After Aida
After Aida (original title: Verdi's Messiah) is a 1985 play-with-music by Julian Mitchell. It is about Giuseppe Verdi, and the pressure put upon him after his attempt to retire from composing. Continued insistent prodding from his friends eventually results in one of his greatest masterpieces, the opera Otello, which premiered in 1887.
Background and inception
Brian McMaster, managing director of the Welsh National Opera, commissioned the play, originally as a vehicle for the company's touring season to far-flung Welsh towns with smaller theatres than the average opera house. McMaster initially asked Julian Mitchell, author of the hit play-turned-film Another Country, to write about the backstage life of an opera company. Mitchell, although he had been an opera fan in his youth, knew little about this milieu when he began working on the project.
In the course of his extensive research, however, Mitchell happened on "Boito and Verdi", the final chapter in Frank Walker's biography The Man Verdi. This was a dramatic situation that immediately appealed to Mitchell—"a great artist going through a crisis, brought back to composition after a long silence, and finding himself a substitute prodigal son in the process"—and he took it as his subject matter.
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After You Die
by: Tom WaitsLike a tin can feeding
like a skinned hand bleeding
like a tramp choir crying
like a camp fire dying
like a big dog breeding
like a pig hog feeding
like a top hat tipping
like a dropped rat skipping
like a tin horn glowing
like a gin storm blowing
like a neck tie flapping
like a rich guy clapping
like a big fool crawling
like a rig tool falling
like a back door squeaking
like a crack whore tweaking
what is it like?
what is it like after we die?
like a string that´s brocken
like a thing that´s smoking
like a blue flame burning
like a new brain learning
like more cold coffee
like a poor old softie
like a declining graveyard
like a shining brave star
like a child that´s fainting
like a wild ass painting
what is it like?