Removing the Critic

A very interesting blog by Baltimore Sun Critic Tim Smith:

"Don Rosenberg, music critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer for 16 years, was told yesterday by the paper's editor that he will no longer be covering the famed Cleveland Orchestra."

A lot of very well respected critics respond in the comments as do folks from the orchestra. I think at this point in time we're lucky to have fine arts/classical music critics. Criticizing the critic too much may lead to newspapers thinking they aren't worth the trouble. A critical critic is better than no critic at all.

Getting Ready for TRAVIATA

The banner went up on our building today.

Fake Spam , complete with typos from Sec. Paulson

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Delta Cappella at Arts Memphis

Wednesday night, Delta Capella performed at an ArtsMemphis function at their headquarters. Coming from very different backgrounds to work beautifully together, DC could serve as a metaphor for how Memphis could function...

Midsummer Night's Dream, opera a cappella

Here's a redo of Egeus' speech from scene I of MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. The baritone is Stephen Len White. I've left the other version on this blog in a previous post with me singing. You can hear that adding a real professional singer makes the track more compelling.

The classical music concert format

This is an interesting article in a recent New Yorker by Alex Ross about how the classical music and opera concert as it is now configured came to take shape. He mentions a book I'm very fond of--HIGHBROW/LOWBROW by Lawrence Levine. In the 19th century, entertainment evenings often were put together like variety shows. In a nod to that, our opening nights at Opera Memphis are starting to feature regular after concerts. Last season we experimented with this with aristocrunkers LORD T. AND ELOISE performing after TURANDOT. In a considerably more mellow vein, folk diva Judy Collins is performing after LA TRAVIATA's opening night on October 25th.

Musical tastes and personality profiles

I'm sure there's going to be some buzz about this article about musical tastes and personality profiles. It appears that classical music (and probably opera) overlaps with the personality of blues and heavy metal lovers.