Lincoln Center and New York Philharmonic Move Into Opera (Look Out, Met!)

“For years, the Metropolitan Opera has gently encroached on the symphonic terrain of its Lincoln Center neighbors with orchestral concerts at Carnegie Hall. Now the shoe is on the other foot: Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic said on Wednesday that they would join forces to mount several fully staged opera productions” of acclaimed new works from Europe that the Met seems too risk-averse to touch.

How Ironic Is It That Our Most Celebrated “Un-Blockbuster” Theatre Composer Has A Hit Movie?

“Stephen Sondheim is the antibody of the blockbuster, the antithesis of mass taste. He writes for questing minds, disdaining sunshine, inhabiting the deep, dark woods of moral ambiguity. At his most challenging, in Sweeney Todd, he elicits our sympathies for cannibalism. At his gloomiest, in Company, he seems to conclude that man’s fate is always to be alone. Sondheim is not an easy date, never a sell-out.”