parterre box

22 comments

• CruzSF says:

  Quanto: I agree with that the sound engineering was very effective during LOC’s Tosca broadcast. I really had the sense of movement on the stage as the characters followed or avoided each other.

  Mr. Morris had too much wobble for me, during the parts I heard (most of Act I and the last 15 min. of Act II). But I don’t disagree that this could have been a good night for him, given the qualifications you made.

  on September 27, 2009 at 10:46 PM
• Krunoslav says:

  [Thanks, Armerjacquino. for a clarifi8cation.]

  I only just now got to the *truly* reprehensible misuse of TIMES hegemony over local elite opinion in the STYLE section, the caption of pictures from the opening night gala in EVENING HOURS. Can’t extract the text but here is the url:

  http://tinyurl.com/ydj9zhj

  This is mendacious nonsense– as if there had never been a “pared-down” TOSCA before, as if the idea of opera as theater were a Gelb invention, even a novelty at the Met — that the TIMES and the Met should be ashamed of promulgating.

  Brooklynpunk, if you can’t detect a pattern these last few years of unwavering myth-making “family” support for One Of Ours on the TIMES part, perhaps you also believe that the loads of front page positive coverage of Sulzberger squash buddy Bruce Ratner’s various enterprises is totally random.

  on September 27, 2009 at 10:47 PM
• brooklynpunk says:

  #12:

  I gottta respond (it would be unlike me not to, nu?)..BRIEFLY ( it’s not totally ‘opera-related”–AND, I have no desire to fight with YOU..)..BUT..I take a certain offense , and exception, to the expression “One of Ours” used in a a slightly disparging manner (If I’m being too sensitive, I apologize…but IT IS “Er’ev Yom Kippur”, after all…

  I would hope that YOU’re intelligent enough (as you generally come across , here..) that there is LITTLE actual bond , anymore, between the Sulzburger family and the Gelbs..Arthur was an EMPLOYEE for many distinguished years…(but his backround is, in fact, anything BUT “”One of Ours”)…( don’t think anyone actually still uses that term, anymore…)

  As for whom Pinch JR choses to play squash with…that’s his business…The Times has been fair-minded…and outspoken, at times, expressing very valid concerns over Ratner’s plans for the “Atlantic Yards” re-development project (which , I might add, I am an active Community Organizer in opposition to Ratner.)

  respectfully yours….Bp

  on September 27, 2009 at 11:15 PM
• Inveterate Gossip says:

  @ #2:

  What’s the article’s point? That the booing at the Opening Night Gala of the Metropolitan Opera, reported in the international news media as a minor scandale, is really nothing new. Booing in the opera house has been around for centuries.

  To which our collective response is probably, “Well, duh.”

  But remember, that article wasn’t aimed at us – “us” being a bunch of people who already know and care enough about opera to spend spare time kibitzing on Parterre Box. That article (which was on the Op-Ed page, not in Arts and Leisure) was aimed at all those general Times readers who read or heard in the news last week that there was booing at the Met’s opening night and figured that, because it was in the news, it was a minor scandale.

  Was the point made well? Was it worth making? You could certainly argue about that, as you could argue about any given piece of the Times’s opera coverage. But it’s worth remembering, when we’re irked by that coverage, that the writers there aren’t writing for “us.” We all do a pretty good job of writing for each other.

  on September 28, 2009 at 12:15 AM
• Krunoslav says:

  Brookylnpunk–

  I might counter (speaking as an insider in this context) that is the mark of a certain kind of New York Jewish sensibility to assume that “One of Ours” referred to Gelb’s being Jewish rather than to him being part of a “good TIMES family”. Such partiality extended to, say, Margaret Truman, who was hardly Jewish, for having been married to longtime editor Clifton Daniel, an Episcopalian AFAIK.

  Sills was absolutely prescient: the TIMES has never criticized a single action or decision taken by Gelb and has promulgated his self-estimation and claim of visionary status as fact. The full court press that has been deployed by the TIMES (beyond, as we’ve seen, the confines of the Arts pages) in defense of the woefully misfired TOSCA shows the extent of the bond.

  on September 28, 2009 at 4:10 AM
• StarryVere says:

  It’s obvious neither of the two people who wrote that piece saw the production. There was no “stunt double” for the leap.

  But they were right about Wilson’s “Lohengrin”. It was nothing if not “illuminating”.

  on September 28, 2009 at 8:23 AM
• brooklynpunk says:

  Krunoslav/15:

  “that is the mark of a certain kind of New York Jewish sensibility to assume that “One of Ours” referred to Gelb’s being Jewish”

  .Well…Since I’m a New York Jew…and as “One of US”was the code word (and title of a book dealing with those families) used by the German-Jewish elite families of NY….it isn’t quite a stretch, now…is it…?

  on September 28, 2009 at 10:17 AM
• kashania says:

  But remember, that article wasn’t aimed at us – “us” being a bunch of people who already know and care enough about opera to spend spare time kibitzing on Parterre Box. That article (which was on the Op-Ed page, not in Arts and Leisure) was aimed at all those general Times readers who read or heard in the news last week that there was booing at the Met’s opening night and figured that, because it was in the news, it was a minor scandale.

  EXACTLY! People here have to realise that die-hard fans like us are never the target audience.

  on September 28, 2009 at 3:01 PM
• Krunoslav says:

  17:“that is the mark of a certain kind of New York Jewish sensibility to assume that “One of Ours” referred to Gelb’s being Jewish”

  .Well…Since I’m a New York Jew…and as “One of US”was the code word (and title of a book dealing with those families) used by the German-Jewish elite families of NY….it isn’t quite a stretch, now…is it…?

  …..

  Yes, it is quite a stretch,rather proving my point, as the phrase I had used was ONE OF OURS, which in fact is the title of a Willa Catther novel; plus,m the book you refer to is actually called OUR CROQD; plus, the common English phrase “One of us” is not the exclusive property of any group, it would seem elementary to state: it is notably used, for example, by the freaks in the film FREAKS.

  on September 29, 2009 at 4:26 AM
• La Cieca says:

  Amazing the tidbits you can glean from this site. I mean, did you know that Willa Cather’s family used to own freaks? Really! They never taught us this stuff at Radcliffe.

  on September 29, 2009 at 8:03 AM