53. Mozart: La Clemenza di Tito
atelier ying, nyc.
Please view on black.
This opera holds a lot of sentiment to me. Growing up with Elton John as a young teen I was not ready for the sudden (or so it seemed to me) change to punk rock, but that is the nature of progress. It really sank in when a schoolmate asked me why I was still listening to "kiddie tunes". That snide ill-intentioned remark and other factors sent me one day on a fact finding mission to the Lincoln Center Public Library. There by chance I found a large LP set of Mozart's final opera. I knew nothing, which allowed me to make the worst choices yet with a silver lining. My original intentions were :
1. Hear only Mozart's most popular and fun opera
2. Listen to the very beginning and if it wasn't easy sounding and pleasant, forget it.
3. Base all my opinions about Opera on this one-minute audition.
Of course everything backfired for me, with a silver lining again.
La Clemenza di Tito was Mozart's final work, written in haste while he was ill, in heavy debt, distress and while he was trying to clear it off the docket in order to write what he felt he really had to complete, his requiem, which he never did finish. In this respect, this much overlooked and criticized Opera Seria was his "real" requiem.
When I settled into a phonograph booth in the library's listening room, I made two wonderful mistakes (more mistakes!) : Never having used a record player I placed the needle close to the very end of the last side of the album set, thinking I was playing the opera from the very beginning. Thus, the last 2 minutes of the finale to La Clemenza di Tito, Mozart's very last pen strokes, rocked my 16-year old world, a real taste of Grand Opera just a mere 100 feet away from the actual stage of the Metropolitan, and I have never ever turned back since. I was an avid Opera fan for eight memorable years at the Met, I still know the sequence of arias of the first act of La Clemenza by heart.
My homage and design to Mozart focuses upon his famous tender meeting with Marie Antoinette, when they were both children. As the child prodigy he would play piano duets with the future Empress in the coming years. The design proposal is based upon the premise of an Apotheosis so we must balance the spiritual with fanfare: Mozart and Marie are united in spirit within an intimate courtyard of a cloister which is enclosed as a coliseum, the creation of the benevolent Roman Emperor Titus. The scene is to be quiet and marks the peaceful end to the noble lives of all three personages by the sundial at the very center of the entire structure.
As a side note, Marie Antoinette's inclusion in this design is prophetic as clemency played a large role at her own trial at the end of her life. Just as Mozart's opera, she was also denigrated by the masses yet history later recognized her in a more fair light.
This camera design gives the colosseum exterior an upgrade with faux aluminum cladding and a set of tiny art galleries a la the Guggenheim inside. In the same spirit as the Emperor Titus opening the arena to the public in order to increase his popularity, the rental income from all the galleries should also bring in funds for future projects. The cladding should last millennia but is not earthquake proof.
To me, a camera without additional experiences inside it, is a kind of waste. The "live" view of the LCD screen is a colosseum-like focal event, as is the perspective experience of the viewfinder (meant here only as a simple targeting tool) which seems to herald great events to be taking place soon. From he second interior eyepiece at the location of the Emperor's entrance one can view the intimate gathering of the principals at the fountain where traditionally monastic reflection and spiritual replenishment occur within the cloister. Surrounding the couple are statues of great musical composers in the coliseum's upper level, both before and after Mozart's time. The Lumix M4/3 has an uncoated Cooke Kinic 1-inch f1.5 lens to make dreamy portrait photographs.
There is ample storage space to hold miniature exhibits for related historical figures like Marie Antoinette's children and the Sun King in the multiple galleries in the interior of the colosseum. A simple relic of the actual colosseum and of St. Cecilia the patron of music are easily obtained for display inside this camera's compartments.
This Design drawing & descriptions are copyright 2013 by David Lo.
53. Mozart: La Clemenza di Tito
atelier ying, nyc.
Please view on black.
This opera holds a lot of sentiment to me. Growing up with Elton John as a young teen I was not ready for the sudden (or so it seemed to me) change to punk rock, but that is the nature of progress. It really sank in when a schoolmate asked me why I was still listening to "kiddie tunes". That snide ill-intentioned remark and other factors sent me one day on a fact finding mission to the Lincoln Center Public Library. There by chance I found a large LP set of Mozart's final opera. I knew nothing, which allowed me to make the worst choices yet with a silver lining. My original intentions were :
1. Hear only Mozart's most popular and fun opera
2. Listen to the very beginning and if it wasn't easy sounding and pleasant, forget it.
3. Base all my opinions about Opera on this one-minute audition.
Of course everything backfired for me, with a silver lining again.
La Clemenza di Tito was Mozart's final work, written in haste while he was ill, in heavy debt, distress and while he was trying to clear it off the docket in order to write what he felt he really had to complete, his requiem, which he never did finish. In this respect, this much overlooked and criticized Opera Seria was his "real" requiem.
When I settled into a phonograph booth in the library's listening room, I made two wonderful mistakes (more mistakes!) : Never having used a record player I placed the needle close to the very end of the last side of the album set, thinking I was playing the opera from the very beginning. Thus, the last 2 minutes of the finale to La Clemenza di Tito, Mozart's very last pen strokes, rocked my 16-year old world, a real taste of Grand Opera just a mere 100 feet away from the actual stage of the Metropolitan, and I have never ever turned back since. I was an avid Opera fan for eight memorable years at the Met, I still know the sequence of arias of the first act of La Clemenza by heart.
My homage and design to Mozart focuses upon his famous tender meeting with Marie Antoinette, when they were both children. As the child prodigy he would play piano duets with the future Empress in the coming years. The design proposal is based upon the premise of an Apotheosis so we must balance the spiritual with fanfare: Mozart and Marie are united in spirit within an intimate courtyard of a cloister which is enclosed as a coliseum, the creation of the benevolent Roman Emperor Titus. The scene is to be quiet and marks the peaceful end to the noble lives of all three personages by the sundial at the very center of the entire structure.
As a side note, Marie Antoinette's inclusion in this design is prophetic as clemency played a large role at her own trial at the end of her life. Just as Mozart's opera, she was also denigrated by the masses yet history later recognized her in a more fair light.
This camera design gives the colosseum exterior an upgrade with faux aluminum cladding and a set of tiny art galleries a la the Guggenheim inside. In the same spirit as the Emperor Titus opening the arena to the public in order to increase his popularity, the rental income from all the galleries should also bring in funds for future projects. The cladding should last millennia but is not earthquake proof.
To me, a camera without additional experiences inside it, is a kind of waste. The "live" view of the LCD screen is a colosseum-like focal event, as is the perspective experience of the viewfinder (meant here only as a simple targeting tool) which seems to herald great events to be taking place soon. From he second interior eyepiece at the location of the Emperor's entrance one can view the intimate gathering of the principals at the fountain where traditionally monastic reflection and spiritual replenishment occur within the cloister. Surrounding the couple are statues of great musical composers in the coliseum's upper level, both before and after Mozart's time. The Lumix M4/3 has an uncoated Cooke Kinic 1-inch f1.5 lens to make dreamy portrait photographs.
There is ample storage space to hold miniature exhibits for related historical figures like Marie Antoinette's children and the Sun King in the multiple galleries in the interior of the colosseum. A simple relic of the actual colosseum and of St. Cecilia the patron of music are easily obtained for display inside this camera's compartments.
This Design drawing & descriptions are copyright 2013 by David Lo.