When I find a shirt I like, a cut that fits me well, that minimizes my arm flab and compliments/complements my silhouette, I tend to buy it in as many colours as strike my fancy (which, as my mother will say, translates into the bruise palette of black/grey/blue). It’s kind of awesome to see that Cecilia Bartoli thinks the same way:
As if you need more reason to love her.
I’ve made mention of recent reviews of the American Symphony Orchestra, etc., here’s the rest of what I’ve been up to this winter/spring:
Q&As
Reviews
Live Previews and Features
This week’s Time Out New York is our annual Summer Arts Preview issue, covering May through August. The nuits d’ete are one of my favorite things about living in New York; some highlights for classical were included (with more to come in the Summer Concerts issue:
6.21 Make Music New York: Iannis Xenakis
There are no seats at this concert—but there are plenty of boats. Instead of kicking it at a concert hall, the audience will row out into Central Park’s lake while six percussionists—including erstwhile Bang on a Can All-Star Steven Schick and former So Percussion member Doug Perkins—serenade them with Iannis Xenakis’s Persephassa from the water and the shore.
7.13 New York Philharmonic/Shanghai Orchestra
While we can think of no better way to spend a midsummer night than with a picnic and a free concert under the stars courtesy of the New York Philharmonic, the Concerts in the Parks series ups the ante with an evening of special guest-artists. In the program’s first half, Andrey Boreyko conducts the Phil; after intermission, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra takes the stage, conducted by its music director, Long Yu, and featuring pianist Lang Lang as one of the soloists.
7.19-20 Varèse (R)evolution
For the musically inclined, the highlight of the Lincoln Center Festival will be this comprehensive, two-day retrospective of visionary experimental composer Edgard Varèse’s works. The luminous roster of artists bringing them to life at Alice Tully Hall (July 19) and Avery Fisher Hall (July 20), features conductor Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic, So Percussion, the International Contemporary Ensemble, bass-baritone Alan Held and sacred-music consort Musica Sacra.
8.13 Kronos Quartet
As part of the Lincoln Center Out of Doors fest, the Kronos premieres electronic composer Christine Southworth’s high-voltage Super Collider, cozied up next to works by Steve Reich and Café Tacuba.
8.17-18 Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra
While the major buzz this year’s Mostly Mozart Festival is for Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s appearances with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, we’re looking forward to our home-team pianist, Jeremy Denk. On these two nights, he joins with longtime recital partner Joshua Bell and Mostly Mozart music director Louis Langrée for Mendelssohn’s dazzling double concerto. Denk also plays a solo recital of works by Liszt and Beethoven on August 19.
My favorite American girl living in Milan (and you’re not) who goes to La Scala a lot (and you don’t) breaks down the protests at La Scala this week (pictured above, one of the previous–and way more theatrical–demonstrations). There’s a lot at play here, not the least of which being the varied and deeply-rooted issues with Berlusconi and the increasing realization that the country where opera was born is no longer the prima paese for the same art form. However, my take on this mishegas pales in comparison to Opera Chic’s analysis:
But in the end, it’s a pointless debate. Because the economic model created back in the mid-1990s for Italy’s very costly, not very productive opera houses has spectacularly failed. Making opera houses — the notorious enti lirici – bloated and inefficient by design (politicians will not allow private corporations to have a real say in how opera houses are to be run because they want to keep calling all the shots). Threats to cut government funding during a bad recession play quite obviously the populist card: most people, in Italy and abroad, never go to the opera house, period. Opera therefore remains, by-definition, an elitist field (and in Europe it’s 100% of taxpayers who fund the pastime of the few opera-goers), so good luck getting good PR traction among the general population besides the general, vague “yeah, yeah, Italy’s legacy, Verdi, Pavarotti, o mio babbino caro, blah blah etc.”
Any executive order or legislative plan that does not seriously reform the intact structure of Italy’s enti lirici is bound to fail. By design. Because it allows a center-right government to play the populist, pro-market card of “modernization” (not privatization, because this executive order has exactly nothing to do with “privatization”). At the same time it allows the unions to look like great defenders of The Average Joe, and it makes Berlusconi’s opposition (basically impotent) look like the brave champions of the arts VS. the Berlusconi-led hordes (and it’s true that TV billionaire Berlusconi couldn’t care less about opera — in fact, he makes a point of avoiding opera houses like the plague, even going to light comedy shows on the same night that la Scala opens its season just a few blocks away).
In the muggy heat of a Tuesday morning (early morning, at that), I melted a bit more at Rufus Wainwright’s…Op-Ed? Letter to the Editor? Editorial?…in the UK Times. Though sometimes I feel more like Abe Vigoda than Max Gail when it comes to my work (because, let’s face it, it’s work), I do try to leave my own biases at coat-check when I review. That’s why Anthony Tommasini walked out of Dmitri Hvorostovsky’s Radio City Music Hall show and I remained. And even found stuff to like. That or I’m just tone deaf. Or have a drinking problem. Or both.
Regardless, Rufus had me at the second paragraph:
“I expect this vitriol was the result of a stiff and unforgiving school system — Lord of the Flies meets Revenge of the Nerds — in which any attempt at emotion is met with slingshots. Please, learn from America and next time use a gun; it’s much sexier.”
Rufus, Rufus, Rufus…we’re supposed to use our words…although if everyone used their words instead of a gun we wouldn’t have opera. But I have a sneaky suspicion the pendulum swings both ways, even if the cool kid’s Verdi is firmly on one side (which used to bum me out in high school). If Rufus’s fabulously bitchy missive isn’t proof enough of that, when I got into the office this morning—practically seconds after finishing the tarte tatin that was this Times piece, a phone call led me to one of my listings for a local choral consort. Which we listed favorably.
This is what we got from that.
Ladies and gentlemen, 21st century critical discourse.
The Bronze Age just came back in the baritone of someone named either Liao Chang-rong or Liao Chang-lin (clarification anyone?) Liao Changyoung (thanks, Dennis Wu). Who is this guy? I’m totes obsessed. It looks like our debt to China just got a little larger.
