Clik here to view.
A Promising Night at the National Symphony
I’ve been critical of the National Symphony Orchestra in the past, and part of that criticism is fueled by a sense of alienation from the music they too often play. If you love classical...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wagner’s Genius for Self-perpetuation
In last month’s issue of Opera News, I took up the issue of interpreting Wagner, in particular, the mania for ever more far-fetched ideological reinterpretations. I argue that Wagner locked future...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Met censors…and loses
The Metropolitan Opera has decided not to allow Opera News, published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, to review any more Met performances. Unhappy with occasional negative (and sometimes quite...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Met Relents
Reaction was obviously swift, furious and focused, and now the Metropolitan Opera has sent word that Opera News will indeed continue to review new Met productions. An emailed statement came from Lee...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Massenet’s “Werther” at the Washington National Opera
It’s always encouraging to find Emmanuel Villaume in the orchestra pit, especially so when the repertoire is French. Villaume conducted last night’s performance of Massenet’s Werther, and the orchestra...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Silence is not the problem
Another cliche-riddled story about how to fix classical music is making its rounds on Facebook. I tried to muster some sympathy for Richard Dare’s Huffington Post piece, “The Awfulness of Classical...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Return to Castleton
Tyler Nelson and Cecelia Hall in Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” Friday night’s big storm blew through the Castelton Festival, creating drama that evening, and a cancelled performance on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Future of Opera
There’s a lot of discussion at the moment about the future of opera, whether it’s trending to a diminished state, with major companies economizing and falling back on a limited repertory of war horses,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Galina
Galina Vishnevskaya, the great Russian soprano, has died. It feels very strange to learn this today as my other half and I spent part of the weekend listening to a very fresh-voiced, and dramatically...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Puccini’s Manon Lescaut
The star of the show is, of course, soprano Patricia Racette, who added the title role to her repertory for the first time last night at the Kennedy Center Opera House. Racette is a favorite at the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Frozen music, unheard too
Dwell magazine has posted a story I wrote about a new house in Seoul, designed by the magnificent architect Steven Holl, who was recently chosen to reconfigure parts of the Kennedy Center campus. Holl...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fit for a Tsar
When I visited St. Petersburg last May, the Mariinsky 2 was still a work zone. Now it’s open. The new building is undistinguished and even quite ugly from the outside. I haven’t seen the inside...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Benjamin Grosvenor at Wolf Trap
Benjamin Grosvenor, a young pianist from the United Kingdom, comes very highly praised. You can’t open the pages of Gramophone magazine these days without some news of his career and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Castleton Festival
I wrote a piece about the rural Virginia-based Castleton Festival for Opera News, which appeared in the magazine’s June issue. It’s now online. I returned from a month of travel to catch the last of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Met’s Onegin and Gergiev’s Cultural Politics
An online petition asking the Metropolitan Opera to dedicate its opening night performance of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin “to support LGTB people” seeks to connect the Met’s scheduling...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On the American Orchestra
Very happy to see my article about the state of American orchestras is posted on The New Republic’s website. It sparked a Twitter conversation with a host at Vermont Public Radio who clearly feels the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A question about social media and the arts
So much of social media is about recommendations and suggestions: You need to hear/read/see this. We eagerly offer and receive them. Yet in the cultural arena it’s seen as high-handed, even an act of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Putin, Gergiev, The Met and Onegin
This piece, a much expanded version of what I wrote on the blog a few days ago, got lost in the holiday shuffle. My subject is the so called “gay propaganda” law, recently passed in Russia, that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tristan und Isolde at the WNO
After all the drama surrounding Deborah Voigt’s withdrawal as Isolde in the Washington National Opera’s opening production, “Tristan und Isolde,” the company came back with a solidly cast production...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Parsifal at the National Symphony Orchestra
If Parsifal feels blasphemous, it’s because Wagner appropriates and repurposes basic Christian tropes with the same abandon as he uses myth and legend in earlier works, and his own biographical...
View Article
