That Quiz

Okay, I'll play too.

1. Name an opera you love for the libretto, even though you don't particularly like the music.

The Barber of Seville. (So shoot me, but I am not a Rossini fan.)

2. Name a piece you wish Glenn Gould had played.

Something by Sorabji.

3. If you had to choose: Charles Ives or Carl Ruggles?

Are you kidding? Ives.

4. Name a piece you're glad Glenn Gould never played.

Piano part in one of the Schubert song cycles.

5. What's your favorite unlikely solo passage in the repertoire?

Either the piccolo/tuba passage in the Britten violin concerto or the accordian/strings passage at the end of Ades's Chamber Symphony. Okay, not quite solos.

6. What's a Euro-trash high-concept opera production you'd love to see? (No Mortier-haters get to duck this one, either—be creative.)

The reverse of Alex's nomination: an all-woman Billy Budd, with the sailors all dressed as Catholic schoolgirls, and let's see if we can work some sex into it.

7. Name an instance of non-standard concert dress you wish you hadn't seen.

Either the orange paisley Anne-Sofie von Otter turned up in a couple of years back or that monstrous quilt Jane Eaglen wore at the Levine Gala in 1996.

8. What aging rock-and-roll star do you wish had tried composing large-scale chorus and orchestra works instead of Paul McCartney?

Yes. Or maybe Al Kooper.

9. If you had to choose: Carl Nielsen or Jean Sibelius?

Sibelius.

10. If it was scientifically proven that Beethoven's 9th Symphony caused irreversible brain damage, would you still listen to it?

Maybe I'm already brain-damaged, because I can't remember the last time I heard it.