Monthly Archives: June 2025
COVID Vaccination During the First Timester of Prgenancy
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 24th June 2025A study of pregnant women in Israel who received the COVID-19 vaccination during the first trimester of pregnancy has been released in a preprint PDF – ie, it hasn’t been through peer review. The vaccine used in Israel was almost entirely the Pfizer BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine. Pregnant women were excluded from the pivotal randomized clinical…
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Astor Opera House Riot
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd June 2025I’ve just written about massacres that are depicted in opera. Here’s a real massacre that happened in front of a New York City opera house. The date was May 10, 1849, the theater was the Astor Place Opera House. I briefly mentioned it in an earlier post. The riot resulted in as many as 32…
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Around the World in 73 Years
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 19th June 2025Memory is a highly fallible record of the past. This divergence from fact to fancy increases with age and its attendant distance from the recalled event, as well as the fog and confabulation that the accumulation of years inevitably accrues. Despite these difficulties, I started recalling all the cities in which I had heard serious…
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Opera Massacres III – Verdi and Wagner
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 13th June 2025So many different outsiders have controlled Sicily that if an alien power were to conquer Earth, it would likely start on that island. Among the temporary rulers of the place are the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines, the Muslims, the Normans, the Angevin French, the Bourbons, and now the…
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Opera Massacres II – Berlioz and Saint-Saens
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th June 2025Hector Berlioz (1803-1860) completed three operas. The second of these, Les Troyens, is based on Books Two and Four of the Aeneid. Berlioz wrote the libretto himself. It took him two years to write the words and music for the opera, from 1856 to 1858. Most musicologists consider it to be his masterpiece. It’s as impressive…
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Opera Massacres I – Two by Meyerbeer
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 6th June 2025Death and opera are as linked as bacon and eggs. The subject of this short series of articles is wholesale death – death that kills not only the principals, but the supers as well. This grim occurrence often gets the composer’s best effort, which is my excuse for presenting it. I’ll start with Meyerbeer. He…
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Met Opera’s 25-26 HD Season
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd June 2025The Metropolitan Opera has announced the operas that will be telecast next season. They are listed below. For further details about the telecasts and the upcoming season, please visit this link. A few comments about these shows. Two Bellini operas out of a total of eight is an oddity. The first of these will mark…
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