Monthly Archives: July 2005

The Right Time and Place

July 28, 2005

Donkey’s Ears
Every year around this time I start keeping a yellow pad close at hand, to jot down all the reasons why classical music at the Hollywood Bowl is a totally unworkable proposition. The list is long and sad; it should be familiar by now. Most of it dates back to Bernheimer days. Some items [...]

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Bowlsful

July 21, 2005

Ringlets
They knew how to do things then. Opening night, 1938, at the Hollywood Bowl consisted
of nothing less than Wagner’s Die Walküre, four hours plus, with Valkyries
on horseback careening down the verdant nearby hills. The legendary Maria Jeritza
was the Brünnhilde; Richard Hageman, better known for such salon tearjerkers as
“Do Not Go, My Love,” was on the [...]

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Silence Prevails

July 14, 2005

Dorrance Stalvey, who single-handedly planned,
directed and managed the Monday Evening
Concerts at L.A. County Museum of
Art since 1971, died Sunday at 75,
after a yearlong illness, while the
following words were being written. His
passing, while not unexpected, takes from
our midst a genuine musical hero we
can ill afford to spare. It’s now
all the more urgent that the shameful
situation described [...]

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Dirty Work Afoot

July 7, 2005

Britten as Written
Considering that Henry James wrote The Turn of the Screw for Collier’s
Weekly, a popular fiction magazine in 1898 as it was until its demise some
60 years later, his ghost story has borne the weight of considerable serious analysis
and interpretation. There is reason to suggest that music – i.e., Benjamin Britten’s
tightly crafted chamber-opera setting [...]

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