Monthly Archives: July 2020
Finale 24 – La Forza Del Destino
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st July 2020Verdi started to threaten to retire before he was 50. After composing Un Ballo in Maschera he said he was done and that the life of a gentleman farmer was to be his for the remainder of his life. In 1861 he was approached by the great tenor Enrico Tamberlick, acting as an agent for…
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Einstein, Insanity, and Models
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th July 2020“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” This quotation attributed to Einstein, was said by him (if he really said it) in the context of quantum mechanics, where doing the same experiment repeatedly does give different results. But in the macro world the same experiment properly performed does give…
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The Met Must Cancel Wagner
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 24th July 2020The Metropolitan Opera has recently sent two of its biggest stars down the wormhole – James Levine and Placido Domingo. Before we get to the big enchilada, the subject of this piece, there are lesser players whose memory must be erased. Enrico Caruso, he was a fanny picher and was arrested and fined for the…
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Verdi Otello Kaufmann
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd July 2020Jonas Kaufmann sang the title role Otello for the first time in 2017. The venue was London’s Royal Opera House. Antonio Pappano conducted then as he does on the CD of Verdi’s masterpiece issued earlier this year by Sony . Both tenor and conductor seemed to have a slightly tenuous grasp of Verdi’s penultimate opera…
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No Lives Matter
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st July 2020Unless Netflix and Amazon Prime has drowned out any exterior information, you are aware that much of life has been canceled. My thesis is that this activity which used to be confined the the Post Office (it was canceled decades ago) has not gone far enough. From my jaundiced vantage point it seems clear that…
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The False-Positive Panic over COVID-19
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 16th July 2020The title above is that of an article by me published today in the Mises Wire. It deals with the problem of false positive tests for COVID-19 that will be found if a large population is tested which has a low prevalence of the virus. It also deals with the issue of frequent tests of…
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Rossini String Sonatas
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th July 2020Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) grew up in a musical and operatic family; his mother was a singer and his father a horn player. He is the only composer to write multiple masterpieces before reaching 25: Tancredi, L’italiana in Algeri, Il turco in Italia, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Otello, ossia Il moro di Venezia, and La Cenerentola….
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Hamilton in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th July 2020Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical based on Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton is the most successful stage musical of the current century. Three performances of the show were recorded in 2016. They were melded into a single version which was intended for to be shown in movie theaters. Miranda sold the distribution rights to Disney for…
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Is Herd Immunity to COVID-19 Present in Brooklyn?
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th July 2020An article from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency raises the possibility that the Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn may have achieved herd immunity to the Coronavirus. The insular residents of this community were criticized by Mayor Di Blasio for not social distancing according to the mandates of our medical masters. Their way of life makes such…
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COVID-19 Texas Update
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 8th July 2020You’ve likely heard that there has been an increase in cases of COVID-19 in Texas. That’s not accurate. There has been an increase in positive tests. Because there is no attempt to differentiate true from false positive tests, one cannot be sure that the infection rate has really increased. What can be done, is to…
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