Monthly Archives: March 2013

Tutto Verdi: Oberto

Oberto Conte Di San Bonifacio was Verdi’s first opera. Its premiere was at La Scala on November 17, 1839. Oberto’s modest success was sufficient to earn its composer a contract to produce three more operas for the Milan theater. Before going further, a word about what books on Verdi are, in my opinion, best for someone who wants…


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Lubbock Symphony Orchestra Video

The video below give a good picture of how good Lubbock’s premiere arts organization is. The Lubbock Symphony Orchestra would be outstanding in a city 10 times our population. Here it verges on the miraculous.


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A Nap at Opera – II

“Sleep – the opera was invented for no other purpose.” The opera being performed at the time the remark was made was Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable. Alexandre Dumas – The Count of Monte Cristo (It’s 1838 at this point in the novel) Interestingly the opera was recently revived at London’s Royal Opera House apparently without much success.  


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Chopin Nocturne Op 27 No 2

For the most beautiful 77 bars in music listen to Chopin’s spectacularly beautiful Nocturne Op 27 No 2. Written in 1836 when the composer was 26 years old. It’s like a sigh from heaven. The pianist is Arthur Rubinstein. The piece show why Chopin, despite essentially being a miniaturist, was one very greatest composer since Orpheus….


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Tutto Verdi

This is 200th anniversary year of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth. To mark the occasion Parma’s Teatro Regio has released a 30 DVD set which presents videos of the master’s 26 (none of the reworked operas is included) operas and his requiem mass. The pdf file below gives the particular’s of this mammoth collection. Almost all the operas…


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Metropolis Elektro at the LHUCA

Fritz Lang’s silent movie epic with an original soundtrack was performed live to two sold out audiences on March 22 and 23 at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts. The music was written by Scott & Amy Faris. The film was the opening work of the 2013 Flatland Film Festival. Metropolis is a landmark in the history…


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Haydn Violin Concerto: 2nd Movement

If you had any doubts that Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) was among the handful of the greatest composers the slow movement of his Violin Concerto #1 in C should erase them. The reading below by violinist Andras Agoston has a long cadenza near the movement’s end. The video of the entire concerto with Joshua Bell…


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Head Start as an Heuristic For Medical Students, Treatment of Strokes, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

For more than 25 years I have used the Head Start program to teach medical students data analysis, how to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of treatment regimens, and how belief commonly trumps evidence. This process usually followed the recommendation of a course of treatment by a consultant to a patient who was on a general medicine service…


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Francesca da Rimini in HD

Riccardo Zandonai (1883-1944) wrote 13 operas only one of which roams the outskirts of the standard operatic repertory – Francesca da Rimini. The Met telecast the opera today as its penultimate HD presentation of this season. The opera’s libretto is a shortened version (by the publisher Tito Riccordi) of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s tragedy of the same name. The…


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Earl’s Oil – Photographs

On Friday March 8 my friend Earl allowed me and another friend to accompany him as he made his daily rounds. Earl is an oilman. He started in the business when he was 17. He’s a lean and taciturn West Texan except when he sees an oil well – then he recites the well’s life…


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