Word: opera
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...territory. Tilting the Plates emphasizes the musicality of poetry rather more than his previous collections, while taking as its core a love story between two shape-shifting Hindu deities. Like those beings, the poet also enjoys inhabiting different avatars. At literary festivals from Adelaide to Edinburgh, Wong, a trained opera singer, has been known to "invoke Whitney Houston," belting out renditions of I Will Always Love You that leave stunned fellow authors wondering how they are going to follow on. If straitlaced Singapore is unhappy about being represented by charming camp like that, well, you could call it poetic justice...
...China's Ring Cycle The Kunqu opera The Peony Pavilion is one of the greatest masterpieces of all time [Nov. 5]. What a curiously mistaken notion that "witnesses to such a grandiose relic should worry less about falling asleep and more about slipping into a coma." I was lucky enough to see Chen Shi-Zheng's full 19-hour production and Pai Hsien-Yung's nine-hour production of the opera. Each time, when the performance ended, I wanted it to start all over again. Such is the power, beauty and fascination of Kunqu opera, even to a Westerner...
...Even fashion magazines carry serious book reviews, and the Nov. 5 announcement of the Prix Goncourt - one of more than 900 French literary prizes - was front-page news across the country. (It went to Gilles Leroy's novel Alabama Song.) Every French town of any size has its annual opera or theater festival, nearly every church its weekend organ or chamber-music recital...
...ways. Their government spends 1.5% of GDP supporting a wide array of cultural and recreational activities (vs. only 0.7% for Germany, 0.5% for the U.K. and 0.3% for the U.S.). The Culture Ministry, with its 11,200 employees, lavishes money on such "high-culture" mainstays as museums, opera houses and theater festivals. But the ministry also appointed a Minister for Rock 'n' Roll in the 1980s to help France compete against the Anglo-Saxons (unsuccessfully). Likewise, parliament in 2005 voted to designate foie gras as a protection-worthy part of the nation's cultural heritage...
Miel récolte sur les toits de l'Opéra de Paris (honey harvested on the rooftops of the Paris Opera): A limited supply is available at Fauchon's Place de la Madeleine store...