Here at Balladeer’s Blog I love sharing my enthusiasms. My blog posts where I provide contemporary slants to Ancient Greek Comedies to make them more accessible have been big hits over the years, so I’ve been trying it with operas, too. Previously I wrote about how Philip Wylie’s science fiction novel Gladiator could be done as an opera. Then I looked at how an opera version of the 1966 Spaghetti Western Django could be done and then an opera based on the novel Venus in Furs.
This blog post starts a look at how the original Dune novel could be done as an entire cycle of operas. If you’re not familiar with the story it is set over 20,000 years in the future, when humanity has colonized many Earth-like planets.
DUNE
LANGUAGE: Spanish. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that most of my fellow English-speakers find English-language operas to be silly. The prosaic nature of the forced rhymes in a language we are well-versed in does seem to rob opera of its mystique and its grandeur.
SINGERS: Two Baritones, two Bass-Baritones, two Sopranos, one Mezzo-Soprano, four Tenors, a contralto and a Bass.
ACTS: FOUR ACTS
STORY: My fellow Dune geeks may get annoyed with this change, but remember, adaptations for staged performances have to be made very tight. I would start out at the Arrakeen Great Hall as the family and court members of House Atreides have just arrived on Arrakis/ Dune, the desert planet. All the scenes that the book covered while the Atreides family were preparing to depart their home on Caladan would instead play out shortly after their arrival on their new planetary fiefdom. Continue reading
BIDEN HAS KIDS IN CAGES (like during Obama’s and Trump’s administrations). Oh, that’s right, anti-Trump fascists never really cared about kids being in cages, they just wanted to use those kids as a political stick to attack Trump with. Now those hypocrites are back to not even pretending to care about such things. Anti-Trumpers apparently won’t complain about Joe Biden’s kids in cages. 
For Flashman Down Under, Flashman in the Opium War & Flashman and the Kings click 
The duo enjoy diving into the darker and more forbidden side of life where sex, booze and other diversions are concerned. Flashman happens to be with Burton in Egypt in early 1853 when the famous explorer begins his journey to Medina and Mecca disguised as a Muslim. 
I consider President Trump the best president for the working class and the poor during my lifetime. Here’s a take from a true working class heroine. Mary Harris Jones, the legendary labor organizer from the 1890s onward, also known as “the Miner’s Angel” and “Mother Jones,” spoke to Balladeer’s Blog yet again, despite being dead since 1930. 
BB: I admit the stench from Washington, DC is amazing. “Draining the Swamp” as it were, demonstrated the depth of corruption and outright criminal activity the Democrats and Republicans are responsible for. It took a de facto Third Party President like Trump to peel back the curtain. 
MJ: First off, President Trump is like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR was looking out for the working class and the poor, so rich fat cat scum tried to destroy him like they’re doing with Donald Trump. They even tried the noted Businessman’s Coup plot against FDR. 
THIRD, President Trump is like that Robert Redford fella when he played Brubaker! Like Trump, Brubaker was trying to clean out a virtual sewer of corrupt officialdom. Even if the scumbags fighting Trump oust him, it will be like the ending of Brubaker, when the prisoners – or American citizens in Trump’s case – gathered around to pay him respect. 
NICK CARTER IN PRAGUE (1978) – This film seems to like to hide from the millions of Nick Carter fans in the world by also going under titles like Adele Has Not Had Her Dinner or Dinner With Adele. I originally planned to review this movie last year but the passing of actor Robert Conrad prompted me to review his telefilm The Adventures of Nick Carter instead. 
The approach is wry and knowing but without stooping to the overdone camp of 1975’s Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, starring Ron Ely. Nick Carter in Prague is often labeled a comedy but don’t go into it expecting laughs, just lots of smiles like during Dick Tracy or Tim Burton’s Batman. It’s more “comedy” as in whimsical fantasy touches, not hard belly laughs. 
Remember when the following Democrat slogans were intended by me as humor? Well, the Democrats are proving they’re worse than any of us imagined. WE NEED THIRD PARTIES!
Dennis Quaid aka Furious DQ is the subject of this list of brief film reviews. Ignore Buzzfeed reports that Dairy Queen (DQ) is partnering with Balladeer’s Blog to sponsor a Dennis Quaid Film Festival in Rio. In fact, you should just ignore ALL Buzzfeed reports, period, at this point. 
THE BIG EASY (1986) 
GREAT BALLS OF FIRE (1989) 
*** I WAS PLANNING ON GOING TWO OR THREE WEEKS WITHOUT MAKING A BLOG POST ABOUT POLITICAL ISSUES BUT THE DEMOCRATS REFUSE TO STOP WITH THEIR HATE-FILLED AND DIVISIVE ANTICS. Yet, being Democrats, they simultaneously make with hypocritical lectures about “unity.” 
Many times over the years, Balladeer’s Blog has recommended Gab for people tired of the heavy-handed abuses by Techno-Fascists like privileged white male Jack Dorsey and his ilk. 
And, if you haven’t had enough laughs so far from Democrats – yes, DEMOCRATS (LMAO) pretending they care if the U.S. government got overthrown after five decades of telling us the U.S. government is the greatest menace/ terrorist threat in the world, below is a great bit yesterday from Gab about TWITTER LOSING 4 BILLION DOLLARS IN ONE DAY.
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