Monthly Archives: November 2019

Akhnaten in HD

Thirty five years after it was written, the Met staged Philip Glass’s opera Akhnaten for the first time this month. Today it made its way to the movie theater as part of the company’s HD series. Glass is a leading member of the minimalist school of music. My understanding of this school is that it…


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Norma – Animal Version

The short video below depicts a snippet of the Guerra Chorus from Bellini’s Norma. For more details about the piece read the entry in the Vimeo Blog. The video was produced by Bloom Pictures.


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Die Tote Stadt in Munich

Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s music is being played with exponentially increasing frequency. This past Spring La Scala mounted a production of the composer’s most well known opera Die Tote Stadt. It featured Klaus Florian Vogt and Asmik Grigorian in the two leading roles. In my view the former displayed an undersized tenor for what is one…


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Three Quotations

The following speaks for itself. GK Chesterton was 6-4 and weighed 286 pounds. Chesterton: To look at you [GB Shaw], anyone would think a famine had struck England. Shaw: To look at you, anyone would think you had caused it. Next from a review of the movie Ford v Ferrari. Christian Bale may be the…


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Giuseppe Di Stefano Video

Below is a video made by the late tenor shortly before he was beaten senseless by unknown assailants as he was exiting his car near his home in Kenya. The attack was in 2004; the singer never fully recovered and died in 2008. Di Stefano’s prime coincided almost exactly with that of Maria Callas with…


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