Allegra Lenkeit // Elpis (h8texpectations) wrote in forgotten_gods, @ 2010-02-09 14:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | allegra lenkeit, sleipnir |
there is a part i can't tell // about the dark i know well
Who: Allegra Lenkeit & Sleipnir
What: The Underworld Excursions (Pt. I)
Where: Limbo --> Underworld (Norse)
When: TBA
Why: Life is a journey, but we all end up in the same place—dead.
The thing was you knew where you were with Wagner.
The Italians--well, the Italians were pretty. Allegra loved Italian opera, everyone in her family did. It wasn't expected as much as it was traditional. Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, they were family. Allegra liked Scottish affairs too, Lucia di Lammermoor and Macbeth, and the nautical yarns like The Flying Dutchman or Billy Budd. But bel canto displays were the soundtrack of Allegra's childhood and, whatever the consequences or circumstances, she would always be more than a little obsessed with the genre.
She just didn't always trust it.
Pretty was...nice. Often pretty evolved into beautiful, into meaningful even. But there was always a liquid element of interpretation in Italian opera. It was as if most arias had an unmentioned extra piece that a daring soprano to tweak.. And if you were a soprano who not only dared but had the pipework to back it up--well, you could do a lot more than tweak.
But you couldn't pull that sort of play with Wagner. Especially if you were a soprano. Part of it, Allegra knew from a strictly professional perspective, was the notorious "soprano problem" of mispronunciation. It was an age-old trouble: sopranos, with their more-oft-than-not "delicate" voices tended to mispronounce lyrics when singing powerfully in the top half of their range. Allegra still remembered being thirteen and reading Berlioz's 150 year old warning that sopranos "should not be required to sing many words on high phrases, since this makes the pronunciation of syllables very difficult if not impossible.”
She always thought Berlioz was a bit of a prick, really.
It was odd, she supposed, to be thinking of that now. Here. Wherever, or whatever, here was.
She didn't know how long she'd been...here. Mostly because every time Allegra tried to stop and focus, to think of where she was exactly, things got muggy. Her thoughts softened and spoiled, unraveling. It was pathetically easy to fade out and sink back into the timeless lightless warmth that hovered on the edge of her abused consciousness. Like stepping back into the stage wings. It was easy, peaceful--and it scared the hell out of Allegra.
(Because in the back of her mind, she knew. Knew this wasn't a dream or a hallucination, or a bad trip. Knew what the cold meant, what the darkness was, what was happening--what had happened.)
So she sang.
No easy stuff, no lullabies, no powderpuff trills or cooing show pieces. Allegra threw her voice forward like a shot. She skipped Mimi and Amina, and aimed straight for Rings.