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Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Morning Miscellany

Bookings are open for the fall season at the English National Opera, and an uncommonly good season it is: Rigoletto, Turandot, The Turn of the Screw, Le Grand Macabre, and a double bill of Duke Bluebeard's Castle and The Rite of Spring. I wonder if it's the same production I saw in 1993, when Bluebeard was paired with semi-staged Monteverdi madrigals. I do have one small quarrel with the email I received: "poingnant" isn't the first descriptive term that comes to mind for Bartok's expressionist masterpiece.
If you're thinking of a trip to England, and none of those operas appeals, ENO is performing Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin in early July.

At Brandeis University, the Rose Art Museum saga continues, with the official committee for the Rose's future issuing an interim report supporting the university administration and board of trustees. Big surprise, the hand-picked committee likes the pickers. Here's a choice paragraph from a story at ArtInfo:
"It reminds me of something like a Stalinesque show committee," said the chairman of Rose's board of directors, Jonathan Lee. Andspeaking to ARTINFO, Meryl Rose, a member of both the museum board and the family that founded the institution, called it "just a sham."
Fan of Flicka? Well, who isn't? She is one of the singers appearing in a recital of songs by Jake Heggie (the composer will be at the piano) on Monday, May 11, at Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco. Goldstar has a discount on this one even though full price is still only $25.

6 comments:

  1. L'Amour de Loin is so on my summer itinerary. The perfect combination is to pair this with a visit to Munich for Palestrina and their new Lohengrin. Just a thought.

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  2. I would be so there, but I expect to spend every penny of my savings on my house this summer (foundation work, earthquake retrofit, take down the chimney & plug up the hole, replace a hazardous back porch), so the furthest I am likely to get is Santa Fe for The Letter.

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  3. Yes, the Saariaho sounds tempting but I'm saving up for these quick leave Wednesday > return Sunday trips:

    November
    Die Tote Stadt (with Vogt as Paul)-Frankfurt
    Lear-Oper Komische Berlin
    Love of 3 Oranges-Komische

    March
    Medea (new Reimann)-Wien Staatsoper
    Moses und Aron-Wien Staatsoper
    Lots and lots of museum going

    May
    Bavarian RSO-Berg VC; Ligeti Requiem with E-PS
    Bavarian RSO-Pintscher: Towards Osiris; Berg: 3 Orchesterstucke; Tchaikovsky: Manfred Symphony (!!! WTF?)
    Der Ferne Klang-Augsburg
    Der Ferne Klang-Zurich (new production with the wonderful Ingo Metzmacher conducting)

    All dependent on continued employment, of course and I'll take the Schreker double-bill if I can only do one

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  4. Ohman. Those are three great itineraries, though I have to say, the Saariaho/Pfitzner/Wagner trio sounds damn good.

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  5. Lisa, I know I've mentioned this here before, but as I was typing out the program for that BRSO Pintscher > Berg > Tchaikovsky concert, I once again had the thought: "Why on earth would they pair Pintscher and Berg with Tchaikovsky?". To me, it smacks of "OK, we're going to have the difficult stuff in the first half, but stick around and you'll get the nice comforting 19th century romanticism after the break" kind of thinking. Why not pair those two with, say, The Miraculous Mandarin (complete) or Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande or any of a number of other pieces? At least there would be a consistent musical tone.

    It's like this one concert from Germany that I saw a listing for recently that was

    Mozart 38th Symphony
    Berg Violin Concerto
    Mozart 39th Symphony

    I mean, c'mon, that's horrible programming! Other than they're writing in the European orchestral tradition and they both lived in Vienna, I see no connection whatsoever between Berg and Mozart's pieces. It always smacks to me of apologizing for programming that difficult 20th century stuff by surrounding it with the standard tonal rep, along with the box office considerations.

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  6. Yeah, I agree. I have been to two similar programs at SFS and wish I'd just punted after the 20th c. piece I'd attended for.

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