A tally of word usage on Howard Stern’s first day on Sirus Satellite Radio, from 6:01 a.m., when the show opened with an all-flatulence rendition of Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” until it ended at 11:15 a.m.:
· Fuck and its variants (e.g. ‘fucking,’ ‘motherfucker,’ etc.): 65
· Asshole: 30 (N.B.: Stern’s call-in number Read More
Great opera singers are always engaged in a kind of striptease: They expose themselves in all their vulnerability-and, at the same time, drape themselves with a blanket of beautiful sound. The Met has lately been full of operatic peekaboos. A few weeks ago, we were treated to the now-you-hear-it-now-you-don’t phenomenon of Luciano Pavarotti’s voice in Read More
It was a sight that would have given Genghis Khan second thoughts: a battalion of armed policemen behind barriers, amidst an array of outer-space equipment that looked like a preview of the Bush administration’s missile shield. But it wasn’t happening in Nevada; it was happening on the plaza of Lincoln Center. And the advancing hordes Read More
If things were getting unbearably nasty onstage, they were
also heading in that direction offstage. We were in the second scene of Lucia di Lammermoor , which tells of a
Scottish damsel driven mad by a feud between her brother and her lover, when
the wind began howling and the rain began blowing into the Read More
Although the CD bins are stuffed with the annual avalanche of Christmas recordings, my recommendations for last-minute stocking stuffers for classically minded friends are two new albums that feature female voices singing, well, like angels. Renée Fleming possesses what many vocal connoisseurs consider the most sumptuous soprano around-a judgment with which anyone who hears her Read More
“Context” is all the rage in our concert programming these days. Ever since education in Western music was largely abandoned in favor of new liberal arts subjects like Gender in the Kitchen and the Psychology of Self-Abuse, impresarios have been desperately trying to reconnect audiences to Mozart, Brahms, Stravinsky et al., by linking them to Read More
