About
I decided to start a blog for three reasons:
1) People felt that there should be a part of the Threepenny website that was available only online, not in the printed magazine.
2) Some of the things I wanted to write about seemed as if they would benefit from a slightly more timely response than our usual quarterly publication permitted.
3) I was seeing and hearing so much interesting art — especially in the areas of dance and music, though also in literature, theater, and the visual arts — that I couldn't fit everything I wanted to say into The Threepenny Review without taking over the whole publication. And if you are not Diderot or Karl Kraus (and I am certainly neither), it is never a good idea to write the whole magazine yourself. But I figured the rules of blogs would allow me to monopolize one of those.
I struggled to come up with a good title for the blog and at first resisted using my own name, feeling (as those named Lesser are bound to feel) that diminishment is not necessarily a selling point. But then I figured that if people named Grudge or Drudge can use their names on websites, I should certainly not be abashed at calling this The Lesser Blog. So here it is, and I hope you enjoy it.
Wendy Lesser
Editor, The Threepenny Review-
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Tag Archives: barrie kosky
Kosky’s K.
I didn’t know what to expect. The Barrie Kosky production playing at the Berliner Ensemble was billed as “a Talmudic tingeltangel around Kafka’s Trial, after Kafka, with music from Bach to Schumann to Yiddish vaudeville.” (The untranslatable tingeltangel is an … Continue reading →
Four More Concerts
My average attendance at Berlin musical events usually hovers between two and three per week; this time it was at the lower end, but that still meant I attended four additional concerts since my last posting. They were so varied … Continue reading →
Easter Weekend in Berlin
Yes, I have escaped from America, if only temporarily. It’s amazing how just being out of the country seems to remove that tightening iron vise from around one’s head. I can still read about all the presidential crimes and depredations … Continue reading →
Adventurous Opera
Normally, at least in San Francisco, the summer music offerings tend to be safe and crowd-pleasing. At the moment, for instance, the San Francisco Symphony is advertising a series of movie-score evenings as its featured seasonal fare. (But then, the … Continue reading →
Another Berlin Diary
I spent a wonderful nine days in Berlin earlier this month, but I didn’t have my computer with me, so I am only now catching up on the Lesser Blog account. (Apologies for the delay, but I have yet to figure … Continue reading →
A Surprise at the Komische
The Komische Oper is the liveliest and least formal of Berlin’s three opera companies, and I have seen many great productions there over the years—most recently, in December, Andreas Homoki’s brilliantly directed Love of Three Oranges. So when I saw … Continue reading →