Gaddafi e Mobile

An opera about Libya's Moammar Gaddafi is in the works. Guitarist Chandrasonic of the band Asian Dub Foundation is working with the English National Opera to produce it. "The fact is, Chandrasonic told BBC radio, Gaddafi "is frightening but fascinating, the way he has pushed himself onto the world stage." Opening night is scheduled for sometime in 2006.

Comments

[joe]

Quick Robin!...

[PapayaSF]

The opera should certainly include Gaddafi's "Libyan Rocket" car:

http://www.finalcall.com/international/1999/oau9-21-99d.htm

[The Lonewacko Blog]

If life were a sitcom, Moammar would be the wacky dictator next door.

[joe]

Papya, I try to be absurd, but I just can't keep up.

[tom]

What's next - Fidel Castro impressionist paintings.

[Mo]

I was playing Trivial Pursuit with my roommates last night and there was a question about who wrote a book about a love story between a peasant girl and some prince (or something equally contrived). The writer of said love story? Saddam Hussein. I almost shit myself. Who would've thought he had the soul of a poet.

[Douglas Fletcher]

"Opening night is scheduled for sometime in 2006."

Jeez, I gotta run out and get a 2006 calendar so I can pencil it in.

[R C Dean]

Just so they keep his hot bodyguard chicks in the designer camo. Behave, baby!

[e]

Anyone else remember Robert Wilson's "The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin?"

[Ken Shultz]

I'm into a lot of different things, but I consider Opera the highest form of art. Part of its magic is that it happens in a magical world; a world where people sing dialogue. A male, thirty something, American football fan of the 21st Century can understand what it feels like to be a young, jilted mail order bride even when those feelings are filtered through an Italian composer born in the 19th Century writing lyrics in a romance language about Japanese culture. But when you bring characters from the real world into the magical world of opera, be it Gaddafi, Nixon or someone else, you loose that universal quality. Brooks achieved a comic effect by placing beautiful lyrics in the mouths of Nazis, but that was the effect he wanted. I'm trying to imagine what kind of recitative Gaddafi could sing that wouldn't make people laugh.

I know there are operas inspired by real people and real events, and that they worked really well, but the people of Puccini?s day weren?t familiar with Tosca, for instance, as a real person. Even if they knew the story, it was like a fairy tale to those in the know, and it certainly was like a fairy tale to those in the audience. I?m no great composer myself, I?ve learned to live with the fact that I?ll always be a consumer rather than a producer of art, but I'm not sure Puccini could accomplish the same success with the story of Jean Benet Ramsey or Lacy Peterson or Gaddafi. If Puccini were alive today, he might have written an opera about the tragedy of the royal family of Nepal that happened a few years ago. The royal family of Nepal was real, but their true story is like a tragic fantasy.

[Kevin Carson]

Didn't the Russians produce a comic opera about Clinton and Lewinski a few years back?

[Chris]

I recall reading an interview of Chandrasonic in Guitar Player magazine, three, four years ago ... he came across as the most pompous, condescending twit you could ever imagine. Wish I could find that issue, because his posturing was almost hilariously fatuous. He argued, among other things, that Jimi Hendrix was "not a guitar player" and that his guitar technique was in fact irrelevant to his art, etc.

[Fred Gillette]

Chris, Is that right? You gotta post that one.

[IShouldBeWorking]

"The royal family of Nepal was real, but their true story is like a tragic fantasy."

I'll bite. What happened? Run-in with a Yeti?

[Ken Shultz]

IShouldBeWorking,

A couple of years ago, the Heir to the throne of Nepal asked his parents, the King and Queen, for permisson to marry the love of his life, but they refused to give their blessing because she was Indian. In response, the Heir to throne went on a shooting rampage, killing both the King and the Queen, and all his brothers and sisters. The palace spokespeople wouldn't confirm that it was the heir that did it, anyone from the palace is prohibited from speaking against the sitting monarch, but as I recall, and my memory is a bit fuzzy on the details, someone in the palace either did the Heir in for his crime or the Heir finally killed himself.
With that, the entire royal family was wiped out.

The monarch sitting on the throne of Nepal now is a either an uncle or cousin to the heir, and the resulting instability is what the communist rebels in Nepal are exploiting now. Doesn't that sound like something Puccini would write an opera about?

[Douglas Fletcher]

>> Anyone else remember Robert Wilson's "The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin?"

An early Fox network sitcom, wasn't it?

[Ken Shultz]

I should have just provided this link:

http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/south/06/01/nepal.palace.shooting.03/

[Douglas Fletcher]

Maybe in the background they could have a massive chorus of silent people representing all the billions in the world who didn't care one whit about what the Nepalese royal familiy was going through.

Am I a cruel bastard, or what?

(I hope you will excuse me -- I live in Phoenix and my air conditioning went out about 4 hours ago. Yikes.)