Tom Allen of CBC Radio 2�s Music and Company is insidious. He remarked that the show-stopping tenor aria La donna � mobile sounded tricky to sing because you could so easily slip into It�s Howdy Doody Time.
AAAGH!
Now, I dislike Verdi’s La donna � mobile to begin with. Apart from being derogatory towards over half the planet’s population, it ranks up there with the opening movement to Beethoven�s 5th Symphony, Mozart�s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, and Mendelssohn�s Wedding March from A Midsummer Night�s Dream. They�re all overplayed, and as a result I can�t stand them. I can appreciate their genius, the mastery over the medium and all that, but the fact that people never get past them to discover other wonderful examples of symphonic or chamber triumph bothers me. What also rots my socks is that it�s a closed loop � people like them so the music gets played a lot, and because it gets played a lot people assume it�s good and like it.
Sigh.
So now, whenever I hear La donna � mobile, on top of gritting my teeth, I�ll have to think of Howdy Doody. Brr.