La Belle et la Bête

What made me happy today? Seeing the Philip Glass ensemble perform the filmopera 'La Belle et la Bête' (the Beauty and the Beast).
In early December 2012 a friend sent me and some other friends an email to see if anyone would be interested in going to see this. I didn't need to give it much thought. This would be the first time in seven (!) years the Philip Glass ensemble would do a performance of this piece, live none the less!
I absolutely love Philip Glass! I play my favorite Philip Glass cd at least twice a week. For those of you wondering which one of his vast body of work it is, it's Solo Piano. I'm not going to do a bio on him here, the Wikipedia page does a pretty good job. I came across Philip Glass' music a long time ago, through my piano classes. He has a very specific sound, and is often used in tv shows, movies and so many other things.
I actually lost track of him until I was watching the 'Valley of Darkness' episode from Battlestar Galactica (re-imagined series, very good tv!). In the scene where Starbuck and Helo sit in Starbuck's appartment she plays some music. It's a piece from Philip Glass' Solo Piano. And I was hooked once more :-) Long story short: I love music, I love Philip Glass.
So yesterday I finally got to see and hear 'la Belle et la Bête' live. Philip Glass himself did a 25 minute introduction, explaining how and why he composed this opera, using Jean Cocteau's 1946 film. Impressive process to say the least. He even had to get the rights not to use the original soundtrack and dialogue. Cue general laughing by everyone in the audience. But after his little talk he finished by saying: ' Just forget everything I told you and enjoy it'.
I have to say, there is something in the whole concept of re-doing a movie's spoken parts and soundtrack with an opera. Blew me away. It was amazing! The music was so very recognizable as Philip Glass. If you're familiar with his work, you'll know what I mean.
Granted, the movie is from 1946, so one scene in particular made me cringe. Belle sees la Bête for the first time and promptly faints. I know, old movie, but still.
But oh, the music, the singing. The vocals were spot on, I got goosebumps on more than one occasion. The singers and musicians of the Philip Glass ensemble put so much feeling into it. And a big tip of my hat to the conductor, Michael Riesman. Keeping an entire ensemble in sync with a movie is a tough job. He regularly had to adjust the pace a little bit to make sure everything and everyone was in sync. How I loved every minute of it! And before I knew it, it was over. Minute long applause ensued, well deserved!
One minor point though: the opera singing technique sometimes made it hard to understand what was being sung, but I always have that problem wjhe listening to opera. And apparently, so do the friends I went with.
So I'm going to leave you with this for today: if you ever get the chance to see this perfomance, buy a ticket and go see it. Mind you though, the whole thing is sung in French. But even if you don't understand French, you'll get what's going on.