Category: music

Liang Long, lead singer of the band Second Hand Roses, “strutted across the stage … wearing a red floral-print jacket and snug red shorts. The jacket, adorned with dozens of gold tassels, was as majestically fussy as Michael Jackson’s, but with a more playful touch. … [The guitarist’s] red tutu bounced in time with the beat, and the crowd jumped along with him.”

The house has been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for years and had been threatened with closure more than once. Riccardo Muti, who had raised musical standards and electrified audiences at the company, walked away in September. Then management abruptly let go the entire orchestra and chorus. What’s behind all these problems?

Mind you, the source from which said wonk, at the Post‘s Wonkblog, got his data made no such claims about opera in general. But the wonk did. (Aren’t wonks supposed to know better than to make claims wildly beyond what the data supports? Isn’t that what makes them wonks?)

Stuart Isacoff: “A performance should be unpredictable – an adventure. Today we often demand instead that an interpretation be unblemished, ‘correct’ – something to be memorialized and imitated. (Those of us who teach can attest to the number of students who see their job as learning to duplicate exactly a particular recording of a work by a recognized artist.)”

“In music class, these men were able to temporarily change their identity from prisoner to student, from being numbered to being human. Music became a life force, providing vital human connection in an environment where social interaction is suppressed.”

“‘What’s palpably different is that the commitment and the vitality of the group have been ignited again, and it functions very, very thrillingly,’ James Levine, the Met’s music director, said.”

“She wouldn’t mind if she were asked less about her great-grandfather and more about Liszt, whose daughter Cosima married Richard Wagner in 1870, making the composer Nike Wagner’s great-great-grandfather.”

“‘The key, now that they’ve spent all this money, is to ensure momentum,’ she said. ‘This should be an escape.'”

“Dr. Phillips Center officials hope that guests will arrive early and stay after the show to enjoy a drink in one of the many bars. How many bars? 13 — compared with just four in the Bob Carr Theater, Orlando’s previous performing-arts center.”

The ASO Players’ Association, the orchestra’s board, and parent organization the Woodruff Arts Center have all ratified the collective bargaining agreement negotiated with the help of Federal mediators. Concerts begin next Thursday, Nov. 13.