parterre box

66 comments

• Quanto Painy Fakor says:

  Talk about pleasing with the throat, summer brings us a look at Walter Pondman’s progress. I think he should be voted the official Parterre Tenor of the year scholarship:
  

  on July 11, 2010 at 6:48 AM
  • Quanto Painy Fakor says:

    Now we just need a participating airline to fly Walther to New York so he can claim his award.

    on July 11, 2010 at 8:37 AM
  • mrmyster says:

    Yes, Quanto, by all means a scholarship as he needs LOTS more
    work.
    Where is Pondman, do you know, and in whose studio?

    on July 11, 2010 at 12:09 PM
    • Quanto Painy Fakor says:

      Pondman is being taught the (Franco Corelli) technique by Pondman’s father in the Netherlands. His sister is also developing that bizarre covered effect too. I never knew Corelli spoke Dutch.

      on July 11, 2010 at 12:26 PM
      • Quanto Painy Fakor says:

        The whole family is giftedL
        

        on July 11, 2010 at 12:34 PM
      • mrmyster says:

        One technique does not fit all; clearly young
        Pondman needs to find something to help him
        relax and get his tone more on the breath and
        better supported. Listen to all the glottals and
        cracks; something wrong there.
        Maybe he should go into retailing?

        on July 11, 2010 at 12:35 PM
      • Quanto Painy Fakor says:

        But not as strange as Casa Susanna in the 1950′s
        

        on July 11, 2010 at 12:37 PM
• BETSY_ANN_BOBOLINK says:

  Re: La Cieca @4.2.3.6 and way off topic. “surprised most of the world’s smartest financial analysts.” Honey, who ARE these analysts of which you speak? I do hope they’ve been trained not to eat their Crayolas.

  on July 11, 2010 at 10:39 AM
  • La Cieca says:

    “The easiest criticism of macroeconomists is that nearly all failed to foresee the recession despite plenty of warning signs.” Bloomberg Businessweek

    La Cieca is not saying “nobody could have predicted the current recession;” rather, the point is that the experts disagreed and the consensus seemed to be that when the real estate boom economy slowed down, it would be a “soft landing” without major loss of market value. In retrospect, that seems like wishful thinking, yes, certainly. The problem is, we don’t live our lives “in retrospect.” So I don’t think it’s fair to blame administrators who were planning their seasons five years in advance for failing to foresee the catastrophe and planning accordingly.

    Suppose the conditions were reversed, i.e., LA Opera guessed that the economy would tank, they scrapped their Ring project at a loss of millions of dollars, and then, arriving at the summer of 2010 (when, in this fantasy scenario, the economy is still going great guns and the public is clamoring for chances to spend their massive discretionary income), were in the position of telling subscribers, “well, we’re not doing any opera this year, but the good news is that the season’s deficit is only a couple million dollars.”

    Unfortunately, the “they should have seen in coming” argument always seems to be applied to new productions the commenter disapproves of for reasons unrelated to finance, e.g., “why spend money replacing Zeffirelli sets that are and will always be perfect?”

    on July 11, 2010 at 11:05 AM
    • Sanford says:

      Well, Bloomberg News can spin it however they want, but when internal memos from Goldman-Sachs clearly state that they knew they were playing with fire (as came out during the hearings), I find it hard to believe that outside analysts didn’t also see the problems. In fact, there were a number of analysts who predicted the crisis. From wikipedia

      Role of economic forecasting
      The financial crisis was not widely predicted by mainstream economists, who instead spoke of The Great Moderation. A number of heterodox economists predicted the crisis, with varying arguments. Dirk Bezemer in his research[110] credits (with supporting argument and estimates of timing) 12 economists with predicting the crisis: Dean Baker (US), Wynne Godley (UK), Fred Harrison (UK), Michael Hudson (US), Eric Janszen (US), Steve Keen (Australia), Jakob Brøchner Madsen & Jens Kjaer Sørensen (Denmark), Kurt Richebächer (US), Nouriel Roubini (US), Peter Schiff (US), and Robert Shiller (US). Examples of other experts who gave indications of a financial crisis have also been given.[111][112][113]
      A cover story in BusinessWeek magazine claims that economists mostly failed to predict the worst international economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1930s.[114] The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania’s online business journal examines why economists failed to predict a major global financial crisis.[115] Popular articles published in the mass media have lead the general public to believe that the majority of economists have failed in their obligation to predict the financial crisis. For example, an article in the New York Times informs that economist Nouriel Roubini warned of such crisis as early as September 2006, and the article goes on to state that the profession of economics is bad at predicting recessions.[116] According to The Guardian, Roubini was ridiculed for predicting a collapse of the housing market and worldwide recession, while The New York Times labelled him “Dr. Doom”.[117]
      Within mainstream financial economics, most believe that financial crises are simply unpredictable,[118] following Eugene Fama’s efficient-market hypothesis and the related random-walk hypothesis, which state respectively that markets contain all information about possible future movements, and that the movement of financial prices are random and unpredictable.

