Alan Bennett’s THE HABIT OF ART, April 22, 2010 National Theatre, London—via simulcast at NYU Is squalid solitude prerequisite to habitual art? A case can be made, no doubt. Yet it was strange to see Auden portrayed so slobbering, forgetful, corpulent—a man in a barely buttonable cardigan, wobbling with fat and pissing into his kitchen […]
Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 8 PM Chicago Symphony Orchestra, cond. Pierre Boulez Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage RAVEL | Le Tombeau de Couperin DALBAVIE | Flute Concerto (Mathieu Dufour, flute) BARTÓK | Bluebeard’s Castle (Michelle DeYoung, mezzo; Falk Struckmann, bass-baritone) To carry Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle to its bloodcurdling pitch without recourse to hysterics is […]
Thursday, December 3, 2009
[the trash collectors] Leoš Janáček, From the House of the Dead [Z mrtvého domu] Wednesday, December 2, 2009, 8PM Production: Patrice Chéreau Associate Director: Thierry Thieu Niang Conductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen Main Cast: Willard White (Alexandr Gorjančikov), Eric Stoklossa (Aljeja) Stefan Margita (Filka Morozov) How to make a narrative of so relentless yet monotonous, time-ravaging and […]
Also filed in Labor, Love, Music, New York, Opera, Politics
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Tagged aljeja, dostoevsky, eric stoklossa, Esa-Pekka Salonen, from the house of the dead, Gorjančikov, janacek, Leoš Janáček, met opera, metropolitan opera, notes from the house of the dead, opera review, Patrice Chéreau, prison operas, prisons in opera, review, reviews, willard white, Z mrtvého domu
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Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Ingmar Bergman, in his introduction to Four Screenplays: There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its […]
Monday, September 6, 2004
Federico Garcia Lorca, “Imagination, Inspiration, Evasion,” circa 1928: The mechanics of poetic imagination are always the same: a concentration, a leap, a flight, a return with the treasure, and a classification and selection of what has been brought back. The poet dominates his imagination and sends it wherever he wants. When he is not happy […]
Monday, September 6, 2004
We know something about Wittgenstein’s architectural designs, and about Schoenberg’s paintings. Perhaps there’s a book to be written on philosophers who composed music: Rousseau, Nietzsche, Adorno. More on Nietzsche: in this month’s Atlantic Monthly, Terry Castle’s brief omnibus review of “astonishing memoirs by (and about) deeply repellent people” recommends Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth […]
A few very recent, admissibly notable events: Anna Karenina bolts to No. 1 in bestselling paperback fiction. On her May 27 show, still days before the official announcement, Oprah whispered a few hints to guest Sharon Stone about her next Book Club selection. For any alert lit-critter, Stone’s remarks in response were a dead giveaway: […]
A shrimp who sought his lady shrimp Could catch no glimpse, Not even a glimp. At times, translucence Is rather a nuisance. — Ogden Nash’s Zoo.
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Thursday, January 1, 2004
“Prose should be a long intimacy between strangers with no direct appeal to what both may have known.” — Henry Green, Pack My Bags.
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Their individualism is not perhaps the thing that matters most to us when we meet people in ordinary life, but in a novel where they do not want anything from us, our money or our bodies or our advice — nothing, that is, except our interest — it matters very much; and no deep feelings […]
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