Me sing pretty one day

Sometimes the little, stupid things are just too annoying to let pass, especially when there are big annoying things to be bothered by. When I was looking at San Francisco Opera's website this weekend and noted the stupid "this production may contain nudity" blurb on the Salome page, I also noticed the even more stupid "pronunciation-key" that's the first thing one sees when they look beneath the photo meant to get us all excited about the production. But some comments on the Reverberate Hills made me go back and take a look, just because I'm killing some time until Idol comes on and Adam blows the other two gomers off the stage.

Now the idea of the whole correct pronunciation thing is condescending and snooty enough, especially when Die Entfurhung aus dem Serail, La Fille du Regiment and La Fanciulla del West have all been translated into English and their original titles are nowhere to be seen. But what's even worse, is that yes, there is a pronunciation snippet for Porgy and Bess! I didn't go through all of them (I'm not that bored), but the easy ones are all there- Tosca, Faust and Otello. Even Die Walkure gets it's proper pronunciation. Now the ones, that may actually have been helpful, if done in their native tongues (see above)- are all dead links. Click on them and you get- silence. Well, there is a pronunciation for La Fanciulla del West, in English (wtf?) and Italian, even though the window is mislabeled for Faust.

All together now Tos-ca. Oh-tell-oh. Faoost. Very good. Now, say Poor-ghee and Bhess.

Now don't you feel dumb for even trying? Poor thing- you'll be there at the opera and you won't know how to pronounce the name of the show. You bumpkin!

The voice sounds like Kip Cranna's. That's too bad. He seems like such a nice guy. I can imagine him grimacing into the microphone when he had to do this nonsense.

And as of this writing, it still remains to be decided if there will be nudity in Salome. Say-oh-my.