Okay by me in America
Mariachi bands travel the world, make appearances in Hollywood, and moonlight on Linda Ronstadt albums.
Joel Rozen
Joel Rozen is a culture critic, anthropologist, and audiophile living in New York. His doctoral thesis at Princeton—still underway—is based on some field research he did in North Africa a few years ago; since then he’s enjoyed teaching in the city and writing about music. His love of opera can probably be traced back to high school, when he used to poach from his girlfriend’s dad’s CD collection. The orientation has changed and so has the digital format. What hasn’t is the Domingo/Studer Otello, which remains awesome, and unreturned.
BASTA: Press your luck
Jerold Offerman had spent the day readying the Algonquin Opera orchestra for a high-profile, high-stakes revival of Lucia, and things weren’t going well with the glass harmonica.
Flour song
Touting an austere, governessy program—the hour-and-change Schubert/Müller cycle, Die schöne Müllerin—Jonas Kaufman fulfilled his long-awaited, high-profile return to Carnegie Hall last night.
BASTA: Boots and Saddle
The guy in the green plaid shirt motioned Evan over within seconds of spotting him at Aura. Evan rolled his eyes, checked his abs, and sidled up to the bar.
BASTA: Evan can wait
Weekends at Aura Bar on 53rd and Ninth are typically big money makers for the morons who run the place. Jonjon and Yoni.
Scrumptious and relatable
I had a panic attack, that’s how moved you made me.
Intimacy
Last week, a pair of terrific recitals demonstrated what kind of intimate spell a dramatic singer can cast when left alone with a piano.
Animal, vegetable
Whatever its flaws, La finta giardinera is indeed a wise rep choice for grad students eager to cut their teeth.
Murder, he composed
Flashes of excitement and genuine pathos lit up City Opera’s production of Dolores Claiborne!
The love that dare not yawp its name
Matthew Aucoin’s Crossing depicts Walt Whitman’s experience serving wounded soldiers in a DC infirmary and chronicles the period’s tragic effects.
Py shy
This black-box recital was an aggressively Gallic affair
Simultaneous transformation
For those who thought opera to be a rare enough commodity that there shouldn’t be duels, Saturday night in the Berkshires offered the odd rebuttal.
Mostly Mozart in the Jungle
Tack on a little symphonic Beethoven and some particularly zany hosting patter from Bernadette Peters, and you start to lose focus, or at least some sense of, um, what matters mostly.
Wine coolers are the first thing, morals follow on
Skirting the leafy, patrician Berkshires of Western Mass, and flush with wine coolers and white people, pastoral Tanglewood doesn’t much resemble the dark Nibelung settings of Norse myth.
Midsummer gladness
Gone are the halcyon days of tradition and ritual.
Guilt, edged
If Darius Milhaud took a risk in adapting La Mère Coupable as an opera, it wasn’t the quirky, atonal style he used for his score.
The word is not enough
So, um, I guess we can agree that words are more important than music?
Triple header
I reckon marketing a sex-themed opera in Brooklyn should be like selling bacon-flavored froyo in Vermont.
Monday in the park with mike
From up close, the miked opera singer can be a bit tough to take.
And the ‘Angels’ sing
Angels in America reimagined as an actual, full-blown opera.
Fixing the fan
Cio-Cio and Carmen: what do you do with two tragic heroines who typify not just the sexist clichés, but also the soupy exotic fixations, of the Old-World West?
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
