, for a moment, the composer be substituted for Synge’s islanders and the sea taken as a symbol of the overwhelming forces in the modern world, then the work will assume its true proportions as a remarkably complete expression of Vaughan William’s character and outlook."

In this video, the mother, Maurya, laments the loss of her only surviving son to the sea- following in the footsteps of her husband, father in law and five other sons. Talk about tragic.

Random Sighting!

I was in the library today, printing off our article for Thursday, when I saw this album cover by the Record Sales table. I just thought it was funny that we mentioned in class today that Borodin was among Russian composers we don't really hear about any more, and then there's a recording of one of his operas sitting in the library! Hilarious, Universe.