      But they were resoundingly ignored. Full article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007–2010

      on July 11, 2010 at 11:15 AM
      • Sanford says:

        Oooh, my first block quote! HTML and CSS are our friends.

        on July 11, 2010 at 11:16 AM
      • Harry says:

        What these financial buffoons were really selling was gilded up-loads of straight out ‘pyramid debt’, created by uncontrolled commission wheeler dealers and chiselers at the bottom of the heap. The last clowns caught actually holding these brought ‘packaged debts’ up in their ivory towers when the final bell rang :’Bang!’

        I find it strange that no one during this current financial crisis has mentioned the film ‘Rollover’ (from around the 80′s)with Jane Fonda. Its plot – about a simple stock market financial glitch and its ensuing consequences was ever so unerringly accurate, about what then, has happened since.

        on July 11, 2010 at 12:31 PM
    • BETSY_ANN_BOBOLINK says:

      There is only one point on which I take issue with you, La Cieca, and that is your tacit agreement with the concept that “no one could have seen it coming.”

      I was living in Los Angeles at the time and met one LA Opera Board ex-member who was encouraged to “retire” because he opposed Placido’s plans for a Ring. At that time, he said there were two others who would be replaced ahortly for the same reason. I’m sorry I can’t give names but I didn’t think I would ever need them again.

      As you live in New York, it may be difficult for you to believe, but Los Angeles is truly a loony bin and those ETSP types you see portrayed are not cliches. Los Angeles has always welcomed and rewarded entrepreneur types.

      ETSPs are rewarded with positions of power where they surround themselves with other ETSPs with whom they hold big pissing contests.

      ETSPs listen to no one. Thus, when they fail it is because “no one could have seen it coming” when what they should say is “I didn’t listen when people tried to tell me no.” Another example — ETSPs want to drill in the gulf, and put down any opposition as coming from “tree-huggers” and “bleeding-hearts.”

      I think it is possible to be responsible without being needlessly unadventurous. It requires a leader who is unafraid to ask the question, “Do we do this because I want to, or because it should be done,” and base the answer on rational examination of all the data available, including input from the opposition.

      on July 11, 2010 at 5:42 PM
      • CruzSF says:

        Very interesting. Were the objections of the 3 board members (about to be replaced) because they DID see the coming global financial crisis? Or because they balked at an expensive Ring cycle in a city whose audience had not yet been prepared to appreciate it, regardless of the condition of the economy in 5 years? I think it does make a difference.

        on July 11, 2010 at 6:54 PM
      • BETSY_ANN_BOBOLINK says:

        Now I can pretty much quote that: “Those god-damned cock-suckers tryin’ to bull-doze their god-damned Ring. Okay, we lucked out on Tristan but Tristan didn’t sell anything like what it should have this time around. Los Angeles can’t afford a Ring, not like this anyway, you’ve got to build up to it. We could try on Walkure for size, see how it goes.”

        on July 11, 2010 at 7:11 PM
      • CruzSF says:

        Hard to argue with that sentiment, actually. Walkure first would have been prudent. I don’t know anything about the cocksuckers, though, I’m afraid to admit.

        on July 11, 2010 at 7:21 PM
      • BETSY_ANN_BOBOLINK says:

        The cock-suckers were metaphorical.

        on July 11, 2010 at 7:25 PM
      • CruzSF says:

        Of course.

        on July 11, 2010 at 7:37 PM
• Harry says:

  One subtle point about the hideously expensive Ring of L.A…is the matter of interest. That of either how much ‘they paid out ‘. if they were in financial shortfall- prior to the event. Or how much (if they had the total amount already in hand)they could have been made ‘leaving the money in the bank’ instead as a solid investment.

  Recently it was mentioned that one super box office hit ‘one of the Harry potter films’ was made for $157 million, yet even though its profits to now, made that figure ‘appear very minor’ the studio was still to recoup its full outlay. It was said they paid another $50 million in interest to get the project actually in the film cans.

  on July 11, 2010 at 12:45 PM
• Quanto Painy Fakor says:

  Walther Pondman waits patiently while sis sing her Mexico number:
  

  on July 12, 2010 at 5:31 AM