Two sessions of the informal series “Getting to Know Opera” have now been completed! The first was a couple of weeks ago covering Rossini’s comic opera La Cenerentola. And last night, I gave a session on Puccini’s tear-jerker La Bohème. These talks both were offered … Read more
Visée, Prelude & Chaconne If you’re still cooped up at home and have run out of things to keep you busy, you might want to dust off your theorbo and imagine that your house is actually the palace at Versailles. If, like me, you never … Read more
Look. I was right there with you. Opera once was new to me too . . . and I wanted none of it. So I am doubly delighted with the emails received since our session preparing for the Met’s streaming production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola. … Read more
Arnold, Fantasy for Horn Continuing from last week’s theme of music for quarantine, we turn to a work for solo horn by Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold (1921-2006). Arnold composed the score for numerous films from 1947 to 1969. He won an Academy Award in 1957 … Read more
In homes across the world, parents are grappling with suddenly having charge of their children’s formal education. These families have been forced into accidental homeschooling. Our ancestors would have laughed at our anxiety, since education for most of human history was primarily in a parent’s … Read more
Join me on Friday, April 24, at 8:30 p.m. EDT for a one-hour live, online session about Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola. The session will prepare you for the free performance Sunday evening April 26 of Rossini’s delightful “Cinderella” opera to be streamed by The Metropolitan Opera. (The … Read more
Kuhlau, Fantasy for Flute Solo, Op. 38 As tiresome as talk of sheltering-in-place may be, it does prompt me to return to a theme we explored more than three years ago: music for solo, unaccompanied instruments. This week’s feature was filmed, appropriately enough, in an … Read more
I hope nobody else does this kind of thing regularly. I’m a klutz. Klutz is not quite the right word. Some in my family would say disaster or catastrophe, at least when it comes to handling physical objects. By physical objects I mean breakable things … Read more
Bach, Jesu Meine Freude, BWV 277 “Motet” often means a sacred polyphonic work with a Latin text. But motets took different forms over a long history from the 13th to the 18th century, varying from place to place and era to era. Secular motets dominated … Read more
The temptation is strong to write about topics arising from the circumstances that have turned people’s lives upside down in recent weeks. On the other hand, when most of us look out of our windows, we see spring. Spring flowers, bushes, and trees know nothing … Read more