Archives
Spring 2017
March 28 | What Would Bipolar Music Sound Like? Robert Schumann died in an insane asylum, so there was clearly something going on. Analysts of all persuasions have been busy ever since trying to say just what it was, sometimes with the music itself as a clue.
April 4 | Farewell to All That In Der Rosenkavalier, the Feldmarschallin says goodbye to a love affair; Hoffmansthal’s libretto bids farewell to a disappearing Viennese society; Strauss looks back affectionately on the whole century of Romantic music. All this in one of the most radically modern operas ever to shake things up.
April 18 | Make ‘em Like They Used To? Most opera fans agree that great voices aren’t turning up with their former frequency. Why not? and what to do about it? A close nuts-and-bolts look at what used to go into the training of opera singers, physically, musically, and culturally.
April 25 | Being a Good Knight Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, completed in 1532, is the source of more operas than will ever be counted (the New Grove Dictionary lists over 100). What does this pillar of Italian culture mean, and what does it have to say to the 21st century?
May 2 | The Life and Deaths of Maria Callas We have often talked about Callas, but not yet had a whole class devoted to the 20th century’s most influential singer. The drama of her life story was surpassed only by the drama of her musical imagination – and both are widely misunderstood even by her admirers.
May 9 | The Art of the Lyric Tenor It was a latecomer to opera, historically speaking, but it may be the sweetest of all voices – and the most adept for popularity beyond the confines of opera.
May 16 | A Paradoxical Genius Murray Perahia is in some ways a misfit for superstardom. A studious boy from the Bronx; Sephardic in an Ashkenazic world; the opposite of a firebrand who nevertheless became the closest musical soulmate of Vladimir Horowitz; a Romantic poet who delved deeper into Bach than anyone since Glenn Gould.
May 23 | The Elements of Literacy What does it mean to “read” music? Why was Europe’s the only culture that thought of representing sounds on paper? And how does it matter?
May 30 | The Lure of Bellini Vincenzo Bellini lived only 35 years and left only ten operas, but he created a language of hypnotic seductiveness. Schumann, Chopin, and especially Wagner were listening.
April 4 | Farewell to All That In Der Rosenkavalier, the Feldmarschallin says goodbye to a love affair; Hoffmansthal’s libretto bids farewell to a disappearing Viennese society; Strauss looks back affectionately on the whole century of Romantic music. All this in one of the most radically modern operas ever to shake things up.
April 18 | Make ‘em Like They Used To? Most opera fans agree that great voices aren’t turning up with their former frequency. Why not? and what to do about it? A close nuts-and-bolts look at what used to go into the training of opera singers, physically, musically, and culturally.
April 25 | Being a Good Knight Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, completed in 1532, is the source of more operas than will ever be counted (the New Grove Dictionary lists over 100). What does this pillar of Italian culture mean, and what does it have to say to the 21st century?
May 2 | The Life and Deaths of Maria Callas We have often talked about Callas, but not yet had a whole class devoted to the 20th century’s most influential singer. The drama of her life story was surpassed only by the drama of her musical imagination – and both are widely misunderstood even by her admirers.
May 9 | The Art of the Lyric Tenor It was a latecomer to opera, historically speaking, but it may be the sweetest of all voices – and the most adept for popularity beyond the confines of opera.
May 16 | A Paradoxical Genius Murray Perahia is in some ways a misfit for superstardom. A studious boy from the Bronx; Sephardic in an Ashkenazic world; the opposite of a firebrand who nevertheless became the closest musical soulmate of Vladimir Horowitz; a Romantic poet who delved deeper into Bach than anyone since Glenn Gould.
May 23 | The Elements of Literacy What does it mean to “read” music? Why was Europe’s the only culture that thought of representing sounds on paper? And how does it matter?
May 30 | The Lure of Bellini Vincenzo Bellini lived only 35 years and left only ten operas, but he created a language of hypnotic seductiveness. Schumann, Chopin, and especially Wagner were listening.