I am just listening to Radio 3 and there was talk of an opera about baseball, “The Mighty Casey” by William Schuman.
That surely is the oddest of combinations of art and entertainment, isn’t it?
Indeed, it is odd, but perhaps not as opposite as one might expect =].
Perhaps baseball is not as popular in Europe, as much as Opera isn’t all that popular in American popular culture.
Yet embedded in every game is a dramatic story line, there is an intermission period called the 7th inning stretch in which the iconic “Take me out to the Ball Game” is sung, and there is the protagonist home team, and the antagonist away team, especially if they’re rivals.
In many ways, one could consider Baseball as much of an art as a sport =]
So baseball is the bullfighting of America?
Let’s just hope they don’t follow Catalonia’s example and ban their bullfighting equivalent… (Isn’t Carmen more your everyday opera tragedy and not an opera about bullfighting? In my youth I saw Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dundridge’s Carmen Jones - completely without bulls. A brilliant film. Pearl Bailey was amazing.)
Moreover “Casey at the Bat” is an iconic baseball poem…“There is no joy in Mudville tonight; Mighty Casey has struck out!”
What came first - the poem or the opera?
The poem was published in 1888. The opera, 1953. You can read the poem online http://www.potw.org/archive/potw30.html , and there are several links from the Wikipedia article about the poem to online sound files.
This poem requires a health warning “non-aficionados may experience raised blood pressure when trying to read what they think is an English poem…” Thank you so much for the link. The opera was a flop, this poem obviously not.
For more “torture,” google “Casey’s Revenge.”
Opera on baseball , this theme is a theme very funny, in opera is common the themes dramatic and tragic, I need to see this opera.