Tag Archives: review
Doing Nothing Comment
Written by Steve Balch | 6th November 2023Steve Balch is the emeritus Director of The Institute for the Study of Western Civilization at Texas Tech University. He is also the founding President of the National Association of Scholars. If you’ve ever wondered what the practice of medicine would look like viewed through a proctoscope, the answers are here and they’re mainly hilarious….
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Madama Butterfly – Met 2022
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd April 2022Last 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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Don Carlos in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th March 2022No Verdi opera has as many versions as Don Carlos. There are at least eight. Alas, the composer never designated any of them as definitive. The Met has done both four and five act Italian versions, but never until this season the five act French original. Well, not really the original. The Met’s current go…
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Fire Shut Up In My Bones in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd October 2021I’ll get the bad news out of the way first. In a repeat of the 2014 telecast of Werther featuring Jonas Kaufmann, the signal from the Met’s broadcast of Fire Shut Up In My Bones was lost at the opera’s climax and did not return until the middle of the curtain calls. I was told…
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Boris Godunov in HD – 2021
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th October 2021The Met in HD series returned after an absence of more than a year and half. Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov was previously telecast by the Met in October 2010. German Bass René Pape then and now assumed the title role. This time around the Met decided to stage the composer’s original seven scene version of the…
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Mank – Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 10th December 2020Mank is a film is a film about the writer Herman Mankiewicz, specifically during the time (1940) he spent writing the script for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, though there are flashbacks to 1930 and other years in the 30s. David Fincher directed Gary Oldman in the title role. Mankiewicz (called Mank by everyone in the…
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Iceland Through Icelandic Eyes
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 24th August 2020Iceland is both Europe’s most sparsely populated and farthest west country. Just south of the arctic circle, it has a relatively benign climate due to its proximity to the Gulf Stream. It’s a prosperous place that that has a market economy and generous social welfare programs. It is energy independent as it harvests the thermal…
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Akhnaten in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd November 2019Thirty five years after it was written, the Met staged Philip Glass’s opera Akhnaten for the first time this month. Today it made its way to the movie theater as part of the company’s HD series. Glass is a leading member of the minimalist school of music. My understanding of this school is that it…
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Turandot in HD 2019
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th October 2019The Met seems to have only a couple of dozen operas in its standard repertory, so when it not staging something that will likely never return (eg, Philip Glass’ Akhnaten) it must repeat itself. Such repetition is especially noticeable on its HD telecasts. Today Franco Zeffirelli’s literal recreation of ancient Peking was the first of…
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Goliath – Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 19th May 2019The subject is the Amazon Prime program, not the Philistine who should have gone up against Giannis Antetokounmpo rather than David. SPOILERS AHEAD. The show has two eight episode seasons available with another in the works. It’s headlined by Billy Bob Thornton as a fallen big shot lawyer who was kicked out of his firm…
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