Sunday, October 7, 2018

MUSIC IMPOSSIBLE TO SKATE TO: Queen of the Night Aria

Some music is just impossible to skate to. Other music just grabs you and you see in your mind's eye every movement in a flash.

The Queen of the Night aria, from the Magic Flute by Mozart (NOT the Whitney Houston song) does not generate any choreography when I listen to it, even though it is one of my favorite arias.

I'm going go through the points that make it non-skatable, for the instrumental version first.

The first two minutes of the aria lacks sustained triumphant or dramatic phrasing such as you find in the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth (allegro con brio).  You need this phrasing for quick drama of the jumps and the sustained flow of the landing. The dramatic phrasing in the Queen of the Night aria is in the last minute of the aria. In the aria, although there is drama in abundance, it's too quick for jumps and lacks the kind of rhythmic pacing needed for footwork.

This is a showpiece for a coloratura. It's quick and meant to show off a voice. To my opinion only the last minute is okay for a program, but  it's so fast it will be jerky with no time for sustained skating.


Okay, that was the instrumental. But this is a voice piece, an aria. The showiness is in the voice. The voice carries the drama, the instruments are just to show the voice off.

Below, is the divine Diana Damaru with the Royal Opera, giving one of the best dramatically sung and acted Queens in opera. No.way.to.skate.to.this.


I'd like to make a personal comment about performance. Opera is fulsome with great costumes. I LOVE this costume. Cut the skirt down to dance length and I think it would make judges applaud. I have no idea what I'd skate  in it to, but there you are; this dress is worth a couple of days of stoning.

Also, opera is weird. I'm surprised no one's reproduced the Whitney Houston costume for Queen of the Night, because it would fit right in. And you could skate in it (although I do worry about the bead in spins and jumps).

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