If an orchestra plays an entire opera but the conductor doesn’t acknowledge the orchestra at the end of the opera did the orchestra play? Did the audience hear them?
Just wondering ….
By the way, each is an amateur artist — that is, each doodles around with pencil and paper. And Deutsche Grammophon’s publicity materials feature art from both of them. Mr. Villazón is a cartoonist, ebullient; Ms. Netrebko works in a higher-brow realm. One of her drawings is meant to evoke “The Pearl Fishers.” It is a semi-nude, female — hubba hubba.
So is the New York Sun not quite a “legit” paper? Otherwise I can’t imagine how those last two words could be printed. Sigh.
“Opera is less popular in America than in Europe, because we are the only country in the world with the shortsighted hubris to perform them in their original language instead of our own language,” said Stern, an opera singer with a nearly five-octave range who relocated to Murrieta from Northern California four years ago.
RTWT
I just prefer my opera in its original language. Am I asking too much?
When I strike it rich (isn’t their an oil field hiding in my back yard?), I’m going to go to Australia and hear this woman play live. Meanwhile I do enjoy the recordings I own. She’s a wonderful musician.
“It’s a huge drama all the time,” Doherty says. “Our moods are up and down as our reeds are born and die and it’s an awful lot of work. I know that when I was an adolescent and became serious and was making reeds and doing competitions, it must have been very difficult for my parents.
“I must have been very unbearable. It’s definitely to do with the reeds. If you could give me a good reed and tell me, ‘This will last for the rest of your career’, I think I would become a different person overnight.
“Even when looking forward to important concerts, the thought is, ‘Will I have a good reed?’ “
Ever so much more to read … so go … READ!
Maybe with enough effort one could grow to feel at home with music that has abandoned all the old familiar reference points, but should art require effort to be understood?
-Alexander Chancellor (RTWT)
My thoughts on this matter can’t be really summed up easily when my brain isn’t functioning … and as usual it’s not! But I would say “No” in answer to “should” but I would say “Yes” to “might”, if that word could be substituted … if you know what I mean. I’d understand, though, if no one knows what I mean … I really do have fried brains right now.
You know what I mean?
I had my first visitor from Oman.
I’ve still not had a visit (according to the sitemeter info anyway) from Delaware, Montana or Wyoming.
So what’s up with that, huh?
In other news:
Opera again tonight. Fourth performance. Somehow it feels like more. I suppose it’s just that the run drags over a four week period (actually 26 days, so a bit more than four weeks), so it feels as if we’ve been doing this forever. (Hmmm. How can a “run drag” anyway?)
Next on the agenda will be Symphony Silicon Valley. It’s our opening set, and the program is Beethoven Symphony No. 6, Janacek Sinfonietta and a world premiere of David Amram’s Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie. I’ll play English horn on the Jancek and Amram. I have a solo in the Amram. One guess as to what the Woody Guthrie song—and my solo—is (no fair looking at the symphony site). 🙂
