Terence Blanchard’s second opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones which opened the Met’s previous season was such a hit (it will be back next season) that the company staged his first opera Champion this year. The opera tells the story of five time boxing champion Emile Griffith. Musically Blanchard’s first opera is not as…
Pronoun madness has progressed to the point where even innocuous ones like us and we have been reshaped beyond analysis. Consider the following sentence from a New York Times article about bird flu published on April 23, 2023. The second sentence of the fourth paragraph reads as follows: “The Book of Matthew may assert that…
Things cannot always go your way. Learn to accept in silence the minor aggravations, cultivate the gift of taciturnity and consume your own smoke with an extra draught of hard work, so that those about you may not be annoyed with the dust and soot of your complaint. ——————————————William Osler —————————————————— In addition to the…
Linked below is a Powerpoint presentation of a talk I gave yesterday before the Lubbock Symphony’s performance of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto #1 followed by Shchedrin’s arrangement of Bizet’s Carmen for String Orchestra, Timpani, and Percussion. If you wish to make use of this presentation, download all the files to the same folder. You must have…
Charles Gounod’s opera Faust, very loosely based of Part1 of Goethe’s Faust, was once so frequently performed that its constant presence at New York’s Metropolitan Opera caused the house to be derisively dubbed the Faustspielhaus. Today the opera, while still performed is not as frequent a visitor at the world’s lyric theaters as it was…
When I arrived at the theater where I have been watching the Met’s HD telecasts since they started about 17 years ago I was informed that the theater’s sound system had failed and accordingly the show would not go on – at least not where I was. I returned home in time to catch the…
This evening the Met will present its first performance of Terence Blanchard’s opera Champion about the life of boxer Emile Griffith. The leading role will be sung by Ryan Speedo Green whose life story is worthy of its own opera. It’s already been the subject of a book – Sing For Your Life: A Story…
Robert Carsen’s production of Verdi’s valedictory masterpiece Falstaff was first telecast by the Met in December 2013. It returned today with a new cast. Verdi’s last work for the stage is an operatic sport. There is no work in the canon like it. Its melodic fecundity, mercury-like pace, vocal ingenuity, and its deep insight into…