Re:sound #68: The Big Show Show

This hour: the Rockettes, the opera, congress, and other spectacles.

Backstage With the Rockettes
by Dean Olsher and Emily Botein ( The Next Big Thing , 2004)
Manhattan has plenty of icons: the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the Broadway marquee. But come December, there's really only one show in town: the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular, featuring fireworks, a flying santa, an indoor snowfall, and of course the world-famous Rockettes.

The Tristan Mysteries: The Five-Hour Mystery
by Amy O'Leary and Limor Tomer (WNYC, 2007)
Opera, by its very nature, is synonymous with extravaganza: the huge voices, the sweeping music, the epic story-lines, the performance that lasts hours. Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, a five-hour opera, is no exception and it has one of the most colorful histories around.

Tristan und Isolde Act 1
by Ed Herrmann (2007)
For someone who doesn't like opera, there is nothing worse than sitting through Wagner. For those who just can't take it, here's act one of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in three minutes, plus a summary of the action.

What Brought Down the House
by Brendan Greeley (2004)
In our country, one of the biggest shows around is a constitutionally mandated annual spectacle starring one of the biggest actors around, the President of the United States. Each year he (or she) is required to give a State of the Union address to Congress. In 2004, producer Brendan Greeley decided to do a brief analysis of the address to see what kind of sentiment got what kind of response.

Saturday Night Klein
by Sean Cole ( Weekend America , 2007)
One of the hottest tickets to one of the longest running shows in New York is absolutely free. All you have to do is wait in line. Louis Klein usually arrives at the line for standby seats to Saturday Night Live by Friday afternoon. The tickets are given away at 7 AM the next morning. And he's pretty used to the all-night sitting. He's been waiting on the line since the show was popular enough to merit a line.

This episode of Re:sound was originally produced by Roman Mars.

All the shows in this episode are now defunct - to find out what these producers have been up to since we first aired the show, read their producer bios below.

Image by ChrissyJ