Writing about music, like the art itself, is alive and well in this country.
No composer, of this or any other era, enjoyed a longer, or more beneficial love affair with history’s muse than did Igor Stravinsky. As long ago as 1928, long before recording technology had advanced to where it could cope with the flamboyant orchestration of his early ballet scores, Stravinsky was in the studios of American [...]
One message the Music Center Opera’s “Don Giovanni” made abundantly clear at its opening last Monday night: babies do not come from storks. From Giovanni’s first entrance, fresh from his aborted attack on Donna Anna’s virtue, still buttoning up his trousers and retrieving his boots from Leporello, to Zerlina’s calming of her angry sweetie by removing [...]
There being little of musical consequence hereabouts for most of the past week, it seemed like a good time to seek refreshment at the source. Word was out that the Eastman School of Music, that singular adornment of Rochester, NY, was holding a weekend-long American music festival, and that the program even included music by [...]
N.B.: NEW HED THE CLASSICAL COLUMN Fairness demanded a second visit to the Music Center Opera’s “Madama Butterfly” to check out the new tenor, Jorge Antonio Pita, who has replaced Placido Domingo in the role of Lieut. B. F. Pinkerton in five of the six performances. Fairness, however, has also turned out to be service beyond [...]
The curtain at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion came down at 11:28 on Saturday night, five hours (minus a couple of minutes) after the start of the Music Center Opera’s production of Berlioz’ “The Trojans.” There were cheers, a few boos, a final cry of “Viva Berlioz!” Lively productions deserve lively audiences. Yes, a few of those [...]
Hail, this land of no seasons, where you can go to indoor grand opera one night and the Hollywood Bowl the next. These two cultural manifestations overlapped by one day this year; the Bowl went out with a bang — actually, with several- – this past weekend. A crowd of 17,942 (five short of capacity) [...]
The opera season began on Thursday night with all the fixings: gala crowd, sold-out house, Placido Domingo to sing, high-society supper afterwards. Musically, too, the news wasn’t all bad. It wasn’t all good, either. This was the Music Center Opera’s second try at Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.” The other one came during the company’s first season, [...]
Record collectors have known the name of Switzerland’s Peter Maag for several decades. In the early days of the long-playing record his Mozart performances, with various European orchestras, were regarded as beacons of clarity and strength. Something must have happened, however, because Maag’s belated debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, at the Hollywood Bowl on [...]
John Crosby chose well. An opera coach and conductor, Yale-educated, making his way in New York circles in the early 1950s but suffering under the pace and the bad air of East Coast urban life, Crosby decided that sinuses and sanity demanded a change of venue. Santa Fe beckoned: still in 1956 the sleepy desert town [...]
There’s a lot to be said for symphony concerts controlled by a firm hand at the podium. Once in a while, there’s something to be said as well for concerts in which the audience takes command. Something like that happened at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night, and no harm was done. The program was all-Mozart, [...]
Alan's Poppies and Sage, photographed by Paul Cabanis, Spring 2010.