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Omniscient Mussel
I know of only one opera with an omniscient seashell in it, the all-knowing mussel that serves up a prophetic prompt at the beginning of Richard Strauss’s 1928 Die ägyptische Helena. One couldn’t help...
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A Nod from WQXR
Happy to see my August essay about the challenges faced by orchestras, written for the August 29 issue of The New Republic, was included in the top six essays of the year, as selected by the New York...
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Brokeback Mountain: The Opera
If I could be anywhere on January 28 it would be in Madrid at the Teatro Real, for the premiere of Brokeback Mountain, the new opera composed by Charles Wuorinen to a libretto by the author of the...
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Matthias Goerne sings Schubert
One assumes that the poet in Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin is a stripling, young, callow and given to dreamy reveries on the banks of his beloved brook. From Wilhelm Müller’s poems,...
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Joshua Bell and Hindemith at the NSO
This weekend, the National Symphony Orchestra presents one of its more exciting programs of the season: A star soloist, Joshua Bell, in the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor, and...
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Benjamin Britten
The New Republic has posted an article I wrote about Benjamin Britten, based on last year’s 10oth annviersary celebrations of his birth. I’ve always been ambivalent about his music, loving some of it,...
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Florencia en el Amazonas at the WNO
I’m afraid I don’t believe anything about Daniel Catán’s opera Florencia en el Amazonas. It’s been floating around for almost 20 years now, since a 1996 premiere in Houston, and a successful afterlife...
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Bellini at the Washington Concert Opera
Tonight was the first time I’ve heard the extraordinary mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey, and it was thrilling. Lindsey sang Romeo in the Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Bellini’s “I...
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Mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey returns to Washington Concert Opera
In the summer of 1965, the young Luciano Pavarotti went on tour in Australia with Joan Sutherland. He credited that time with the great soprano for some of the musical lessons essential...
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The Washington Concert Opera at 30
Angela Meade, Vivica Genaux, Michele Angelini, Antony Walker, Javier Arrey and Jonas Hacker at the Washington Concert Opera 30th Anniversary Concert. Photo by Don Lassell. The 30th...
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