Philip Glass meets Walt Disney’s dying days. If anything sounds like a great start for a rich psycho-operatic stew, this is it.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
Live from the Teatro real in Madrid, we get the premiere of The Perfect American today at 2 p.m. (Eastern) via medici.tv — a performance that will be available for free on-demand viewing for a a while afterward.
Here’s the official description:
The Perfect American is a fictionalized biography of Walt Disney’s final months. We discover Walt’s delusions of immortality via cryogenic preservation, his tirades alongside his Abraham Lincoln talking robot, his utopian visions and his backyard labyrinth of toy trains.
Yet, if at first Walt seems to have a magic wand granting him all his wishes, we soon discover that he is as tortured as the man who crosses his story, Wilhelm Dantine, a cartoonist who worked for him, illustrating sequences for Sleeping Beauty. Dantine fascinated by the childlike omnipotence of a man who identifies with Mickey Mouse desperately seeks Disney’s recognition at the risk of his own ruin.
Walt’s wife Lillian, his confidante and perhaps his mistress Hazel, his brother Roy, his children Diane and Sharon, his close and ill-treated collaborators, and famous figures such as Andy Warhol, all contribute to the opera’s animation, its feel for the life of the Disney world.
You’ll find all the details here.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
