Saturday, March 8, 2014

Barcarolle (Offenbach) P Jaroussky et N Dessay ... The Night-folk, particularly Tomas, also known as Jonathon, love this... 3/7/14

There is good music down below. Tomas, also known as Jonathon has been listening to it all night. He does that sometimes. Leonard Bernstein's CANDIDE is special to him, and so is this one, The Barcarolle from TALES OF HOFFMAN by Offenbach. 

But before I fill you in on things around here, I believe Peter promised to tell you about another bloody and torturous death. And so I surrender the floor to our rather strange and 'evil' elferino, late of the cold, dark sea....

PETER ~ We watched royal surgeons slice thick, wet strips of flesh from the limbs of Magyar prisoners til only the bones were left. Severed blood vessels were cauterized to prevent premature death. Then implements resembling shallow, silver bowls were heated o're a fire for roughly one hundred and twenty, or one hundred and thirty heartbeats til they glowed. Upon removal from the flames, highly trained artisans-of-exquisite-torture, purchased from a Wallachian (European region connecting Hungary and Romania) princling for eight odalisques (sort of an assistant harem girl in training) and and three brand new, never fired, bronze, ceremonial canons filled with fine, Izmiri halvah (sweetened sesame seed paste candy) quickly slapped the concave forms onto what was left of the shoulders and hips of the prisoners til all viscous oozing stopped. Did they scream? No, they were beyond screaming. They just trembled. The youngest prisoner experienced such severe facial muscular contortions an eye popped out. But one of the prima-donna torture artisans snipped it off with a jewel encrusted pair of engraved, golden shears brought from his homeland. I think he dropped it in a big, heavy jar of Long Haired Zanzibar tarantulas, the expensive kind, usually given as gifts. You know Topkapi (the Ottoman Palace) had the best of everything? Oh, in case you're interested, three of the prisoners survived the ordeal and were kept in the Human-Oddity-Menagerie for many years. One fathered six children with the Gibbon-Woman, but I don't think he was close to most of them. 

After that, for dinner, they gave me a rejected French chef, send out from the Court of the Medici in Florence. Punishment for a spoiled Tira Misu. Kindly excuse my spelling. But please know I was locked in a leaden chest for two centuries. Formal schooling wasn't my thing. I remember his blood reeked of brandy and cinnamon. So in a sense, I had desert too. (laughs) He farted the whole time, til he was dead. The other elferinos thought that was funny and would not shut up. But our handlers did not like that and made them eat goons from 'the shitty bin' instead.

Before I forget, here's how the mice kill people... STEP 1- Strip down a babbling, terrified prisoner. (You'll find most torture recipes begin this way) 2- immediately shackle to large table top in spread eagle position. 3- put approximately one dozen alert, bright-eyed large mice in a heavy gauge metal bowl. 4- cover bowl with light weight bread board, of a type used to remove pizzas from a pizza oven. 5- quickly flip over and rest upon terrified prisoners belly. 6- slowly pull out bread board, taking care not to let mice escape. 7- glue edge of bowl to living flesh with heavy weight mixture rendered from stunned draft horses and screaming Bessarabian captives. 8- beat prisoner about arms, legs and other sensitive areas while adhesive cures. 9- heat two or three egg sized lumps of coal. 10- arrange on up-turned bottom of heavy gauge  metal bowl. replace frequently as coal cools. 11- after ten minutes rising temperatures inside the bowl reach stifling levels driving rodents into frenzy. 12- in effort to flee searing, lethal heat, vermin quickly chew through skin, subcutaneous fat, muscle wall and into viscera. 13- death ensues soon after..... If clean-up happens in timely manner, before mice exit torso, mess and fuss is kept to a minimum...... They say the Romans started this one.

MEANWHILE BACK AT THE TOWNHOUSE - Tomas tells Billy and Sarah that the name of the piece means 'Beautiful Night. Night of Love.' ... He's in one of his melancholy moods. They haven't found Pig Blood Annie's grandbaby yet. Little Joe, her husband, sits around making angry faces at everybody and moving his dentures around with his tongue. Edith says if Pig Blood such a good witch, how come she can't grow him no new teeth?

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I think the guy singer down below is what they call a counter tenor.. very good and really big in the opera world. the girl singer is his equal in every way, except she has different genitalia. I subscribed to this account on you tube. You should GOOGLE Barcarolle(Offenbach) P Jaroussky et N Dessay on You Tube and follow them too.... weird and wonderful... hauntingly beautiful voices...


OK, now cue the music (bet you listen to it more than once)~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~