New York, Rio, Tokyo

Not in this order and I should include Salvador in the list – but that was more or less my week. My final destination (from where I am writing) is Tokyo, where I’ll be staying for a while. Naturally, I have some good tickets for concerts etc  - and I’ll let you know. In any [...]

Read Full Post »

Louis Langrée

The fact that I was not in the mood for R. Strauss’ s Metamorphosen made me foresee 26 minutes of absent-mindness. I have to confess: I find Metamorphosen a difficult piece. Its steady process of emotional concentration on a restricted thematic palette can strike one as a bit repetitive if you’re not in the mood [...]

Read Full Post »

Lost in translation

Woody Allen’s European movies have always seemed a bit stiff to me. Matchpoint seems ill-at-ease, desperately calling for the customary New York setting to make sense (and actors comfortable with Allen’ s hallmark machine-gun dialogue delivery); Scarlett Johannsen’s lost-in-England American girl feels a bit more spontaneous in Scoop, but it is probably because Allen is himself [...]

Read Full Post »

“Why didn’t she sing __?” x “Why did she?!”

Everybody who likes vocal music has his or her dream list of roles their favourite singers should have sung – I am no exception.  Back in the 90’s, Christa Ludwig was the object of such an obsession.  I particularly resented the fact that there was no recording of her Verdi roles other than that Mrs. Quickly [...]

Read Full Post »

Munich Daphne mistery

I thought the website of a prestigious opera house such as the Bavarian State Opera would feature archives with their opera and concert performance history – but I was wrong. So I thought of asking this blog’s ten readers if any of them has any idea about Wolfgang Sawallisch’s cast for Richard Strauss in 1988 [...]

Read Full Post »