Thursday, November 4, 2010
First, I have to admit that I came to Acis and Galatea last night with a clouded mind. Over the last month I’ve done a lot of thinking about performance tradition, the boundaries of style, and the question of who, precisely, owns the “meaning” of an opera (the correct answer, for my money, is “no [...]
Last summer I attended a performance of the American Ballet Theater’s Romeo and Juliet, and wound up sitting next to someone active in the dance world. My ticket was for standing room, but she plucked me from purgatory and gave me a spare ticket to a much better seat next to hers (“you look like [...]
Last night I had the opportunity to see Acts III and IV of Opera Atelier’s The Marriage of Figaro after volunteering at the subscription renewal tables. I realized that even if I only ever wrote about The Marriage of Figaro on this blog, I’d probably never run out of material. And soon, of course, I [...]
I care a lot about The Marriage of Figaro. I used to get into very heated arguments with the other classical music person in my high school, who was obsessed with Prokofiev. Mozart is bland and predictable, he said, with too narrow an emotional range. This point of view baffled and vexed me, and when [...]
First: new (to me) and interesting opera blogs! opera-toonity – lighthearted opera blog by Gale, who is writing an opera-themed comic novel Opera Rat – opera discussion from the perspective of a non-insider Second, all about me: I spent Tuesday evening volunteering for Opera Atelier’s Versailles Gala, where I administered a rum tasting (rum is [...]
Sunday, February 14, 2010
I’ve just returned from Opera Atelier’s subscriber event toasting the upcoming 25th anniversary season. Since I attended the event alone, there was little for me to do at first besides renew my subscription, consume the consumables, and slink around suspiciously. But the afternoon took a turn for the delightful when the performances began, featuring two [...]
Opera Atelier’s 2010-2011 season – their 25th – features two operas I have never seen or heard, and know almost nothing about: Handel’s Acis and Galatea and Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito. This is a good thing – it shows they don’t feel the need to shore up ticket sales by mounting something comfortingly familiar, [...]
