Monthly Archives: July 2004

Photo by Christine Alcino In the matter of togetherness programmed in heaven, try this for a night at the Hollywood Bowl: Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, with its roistering, rolling E-flat piano arpeggios before intermission; John Adams’ Grand Pianola Music, with its … Continue reading →

The night sky in midsummer over the Athenian forest is fully dark; over Sweden’s northern latitudes it maintains a dusky twilight streaked with sunset reds. By delicious happenstance, both phenomena have been ours to observe and marvel at lately: the … Continue reading →

Photo by David Thompson It will soon be 400 years since the world’s first operatic masterpiece seduced its first spellbound audience, in an elegant room at the Gonzaga Palace in Mantua, where model centaurs pawed the ground and drew fountains … Continue reading →

In one of those imponderable ironies by which the music industry slowly but surely succeeds in cannibalizing its own, the Deutsche Grammophon recording of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Wing on Wing will be made not by Salonen’s Los Angeles Philharmonic (for which … Continue reading →

The management has changed, but not the balls. The Long Beach Opera was back in business with the usual offering of repertory no other company would dream of taking on, and with the usual daredevil production values that endear this … Continue reading →