Monthly Archives: June 1999

Long Reach

AS THE HEAVY-SPENDING LOS ANGELES Opera veers ever more sadly toward innocuous irrelevance, the threadbare neighbor down the road looks better all the time. Not that every venture by the Long Beach Opera — the area’s senior company, after all, … Continue reading

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A Choir of Angels

In 1979, I laughed out loud at a job offer from Los Angeles. I was at the time music critic at New York magazine, a job that offered both comfort and prominence in the only city in America worth the … Continue reading

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Whither Willem?

THIS BEING THE SEASON OF SMOG IN the Los Angeles basin, the haze of uncertainty that descended upon the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion this past week seemed apt. Willem Wijnbergen, executive vice president and managing director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, … Continue reading

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So Far, Still Good

Art by Robert GrossmanAT 75, GIUSEPPE VERDI WAS CLIPPING rave reviews for his Otello and toying with an opera about Falstaff. At 75, Igor Stravinsky produced Agon, a major step forward in his compositional outlook. At 75 — as of … Continue reading

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OPERA REVIEW

Adventurous, exasperating, illuminating and just plain off-the-wall: the 21-year saga of the Long Beach Opera has been all of these and more. Its operation is strictly shoestring; its stagings over the years have included a “Boris Godunov” done in street … Continue reading

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Finnish Touches

BETWEEN OJAI’S VERDANT VALLEY AND the dour woodlands of Finland, some distance intervenes. For a time last weekend, however — the occasion of the 53rd Ojai Music Festival — you could have sworn that miles had shrunk to inches. The … Continue reading

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OJAI FESTIVAL REVIEW

Tucked into a valley northeast of Ventura (which served filmmaker Frank Capra as site for the original version of “Lost Horizon,”) the town of Ojai (pop. 7500) is no more than a 90-minute drive from downtown Los Angeles. One weekend … Continue reading

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An Absentee Lucia

POOR, SWEET, PUT-UPON LUCIA OF LAMMERMOOR. BOTH the opera and its heroine have been far more sinned against than sinning, burdened with evils of the spirit and flesh. The debatable notion prevails here and there in opera-buffdom that underneath Donizetti’s … Continue reading

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