According to the memoirs of Alma Mahler, her third husband, Franz Werfel used to wander around the cafés of Paris with one of his chums, singing arias from obscure Verdi operas at the top of their lungs until the management would ask them to move on.
Swiss soprano Regula Mühlemann made her New York recital debut at Weill Hall on May 8.
Over the course of 700 pages, Alex Ross exhaustively—and sometimes exhaustingly—examines an impact that began in the Wagner’s own lifetime and continues unbroken today, with references cropping up in contemporary works as different as The Matrix and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
For a show set during the hardscrabble 1930s, very few of the performances give off an air of downtroddedness.
Fifteen years after his first parterre box interview, that criterion of countertenors David Daniels speaks of Oscar Wilde, Marilyn Horne, marriage and political art.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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