Isn't it odd how you don't think about or hear about something or someone or some place, and then, all of a sudden, that's all you're hearing about?
Opera lovers know the Belgian city of Bruges as the setting of Korngold's opera Die Tote Stadt. And on the day that the film In Bruges, a crime caper starring Colin Farrell, opens, I come across this story in Le Monde about this dead, and otherwise unremarked-upon, city.
According to the news account, an American man, Jewish, an Auschwitz survivor, was refused service at a Bruges establishment because he was wearing a yarmulke. His attempts to find redress were rebuffed at several turns. After finally being reported in a Dutch magazine, the incident is now being investigated by Bruges' tourist office.
If Korngold's opera hadn't turned me off to the possibility of visiting Bruges, this story certainly does.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Bruges in the News
Nico Muhly: Correction
A kind reader emails me that The New Yorker did indeed post Rebecca Mead's Nico Muhly article on their website--it's just not accessible from their contents page. Here is the link. My apologies to The New Yorker for my snarky comment.
The reader who let me know of my error has her own blog. It reports on new music and shows how far is the reach of Nico Muhly's "ecumenical" (Mead's word) appeal. She has some fun Muhly stuff as well.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Nico Muhly
The New Yorker's web site still feels there is something to be gained by withholding content, so Rebecca Mead's beautifully written profile of the young New York-based composer Nico Muhly can only be found in the print version. Seek it out; it's worth reading, not just for its introduction to the work of this prodigy, but for Mead's masterly (one is tempted to say Rossian) descriptions of just how his music sounds. (She speaks of one of the techniques employed in Muhly's concerto for orchestra and electrified violin as "bouncing the bow across the strings to create an aural ricochet.")
Muhly is part of that current--I don't think it's quite right to call it a movement, as its practitioners would no doubt object to such a term--that locates in the space otherwise known as "classical" an aesthetic that encompasses influences and associations from across a wide musical spectrum. (One could place Schlimé in that space as well.)
The New Yorker web site does at least post a generous selection of Muhly's works. The aforementioned violin concerto, complete with those "aural ricochets," is featured. It's a languid piece that always seems about to veer into sheer prettiness but manages not to. It is clear that Muhly truly is an inheritor of both minimalism and the American eclectic tradition, but those tendencies are so deeply assimilated that the music never sounds derivative or recherché.
Muhly also has a web site, where he muses in an engagingly overstimulated way. And there's a MySpace page, which I leave you to find for yourselves.
My Birth Opera
La Cieca has a great idea: check out what the Met was performing on the day you were born (assuming you were born during the Met season), using the indispensable Met archive. It turns out my birth opera is Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, one that has always held a place in my heart. The cast includes one famous debut:
Metropolitan Opera House
October 13, 1964
DER ROSENKAVALIER {191}
R. Strauss-Hofmannsthal
Octavian.....................Lisa Della Casa
Princess von Werdenberg......Elisabeth Schwarzkopf [Debut]
Baron Ochs...................Otto Edelmann
Sophie.......................Anneliese Rothenberger
Faninal......................Norman Mittelmann
Annina.......................Mignon Dunn
Valzacchi....................Andrea Velis
Italian Singer...............Sándor Kónya
[snip]
Conductor....................Thomas Schippers
It just so happens that I own a recorded excerpt from the Met broadcast of that run (December 19, same year), with Schwarzkopf in all her mannered glory.
Interestingly, Cieca's birth opera, Don Giovanni, shares with mine some notable cast members.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Growth Spurt
G&T is growing! The chart, from StatCounter, shows steady growth--helped along immeasurably in January by Gert's link to the Domingo post. Thank you devoted readers!
A Happy Sports Day in New York
So yesterday everyone in this great city was cheerful and excited. They were all talking about Sunday's game. And what a game! Down 3-0, the Rangers came back with five--count 'em, five--unanswered goals against le Tricouleur. And ...
Wait, what's that? Oh, there was a football game, too.
