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'Twas the season
Catch of the Day, Thanksgiving through New Years
January 15, 2019
Under seasonal and other pressures, recaps of our selections for the last several shows have been delayed. For the benefit of all who have been holding their breath (hi, Mom!), here's the skinny on the tracks we played.
Three cheers
Italian Masterworks
Riccardo Muti, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO Resound 2018)
- Mascagni, Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana
- Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut
Orchestral poetry of supreme refinement.
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American Romantics, American String Quartet plays music of Antonin Dvorak, Robert Sirota, and Samuel Barber (American String Quartet 2018)
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Pre-Posthumous: Edward Gorey on the fringe
Marginalia to Mr. Dery's deeply dreary new biography
January 9, 2019
Below, I offer eyewitness accounts of two noteworthy theatrical productions designed by the cult icon Edward Gorey before pop celebrity descended on his far from willing brow. The first, a postage-stamp Dracula on the faraway island of Nantucket, presaged the pharaonic blow-up deposited on the stage of Broadways's Martin Beck Theatre several seasons later. The second, a one-off Don Giovanni in Manchester, New Hampshire, sank without a trace. At a guess, the director Peter Sellars, in his wunderkind phase, took a hard look at the show and realized that Gorey's aesthetic preempted his own. For the landmark Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy Sellars went on to stage he drafted better team players.
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review of The Trumpiad
November 16, 2018
"To mash the pie of truth into the face of power": such, the poet declares in the opening sentence of a prose preface, was his purpose embarking on The Trumpiad, mock epic to end all mock epics of our Gilded Orange Age. A certain slapdash quality goes with the territory. In the back-of-book acknowledgments of supporters and advisers—"too numerous," endless roll call notwithstanding, "to enumerate"—the author takes ceremonial ownership of any "clubfoot rhythms and imperfect rhymes."Continue to the full review | More reviews and articles
Catching up with Catch of the Day
What we played on October 7, October 28, and November 4
November 4, 2018
Listed below are the tracks we played on October 7, October 28, and November 4.
Keepers
Rolling Down to Old Maui – Kimo Nevius (kimosongs.com, 2018)
Rolling down to old Maui (traditional)/The Other Side of the World/Lahaina Town
Whaling is a closed chapter in Hawaii, thank goodness. Yet it's good to hear some old stories, recaptured and performed with gruff authority by a talented local songwriter-troubadour. The CD comes with an informative album of photographs, notes, and lyrics.
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Anima Sacra– Jakub Józef Orliński, countertenor (Erato, 2019)
Il Pomo D'Oro, Maxim Emelyanychev
Smanie di dolci affetti... S'una sol lagrima (Zelenka)
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Speak for yourself, Conrad!
A postscript on Opera as Opera
October 26, 2018
As far as I can see, commentary on Conrad L. Osborne's doomsday book Opera as Opera: The State of the Art, including my own, has focused on his arguments. As well it should. The tone of the reviews to date has been reverential, in my view justly so.
But in a private communication, a well-placed critic of my acquaintance suggests that Osborne's diagnosis is too bleak, that he makes too great a fuss over singers, and that it ought to have been possible to find some example of contemporary Regietheater of which he could approve.
The way I see it, these objections are without merit.
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Books by Matthew Gurewitsch
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