A 190 pound Maria? I bet you could put Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno together on a scale and barely reach 190 pounds.
The music is still great, and I wish I could listen to it, even if I might close my eyes.
Next time you hear someone raving about how wonderful “Hamilton” was, ask them to hum their favorite melody from “Hamilton”…then ask the same question about “West Side Story”.
Wow! That clip from the original musical was worth the price of my subscription. I've never been a big fan of musical theater (although the movie version of Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum is one of my all time favorite flicks) but that's some world class singing and dancing!
Just to get it off my chest: I’ve always hated WSS. It represents to me the birth of identarianism and American race obsession. Americans have separate races for people us Australians can’t even tell apart. I hated the pointless effeminate dancing and hoped all these dreadful characters would stab each other as soon as possible so decent people could go home.
But there’s an element of cussedness in my attitude I must admit. I loathe it partially because of the people that (ostentatiously) like it; Citizen Kane is probably not nearly as dire as I’m tempted to think it is by the wankers who bore on about it.
I OTOH love West Side Story because I had the broadway cast album on an early pressing "Columbia 6 eye" LP and didn't see the inferior film version until years later. I don't like any other broadway musical especially, though I love a lot of movie musicals.
While Bernstein is gay by the Andrew Dice Clay definition, it is worth noting that he was married to a woman for 27 years until he became a widower and they had three children. Also worth noting is that as gay men both Laurents and Sondheim lived into their 90s
Have always loved West Side Story, wonderful music. A bizarre choice for an opera, in my opinion. The primary pleasure of the show on stage is the choreography.
At my suburban Catholic high school, the Jets were played by the Irish and Polish kids while the Sharks were played by the Italians.
That line about the poor deracinated whites who never had the brains or character to move on up out of the city (or was it the bad neighborhood?--but what made it bad?) got me thinking about a bizarre leftard hypocrisy--that some races can't be expected to do better.
So Ricans living the in the "inner city" is wonderful, but whites living there is so underperforming that they deserve contempt rather than sympathy? Or the implicit assumption that arabs cannot be expected to behave like civilized people but Jews should be, if anything, super-civilized (act like they live in Sweden surrounded by other Scandinavians).
Or that America should give away its manufacturing because, as of the late 20th century, if a white man is earning a living with his hands, something has gone terribly wrong. Logic and human nature require that antiracism always circle back around---through obfuscating contortions---to racism.
Opera singing is boring. I have an untestable hypothesis that in the past it was as exciting as our contemporary music but time, study, formalization, and reverence stripped it of everything but athletic technique. If you can sit through three hours of that, your tush is better than mine.
I love the original broadway soundtrack because it's exciting, audience pleasing and modern.
I would relish the opportunity to look through a time machine and see how future musicologists and publicly funded rock foundations (you know, charities that put on rock shows in 2245 AD) blandify Led Zeppelin, The Clash, and The Talking Heads.
And what is wrong with the 1967 Richard Harris and Venessa Redgrave version of Camelot? It’s at least decent. I know, Harris couldn’t sing, but the buyers of McArthur Park didn’t care and neither do I.
A 190 pound Maria? I bet you could put Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno together on a scale and barely reach 190 pounds.
The music is still great, and I wish I could listen to it, even if I might close my eyes.
Next time you hear someone raving about how wonderful “Hamilton” was, ask them to hum their favorite melody from “Hamilton”…then ask the same question about “West Side Story”.
Life in America sure seems a lot better for women than the men in this song.
Wow! That clip from the original musical was worth the price of my subscription. I've never been a big fan of musical theater (although the movie version of Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum is one of my all time favorite flicks) but that's some world class singing and dancing!
Just to get it off my chest: I’ve always hated WSS. It represents to me the birth of identarianism and American race obsession. Americans have separate races for people us Australians can’t even tell apart. I hated the pointless effeminate dancing and hoped all these dreadful characters would stab each other as soon as possible so decent people could go home.
But there’s an element of cussedness in my attitude I must admit. I loathe it partially because of the people that (ostentatiously) like it; Citizen Kane is probably not nearly as dire as I’m tempted to think it is by the wankers who bore on about it.
Upvote for sheer and perfectly distilled cussedness.
I OTOH love West Side Story because I had the broadway cast album on an early pressing "Columbia 6 eye" LP and didn't see the inferior film version until years later. I don't like any other broadway musical especially, though I love a lot of movie musicals.
> four gay Jews
While Bernstein is gay by the Andrew Dice Clay definition, it is worth noting that he was married to a woman for 27 years until he became a widower and they had three children. Also worth noting is that as gay men both Laurents and Sondheim lived into their 90s
Have always loved West Side Story, wonderful music. A bizarre choice for an opera, in my opinion. The primary pleasure of the show on stage is the choreography.
At my suburban Catholic high school, the Jets were played by the Irish and Polish kids while the Sharks were played by the Italians.
That line about the poor deracinated whites who never had the brains or character to move on up out of the city (or was it the bad neighborhood?--but what made it bad?) got me thinking about a bizarre leftard hypocrisy--that some races can't be expected to do better.
So Ricans living the in the "inner city" is wonderful, but whites living there is so underperforming that they deserve contempt rather than sympathy? Or the implicit assumption that arabs cannot be expected to behave like civilized people but Jews should be, if anything, super-civilized (act like they live in Sweden surrounded by other Scandinavians).
Or that America should give away its manufacturing because, as of the late 20th century, if a white man is earning a living with his hands, something has gone terribly wrong. Logic and human nature require that antiracism always circle back around---through obfuscating contortions---to racism.
Opera singing is boring. I have an untestable hypothesis that in the past it was as exciting as our contemporary music but time, study, formalization, and reverence stripped it of everything but athletic technique. If you can sit through three hours of that, your tush is better than mine.
I love the original broadway soundtrack because it's exciting, audience pleasing and modern.
I would relish the opportunity to look through a time machine and see how future musicologists and publicly funded rock foundations (you know, charities that put on rock shows in 2245 AD) blandify Led Zeppelin, The Clash, and The Talking Heads.
And what is wrong with the 1967 Richard Harris and Venessa Redgrave version of Camelot? It’s at least decent. I know, Harris couldn’t sing, but the buyers of McArthur Park didn’t care and neither do I.