| || opera, offer, simmer, banner, roam Rome.
Image from the Internet.
The opening poem contains all the words (or variations of them) from today's Jumble.
Comments are welcomed!
Do not explicitly reveal any of the actual answer words until after closing time, but embedding them surreptitiously in comment sentences is encouraged.
Opera is an Italian plague
ReplyDeleteThat spread across all Europe.
Foreign words make plots vague,
And voices like simmering syrup.
What banner does opera offer,
That makes it seem desirous?
It makes the hoi-polloi suffer
As from an aural virus.
But makes the hoity-toity
Feel magniloquent and smart,
And so they roam adroitly,
Proclaiming Rome's great art!
Wow, Owen, your poem is completely contemptuous of opera. Though I'm not all that familiar with opera, I hope that's just fantasy and not your real opinion. You are awfully good at coming up with poetic viewpoints just for the sake of a story, and I trust that's what this is, yes?I
ReplyDeleteThe jumble itself was amazingly easy, easier, I thought, than Monday.
Easy but I did jot down the letters. Pretty humdrum pun.
ReplyDeleteI think Owen's saying that he'll take Gilbert and Sullivan over Puccini.
America has Porgy and Bess as our opera. Opera has a libretto that perhaps the buffs are familiar with prior to the show itself.
And when the fat lady sings you can wake up Owen and Wilbur and head home
. WC
I love opera, and took no offense at all from Owen's funny poem. Wonderful to just breeze through all four Jumble items, and when I got the solution at first glance, it cracked me up. How cool that you posted all those great pictures to let us r___, well, wander around Rome, Owen. I loved the cartoon, not only for the different outfits and hair and ages and personalities of the tourists, but also their divergent comments. Lots of Jumble fun this morning.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy opera on PBS -- they caption it in English! Otherwise, blech. And Wilbur is correct, I do love Gilbert and Sullivan!
ReplyDeleteI quite understand wanting to understand lyrics, but the truth for me is that I don't really enjoy storytelling via song, whatever the language. But I know there are many who do, and that's fine. Musical theater has been popular for so many centuries that my indifference to it is clearly just a personal preference.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I do enjoy the music, in isolation from the story.
ReplyDeleteBtw, I delayed doing the Sunday 6*6 but carried it around today. I finally got all six and the words MORE TRAFFIC. However...
ReplyDeleteI had BEAVER for #1 sauf VERBAL. So the best I could come up with was ABIDE MORE TRAFFIC.
Which in a way matched Owen's poem.
WC
Funny--I had "Roam more" as my solution. Still think it fits the caption better.
ReplyDeleteI love much of opera, but certainly not all. Like most deprived American kids I was raised in ignorance of the form--even after I chose Theater as my life's work. The person who turned me around was my secretary. When I became the artistic director of a professional rep company in my early 30s, I quickly discovered that my older female secretary was a real opera buff. Like a teenager she would swoon over Franco Corelli. But her taste was broader than her matinee idol; she loved ALL Italian opera. Every summer she would travel to the great opera houses and send me postcards and programs. She got me to see Corelli at the Met in La Boheme, and I was hooked.
Yes, you do study the stories in advance.
Later I expanded to Wagner on my own. That took a while, but it was worth it.
I'd hate to think I might have lived my entire life in ignorance of grand opera.
I never had the temerity to direct it, although I did stage two G&Ss, one at UCI and one professionally.
~ OMK