Monthly Archives: January 2024
Carmen in HD – 2024
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th January 2024Bizet’s Carmen is so great a masterpiece that it can withstand anything a deranged opera company can throw at it. Opera is a fragile art form, particularly in the 21st century. But with productions like Carrie Cracknell’s staging of today’s HD telecast combined with the recent new operas that started this season’s series the company…
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Cancer Statistics 2024
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd January 2024Every year the American Society publishes the latest cancer data. Its two reports are linked below. The abstract summarising the data is below. I have not corrected the few stylistic and grammatical errors contained in it. Below the abstract are some of the report’s key findings. Each year, the American Cancer Society estimates the numbers…
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Elektra – Three Deaths
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st January 2024Four of Richard Strauss’s operas are masterpieces – Salome, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, and Die Frau Ohne Schatten. The second of these, Elektra, is considered his most harmonically adventurous work. It is often said that Strauss retreated from modernism after Elektra. I’m not sure that’s true. He used the harmonic language suited for the story he…
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Sleepwalkers
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th January 2024Sleepwalking is a disorder that combines sleep and wakefulness. It typically consists of simple repeated behaviors. More complex actions are rare and when reported are of dubious authenticity. It is this latter form of the disorder that finds its way into literature and opera. Episodes of somnambulism last from 30 seconds to 30 minutes. The…
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Disasters
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th January 2024Disasters come in many varieties. I will concentrate on one type which is man-made. Disasters are blame loaded. Preventing one accrues little credit. For example, no one writes a headline: Maintenace crew on Alaska Airlines tightens loose screws. Only after a sealed door blows off in midflight is public attention fixed. Or, Titanic completes maiden…
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Finale 40 – Götterdämmerung
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th January 2024The concluding scene of Wagner’s four-opera slog through Norse mythology ends with the Immolation Scene. Its action is described below taken from the Wikipedia article on the opera. Depending on your taste the cycle is one of art’s greatest achievements or it is a vast Sahara dotted with lush oases. I am of the latter…
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Nabucco in HD 2024
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 6th January 2024Today’s telecast of Verdi’s first masterpiece featured two of the singers who appeared the previous time Nabucco was broadcast in HD. Elijah Moshinsky’s 2001 production first appeared in the series seven years ago. Liudmyla Monastyrska was Abigaille then and now as was Dmitry Belosselskiy as Zaccaria. The title role today was performed by the Georgian…
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Lifetime
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 3rd January 2024You’ve likely received notices from various sources offering a lifetime of service for a relatively small fee. A typical promo is a lifetime of a huge amount of online storage (about 10TB or more) for $50. By comparison, Dropbox sells 2TB/year for around $120. Hence, the offer appears too good to be true. Well, it…
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