Monthly Archives: October 1999

Around me at the Music Center, the crowd stomped and cheered. The forces onstage had aimed a dazzling rocket into their midst, and the sparks flew. Whatever the more substantial virtues (if any) of the composer Rodion Shchedrin, whose Fifth … Continue reading →

AT 8, MICHAEL ROUSE CHANGED HIS FIRST NAME TO “Mikel” because, he says, he liked the spelling. At 15, he ran away from home — in the “boot-heel” area of southwestern Missouri — and joined a carnival. “I did all … Continue reading →

You could arrive at the Los Angeles Opera‘s latest offering with a personal list, rather long, of the works still undeservedly neglected by the company: Verdi’s Forza for starters, Wagner‘s Meistersinger, the two Manons, and on and on. You’d be … Continue reading →

Photo by Lisa KohlerDRIVING INTO TOWN TO MEET PHILharmonic honcho-designate Deborah Borda at her first L.A. press conference, I found solace and sadness on KPCC’s Talk of the City, host Linda Othenin-Girard’s valiant daily attempt to elicit intelligent phoned-in comment … Continue reading →

MOSES UND ARON IS ON MY CONSCIENCE. Arnold Schoenberg’s opera, imposing even in its unfinished state, accorded unquestioned masterpiece recognition on the strength of its composer’s own eminence, is still — after 65 years — so seldom performed that its … Continue reading →