Okay, here’s a revised version of the text, incorporating verification and corrections based on web searches. I’ve focused on factual accuracy and clarity, while preserving the original author’s voice and style as much as possible.
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But don’t listen to me: heed the wisdom of John Cage: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then 16. then 32.Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all”.Classical music? #notboringatall.
Disco dancing with the opera GOATs
Actors dressed as the great masters of Italian opera – Verdi, Puccini and Rossini – perform during the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Milan. photograph: Matthias Hangst/Getty Images
Further evidence of that essential non-boringness came on Friday’s opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo,when the gigantic heads of rossini,Puccini,and Verdi danced to the strains of the Euro-disco classic,”Vamos a la Playa” by Righeira,at the San Siro stadium. Given that Rossini invented disco, they should have just used his music: listen to the offbeat strings and drums that pound throughout the Cum Sancto Spiritu fugue from his *Petite Messe Solennelle* – one of the “sins of my old age”, as Rossini put it – and hear what I mean. and as for the chooons of Verdi and Puccini, which have never needed any apology in Italian culture for being part of everyone’s birthright, they’re popular music in every possible sense. Imagine the same thing happening in Britain: effigies of Britten, elgar and Purcell rocking out at the opening ceremony of the next games we host? I can’t quite see it. alas.