Monthly Archives: May 2013

Weekly Video #38

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Today I am posting a video of Ferruccio Furlanetto singing Ella giammai m’amo from Verdi’s Don Carlo because I saw him singing this last night and I think everyone deserves to see this. He is, in my opinion, one of the best King Philips of all time. I will write a blog post about last night soon but I have my summer exams coming up and so I need to revise a lot of the time.

Ideas Requested

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At school, we have a club called G & T that some of us have to go to every week. G & T is meant to stand for Gifted and Talented but because that sounds very snobby, it is more commonly referred to as Gin and Tonic. Anyway, the point of this club is that if you are considered clever, you have to go along and learn how to do stuff in life and how channel your inner genius into something useful. This year, we’ve been learning about public speaking and at the end of this term, in about 5/6 weeks, we have a Formal Presentation Evening. This means that I have to dress up nicely and stand up in front of lots of people and give a presentation about something that I find interesting or inspirational. If you haven’t worked out yet that I am going to do my presentation about opera, then you are probably reading the wrong blog.

Here’s where you can help: I would really love it if anyone has any ideas for ways to make the presentation interesting, any clips I should show, anything in particular I should talk about. The rules are:

  • I have 10 minutes to give the presentation but if I run over by a couple of minutes it doesn’t really matter
  • I will have a PowerPoint behind me so I can show videos clips and photos
  • The audience will be friends of mine and of the other people giving presentations (e.g. teenagers), families, teachers and the Headmaster of my school, along with the two Deputy Heads and the Chaplain. This means that there are some things probably best not mentioned e.g. the plot of Salome or Die Walküre
  • There is to be no mention, positive or negative, of crossover
  • The aim is to teach the audience a little bit about opera and why it is an interesting art form and what I like about it. The “OPERA IS AWESOME YOU SHOULD TOTALLY GO TO SEE AN OPERA YOU WILL LOVE IT” part should be the subliminal messaging
  • Ideally, I will find an excuse to include this picture of Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca:

My vague kind of outline plan for this is: Extremely brief history of opera, explanation about modern-day opera singers and productions (clip of Met Ring Cycle?), new ideas in opera (cinema, new operas being written), why it’s important to me. Any ideas to include will be very welcome!

PS: I will try to post the finished PowerPoint and script on here or even get someone to film me doing the presentation on the evening so you can see how it turns out!