Monthly Archives: February 2003

FINALLY, THERE IS CLOCKS AND Clouds. I have entertained a private passion for György Ligeti’s 14-minute gathering of moonbeams and distant thunderclaps ever since Esa-Pekka Salonen performed it with the Philharmonic in 1993. It was scheduled for inclusion in Salonen’s … Continue reading →

BARRING A STUMBLE OR TWO, the Los Angeles Opera usually strikes gold in its forays into bel canto comic opera: Don Pasquale and L’Elisir d’Amore, La Cenerentola and The Barber of Seville. This is not, as some believe, an easy … Continue reading →

EVEN IF WILLIAM BOLCOM’S SONGS of Innocence and of Experience were less excellent than it mostly is, it would rank as a monument to rampant artistic ambitiousness and, for that matter, sheer artistic gall. The fact that last week’s performance … Continue reading →

Photo courtesy Opera Pacific THE FLIMSIER THE PLOT, SO IT seems, the greater the urge to meddle. Mozart’s Abduction From the Seraglio, his first real operatic smash, plays on one of the hoariest of opera plots: maiden, captured by tyrant, … Continue reading →