Tag Archives: metropolitan opera

Three in a Row

New York is viewing itself as pretty much post-pandemic these days, and the result is that the full array of concert offerings is once more in place. Last week I benefited from this at an extraordinary level. First up, on … Continue reading

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The last time I was at the Met…

Since the Metropolitan Opera—not to mention the Metropolitan Museum and anything else with Metropolitan or New York or City in its title—is on indeterminate hiatus during the current crisis, I thought I would reflect on the last opera I saw … Continue reading

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Hearing It Live

There are lots of obstacles that might keep you at home listening to favorite performances on your music system instead of venturing out to an opera house or a concert hall. Price is one of the big ones, but transportation, cold weather, exhaustion … Continue reading

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Three-Rattle Week

Even in Berlin, where he has lived for more than a dozen years while conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, you would be hard put to hear Simon Rattle in three different venues in the course of a week. But last week … Continue reading

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

March Madness

For the past few weeks I have practically been running from one performance to another. As follows: On Friday, March 11, and Sunday, March 13, I once again saw L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (this time at Cal Performances’ Zellerbach … Continue reading

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Orientalism on the Stage

By pure chance, I suppose, the first three performances I saw in New York this season were all afflicted with Orientalism, that hokey variety of East-West fusion which Edward Said brought to our collective attention a number of years ago. … Continue reading

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Progress

Musically and dramatically, the production of The Rake’s Progress that I saw last night at the Met was practically perfect. From the moment Paul Appleby appeared onstage in the central role of Tom Rakewell—swinging his arms and shuffling his feet … Continue reading

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Shostakovich Redux

When you spend years writing a biography of a creative figure and thinking about everything he did, you might expect to be sick of him once the job is over. I thought I might be done with Shostakovich when I … Continue reading

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Oops

Three months between error and correction is an awfully long time, and occasionally more than one issue passes before I discover my mistakes, so I’ve decided to use this blog entry to rectify some of the errors I’ve made in … Continue reading

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Highlights from October

I was so busy attending things in October that I didn’t get a chance to write about any of them at the time. Now that we’re well into November, I’ve had an opportunity to reflect on the best of what … Continue reading

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment