On Weathertop Aragorn sang the tale of Luthien (the elven-maiden who loved a mortal man) for pages and pages; and, as I recall, they let him sing a bit of it in the movie as well. I think he does more singing overall than almost anyone else in the books. And if the Aragorn-Arwen stuff isn't operatic, I don't know what is.
As I said-- all depends on how it's done; no pressing need for it, but no intrinsic cause for dismay, either.
posted by Jacob T. Levy at 5/31/2003 04:11:00 PM
I guess the first part of my move is visible to whoever's looking my way, so I'll post it here: Sandarkar dodges into the spreading cloud of fog.
posted by Jacob T. Levy at 5/30/2003 03:24:00 PM
Well, that all depends on who does it. Lots of musical adaptations of other things are really wildly misbegotten; but lots of them end up surprisingly good. Opera's taught me that the most unlikely things can be turned into song and dance numbers. And, really, the range of raw materials for good musicals has been as broad as the range of source materials for operas. Looking throuhgh the list of past Tony nominees: Shakespeare, Shaw, the Old Testament, the New Testament, the hooker wives of Argentine dictators, a classic gothic novel, a classic epic novel, a dark dramatic movie about the friendship between a gay prisoner and a political prisoner in a Latin American jail, a frickin' James Joyce short story...
And it's my impression that really awful musicals have become fewer and further between, that producers have been exercising more of a homogenizing-but-useful quality control function. (Did "Batman: The Musical" ever come to pass? I remember extended discussion of it at one point.)
posted by Jacob T. Levy at 5/30/2003 02:51:00 PM
Oh, I dunno. Remember how many songs are in the books to begin with. The big multi-LP set of "Tolkien reads the Lord of the Rings" that I had as a kid was practically a musical already. (Not that I recommend that they keep the professor's own compositions for his songs.) On its face a musical LoTR is less implausible than, say, a musical Les Miserables.
I don't especially see the need for any new stage adaptation just this minute; it'll will almost certainly suffer, badly, by comparison to the movies. But that's a question of timing, not of taste.
posted by Jacob T. Levy at 5/29/2003 08:37:00 PM
[move sent in to Scott]
Y'know, several weeks ago-- when I first laid out my plans for this night's actions, which might have taken me all night and made me miss these festivities-- I had to ask Scott whether the next morning I'd've heard anything about the previous night's confrontation.
I'm now guessing that the answer is 'yes.' Disappearing acts...
"You have... given the Shire something to talk about for nine days, or ninety-nine more likely..."
"Mr Butterbur... reckoned, very probably, that his house would be full again on many future nights, until the present mystery had been thoroughly discussed."
posted by Jacob T. Levy at 5/29/2003 05:54:00 PM
Acavel urgently grabs Bishop by the shoulder, putting full persuasive force into the following.
Acavel: My friend, a gross injustice is about to take place, and some peril to your sister besides. I beg you to go speak a message to Kray. Say just this: 'A web was being spun 'round the orcs; they were nearly trapped in it. They saw their danger, thought the woman was a threat to their plot, and provoked her.'" Tell him that once everyone is peacefully gone from this place and in custody, Master Sandarkar will come to him. But Drusilla and the others must go into the custody of Dukes' Men, not the town guard; he mustn't let them be held against the debt to the bar. The stolen gold should stand for surety to the bartender, until the investigation's complete.
posted by Jacob T. Levy at 5/25/2003 12:09:00 PM 
Saturday, May 31, 2003
