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The Queen of the Night sequence from Mozart’s “Magic Flute”

The image of the original 1979 poster is a reworking of Henry Fuseli’s 1774 pen-and-ink drawing Dante and Virgil on the Ice of Cocytus.

The film poster, by contrast, was designed by Peter Sis at the request of Milos Forman, taking as its model Robert von Nutt’s poster for the Broadway production (1980). It depicts black hooded figure with outstretched arms and barely visible eyes. Despite its graphic stylization, the composition appears to reproduce the features of a typical Venetian mask, the bauta, consisting of a tricorne hat, a domino cloak, and the mask known as the larva.

My hypothesis is that this aesthetic shift was also influenced by another major Mozart-related event of 1979: Joseph Losey’s cinematic adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In this distinctive opera-film, set in an imaginary Venice, masks play a central role, particularly in the finale of the first act, when Donna Anna, Don Ottavio, and Donna Elvira—having identified Don Giovanni as the murderer of the Commendatore—enter his house in disguise during the ball. In Losey’s film, the masks retain the domino cloak (or tabarro) and tricorne hat, but the traditional larva of the bauta is replaced by a white face with distinctly feminine features. Since the film was released in the United States almost simultaneously with the stage production of Amadeus (Amadeus premiered in September 1979, and Don Giovanni was released inNovember 1979) it is not implausible that it helped shape the visual imagination that would later become iconic.

In Forman’s film, the black carnivalesque figure remains, but the larva is replaced by an original bifront mask depicting the faces of Comedy and Tragedy. This choice appears to invoke the theatre explicitly, not only as the original medium of the narrative (Peter Shaffer’s play), but also as a stylistic principle underlying the entire film, whose events and modes of representation are marked by a pronounced theatricality. In an article published in The New York Times ( “Paying Homage to Mozart”, 1984. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/02/magazine/paying-homage-to-mozart.html.) Shaffer himself stated that the use of masks constitutes a tribute to Mozart, who frequently employed disguises in his comic operas.

I couldn’t help but notice, anyway, that the recent blue ray posters have started to introduce the double faced mask as an iconography: meaning that, in fact, now it is this specific icon mostly associated with Amadeus!

a literary syllabus [x]

how to read now by elaine castillo

a collection of essays by novelist and essayist elaine castillo about the politics and ethics of reading. castillo exposes the inherently colonial premises behind not only the works of many individual writers; but the way reading cultures analyze and canonize works, the tokenizing nature of the publishing industry that fails writers and readers of color, and the unfulfilled promises by bibliophiles and literary institutions to "build empathy" through reading diverse books.

"time in the codex" and "lastingness" by lisa robertson

two essays by poet lisa robertson from her prose collection nilling, both meditations on reading. “time in the codex” is an ode to the sensory and cognitive processes that reading evokes. “lastingness” explores the relationship between passivity and will when it comes to receiving the stories and ideas we read, using the work of hannah arendt to analyze texts by lucretius and pauline réage. 

a history of reading by alberto manguel

alberto manguel (former director of argentina's national library) compiles a history of reading that encompasses the prehistory of books in ancient mesopotamia, the story of the library of alexandria and its influence in libraries that followed, literary societies such as the heian court, book thieves throughout time, book banning in multiple cultures, and the progression of text formats around the world from clay tablets to modern bookbinding.

selections from not to read by alejandro zambra (trans. megan mcdowell)

essays taken from the collection not to read by chilean writer alejandro zambra about the practice of reading, his own evolving reading life, and writing books; mixed with a variety of literary criticism. selections include "in praise of the photocopy," "against poets," "obligatory readings," "traveling with books," and "novels-- forget it."

"how do we read?", "the reading ape", and "inventing reading" by stanislas dahaene

three chapters from cognitive neuroscientist stainslas dahaene's book reading in the brain. "how do we read?" functionally breaks down how our brain understands written words. "the reading ape" imagines how our ability to read evolved by recycling preexisting neural circuits. "inventing reading" explores how languages themselves have formed over time to serve the way we think.

"when robots read books" by inderjeet mani

essay by computational linguist inderjeet mani on ways that artificial intelligence could enhance literary criticism by analyzing classic texts, particularly cumulative corpuses of works. examples of literary AI usage include finding similar character traits, archetypes, and tropes between different books and authors; quantitatively tracking literary trends; and generating timelines and maps of information pulled from narratives. 

"uncritical reading" by michael warner

essay by english professor michael warner which attempts to define what "critical reading" actually is, the beginnings of a history of that practice, its alignment with agency and morality in academic culture, and what the qualities of "uncritical reading" (such as “identification, self-forgetfulness, reverie, sentimentality, enthusiasm, literalism, aversion, distraction") might offer us.

"someone reading a book is a sign of order in the world" by mary ruefle

THIS IS NOT JUST CHROME!!!

Wilhelm pantomime costume design (1890-1910) PNGs, part 5.

Sun postcards compiled by Dick Seeger (1980) PNGs.