By Charles Michener 12:00am

Plays Well With Others: Mozart Makes New Friends

For years, the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center seemed an idea whose time had gone. The event was launched in 1966 as a scheme to keep the new performing-arts center in business during the summer (it was originally called “Midsummer Serenades: A Mozart Festival”). Under the increasingly lackluster leadership of its music director, Gerard Read More

By Charles Michener 2/15/99 12:00am

Now for a Little Bump und Grind: Bartoli, Terfel, McNair Sex It Up

Classical music has rarely tried to simulate-let alone activate-sexual intercourse. Occasions when it has include the climactic carnal duet in Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea , Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps , and that perennial first-time sexual aid, Ravel’s Boléro . But from its very beginning, music has spoken of love-declaring it, longing for it, cursing Read More