Sign Of A Dying City: A World Class Symphony Orchestra?

Time and again, I’d ask Clevelanders–a proud breed beaten down by decades of lake-effect snow, economic degradation, population decline, and gridiron disasters worthy of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland to tell me what was still top-notch about their hometown. It didn’t matter if I was talking to a CEO or a homeless man, a bar owner or a barfly. The inevitable reply: “We’ve got a world-class symphony orchestra…”