Monthly Archives: October 2012

Otello in HD – Moor Murdered at Met

The Metropolitan Opera presented Verdi’s opera Otello for the first time in its HD series. The result was perhaps the biggest disappointment since the HD telecasts started. The fault was twofold. First the sound was poorly  audible for the first half of the performance. It sounded like a radio with the volume turned halfway down. The…


Read the full entry

The Drunkard’s Walk and the World Series

The Drunkards Walk is a book by Leonard Mlodinow which examines the ubiquity of randomness in all things human. As our annual celebration of randomness, The World Series, is now underway another look at the random seems worth an at bat. Baseball is a game where the “best” team often loses to a “weaker” team. It’s rare…


Read the full entry

Pain Management

The Oct 25 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has a Perspective piece – Why Doctors Prescribe Opioids to Known Opioid Abusers – that instructs beyond its immediate content. Written by Anna Lembke, MD, a member of Stanford’s Department of Psychiatry, it deals with one of medicine’s two core purposes, the relief of pain. In the first half…


Read the full entry

Dmitri Hvorostovsky’s 50th Birthday

The Russian baritone was born 50 years ago today in Krasnoyarsk Siberia. To mark the occasion here are some pictures of the singer taken by Robert Cahen. Here’s the baritone aria from Gounod’s Faust to complement the photos. Hvorostovsky – Avant de quitter ces lieux


Read the full entry

L’Elisir d’Amore in HD

The first of this season’s Metropolitan Opera’s TV broadcasts was transmitted around the world today. Donizetti’s Elixir of Love is in my opinion one of the five best comic operas ever composed. The other four are two by Rossini and one each by Verdi and Puccini. Donizetti’s take on comedy tends towards the sentimental whereas Rossini takes…


Read the full entry

Luciano Pavarotti’s Birthday

Today is the 77th anniversary of the great tenor’s birth – born October 12, 1935 in Modena, Italy. To mark the occasion here a few photos of the late tenor take by the renowned photographer Robert Cahen. Finally here is the young Pavarotti singing the first act duet from Lucia Di Lammermoor with Renata Scotto – 1967. Verrano a te


Read the full entry

Giuseppe Di Stefano – Candid Photos

The photos of Pippo were provided to me by Robert Cahen. The one, just below, with the late tenor and his cigarette holder is priceless. Note the gloves.


Read the full entry

Moby-Dick in San Francisco

The dress rehearsal for the upcoming run of Jake Heggie’s new (2010) opera based on Melville’s novel took place at the War Memorial Auditorium on Sunday afternoon October 7. Librettist Gene Scheer has, of course, compressed Melville’s epic of obsession, the sea, and almost everything else into the episodes at sea starting from one week…


Read the full entry

San Francisco Symphony Plays Pärt, Bartók, and Respighi

Last night the San Francisco Symphony presented a program of 20th century music of very different styles under the leadership of the young (born 1976) Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko. The program began with Arvo Pärt’s 1977 composition Fratres. Pärt has reworked this piece many times; the San Franciscans played the 1991 version. The basic structure of work is simple….


Read the full entry

Bellini at the SFO – Photos by Robert Cahen

Here are some photographs of the current production of Bellini’s I Capuleti E I Montecchi at the San Francisco Opera. They were kindly provided by the distinguished opera photographer Robert Cahen.


Read the full entry

Categories

twitter facebook rss