Thursday, September 20, 2007

Diacriticism Notes

AHHHH.. and kurde moll, what is the problem with the Polish words searches? Surely, there must be some ASCII issue that has so far prevented me from finding articles on people we like that just happen to have fancy Polish consonants in their names. (Mine is plain vanilla, luckily).
I am referring to two giants opera-dom, an established one- Ewa Podles (now officially websited) and upcoming one: Mariusz Trelinski, yes, trannylicious, or dark and drab as they see him. The buzz over his Boheme (ahh, Metro Weekly did notice the couch!) is getting louder.
But important spelling issues remain; it should be: Ewa Podleś & Mariusz Treliński.
The Goddess and the Gifted Troll. He is not ugly per se, but it does have a cultivated artistic skunkiness going in his general look.
Diacritic marks are sadly necessary for us; there is no option of writing them out in combination, as it is with German umlauts. But take a name like Podles, assuming it is even in nominative form and try searching Polish mags archives. Total mess...
... but here is the reason I was fuming about this issue: it's only now, after running some proper Treliński searches, that I dug up an interview (Polish link here) titled- ohhhhhh! - "I was born for Don Giovanni"! In which he speaks at lengths about a project that will end up taking two years of his time, the movie, a collaboration with - yes!- Marc (Boski) Minkowski: the Don Giovanni movie. The basic idea: Don is actually killed by Commandatore, and all that follows is just feverish imaginings, a "confrontation of his own myth". Interesting. Very interesting. Please, let's get it made AND available for us to see! After net gimmicks, and a year or so after it was premiered, where the heck is Kenneth Branagh's Magic Flute? Certainly not in cinemas near us, nor on DVD. I know it was actually made with a purpose of NOT making money. Let's hope the Trel-Mink Don movie, in the great tradition of the other Don classics, is a smash hit, DVD special editions, Oscar dripping Amazon best-seller. Just bring it on already!

No comments: