Monthly Archives: April 2022

Lucia Di Lammermoor Met 2022

The Met’s new production of Lucia Di Lammermoor staged by Simon Stone has been roughly handled by several critics. It received its second performance last night which was broadcast on the Met’s radio network. The show will be telecast on May 21. I decided to listen to it without the gouts of blood and high…


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Madama Butterfly – Met 2022

Last night the Met broadcast one of its current run of Puccini’s masterpiece – it was the 898th time the company has presented the opera. The current Butterfly is Italian soprano Eleonora Buratto. She was good in a part that demands great. Tepid applause after ‘Un bel di’ and none after Butterfly’s moment of triumph…


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Melody

The universe is not only stranger than you think, it’s stranger than you can imagine – Richard Feynman Well, a great melody is more mysterious than the universe. John Stuart Mill was said to worry that the number of great melodies was finite and that we would soon exhaust the supply. When I first heard…


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Eugene Onegin at the Met – An Exercise in Cynicism

Last night the Met presented it’s last performance of the season of Tchaikovsky’s most popular opera Eugene Onegin. It was another well done show that save for one issue will fade into the institutional memory of the house without much to remember it. Igor Golovatenko sang the title role. What’s so special about that? He’s…


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Mutations and Ageing

That all living things age and then die has been of interest ever since the dawn of abstract thought. With the advent of molecular biology the prospect of studying the ageing process has become a scientific reality that casts aside random speculation. A multi institutional study from the UK just published in Nature, Somatic mutation…


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COVID, Gender, Climate, and the Collapse of Science

The article below (by me) was recently published in American Greatness. COVID, Gender, Climate, and the Collapse of Science Science is in its worst state since the burning of Giordano Bruno (1600) and the trial and conviction of Galileo (1633). The wounds it has suffered are largely self-inflicted. Science advances by questioning the current state of knowledge…


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La Fanciulla Del West – Vienna 2013

In 2013 The Vienna Staatsoper presented a production of Puccini’s western opera. The full cast is below. Musically it was a terrific performance, especially noteworthy was Jonas Kaufmann’s impersonation of the the reluctant robber turned ardent lover. But Marco Arturo Morelli’s production was like a bad version of a Tom Mix silent movie. The acting…


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More Operatic Lunacy

The brilliant commentator Heather MacDonald has written an article detailing the latest bit of operatic and musical lunacy – Making Beethoven Woke. In it she details the the production of Fidelio at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That’s right – the museum not the opera house. You can read all the antic details in her…


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Kamikaze Cruise Ships

The cruise ship industry is self destructing. Given the realities of the recent pandemic which has virtually destroyed the industry, the ship operators are desperate to get their customers back on board. They are requiring that all their crews and customers be vaccinated. This requirement is not unreasonable. But their next effort at reassuring their…


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