Author Archives: Alan Rich

Leonard Bernstein’s Mass dates from the fade-out of his years as an important composer. After 1971 there would be the pathetic operatic venture A Quiet Place, the failed Broadway project 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and its various spinoffs, and several inconsequential … Continue reading →

The film scores of Nino Rota constitute a body of lyric excellence that carries forward the dramatic vernacular of his Italian forebears into the medium of his own time. I say this, of course, with some trepidation; I have only … Continue reading →

Carlos Kleiber’s recent passing left no noticeable tremors on the musical landscape. He had suffered, the obituary notices read, from a “long-term illness,” but the world had suffered from his even longer-term absence; his last performances of any consequence were … Continue reading →

Photo by Decca/Andrew Eccles The sound of Renée Fleming in song belongs on that shortlist of amenities – sunset through the Golden Gate, dinner at Matsuhisa – that make life on this planet preferable to all others. Even through the … Continue reading →

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 →

The interesting thing about turning 80 is how much of the old stuff still clings. In the last few years, I’ve resumed contact with my two best friends from Boston Latin, the two most responsible for my involvement in classical … Continue reading →