Before Christmas, I wrote something about Kay Nielsen and in that piece I mentioned an old Disney Project that never was: the famed Musicana, a sort of new version of Fantasia that would have had music from around the world. It was a beautiful project and you can read all about it here. Some of […]
Well, it’s around three o’clock on my blog’s clock, which for some reason is set on London time, and we’re approaching the moment when the oldest ladies would fall asleep. I am one of the oldest ladies. But I kept you company so far, and we’re missing just one pieces in our exploration of the […]
On this long, long night of stories, I would feel bad for leaving out the Russian dance, so here we are. It’s not one of my favourite pieces, so I’ll most likely be brief. 3. The Nutcracker Piece by Piece (5) 3.5. Russian Dance: the music The Russian dance featuring in the Nutcracker is technically […]
Between the Chinese and the Arab Dance, both the Nutcracker Suite and Fantasia place another dance, the Dance of the Flutes or Dance of the Reed Flutes. Let us go back to them, though, and then all we’re missing is the Russian Dance and the Waltz of the Flowers. 3. The Nutcracker Piece by Piece […]
I hope you guys are not expecting to have a story each hour for the whole night, because that’s not going to happen. Still, the Arab Dance dance was one of my favourite pieces when I was a child, I was a bit of an orientalist, so I felt bad to close the night without […]
Edit: for some reason, this article became quite popular. The comment section is closed, but you should read this: it’s a comment from a Chinese-American reader, drawing the attention to the cultural controversy surrounding this particular piece, which is still staged in a very harmful way. An addictional section on the article summarizes my answer […]
In few days time, for our Sunday story, I will publish something about Disney’s Fantasia and, in particular, something around The Pastoral Symphony, originally intended to be a more obscure mash-up between a French ballet and a Russian opera. It is only fair, however, that I dedicate another post to the most Christmassy piece of […]
Quando parlate di Mussorgsky, non è improbabile che la reazione del prossimo possa essere quella di Gollum in They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard (“What did you say?”). A quel punto potete tentare varie strade, ma la più efficace dovrebbe essere citare la Notte sul Monte Calvo, e in particolare la sua apparizione (non nell’arrangiamento […]