“It’s an elegantly constructed, effortlessly listenable series that does exactly what you’d hope a general-interest opera podcast would do. It also avoids most of what you’d hope it would avoid—pandering, dumbing down, trying to make opera seem hip. (It gets away with its silly name, just barely, by claiming to “decode” what makes arias great.) The show seems to understand that there are plenty of people who know a little bit about opera and might like to know more; to do that, it makes use of the Met’s archive and extensive community of artists and thinkers.” – The New Yorker
Tag: 12.20.18
How Bach’s ‘Brandenburg’ Concertos Upend The Social Order
Bach scholar Michael Marissen observes that, throughout the set, the composer has solo instruments do things that, in the accepted order of things at the time, those instruments simply didn’t do. (Marrissen couches the argument in Christian terms — “the lowly shall be exalted while the exalted shall be brought low” — which is almost always a safe approach with J.S. Bach.) — The New York Times
Too Big, Too Well-Funded And Too Scared: A BBC World Service Veteran On Why The Network Is Becoming Sclerotic
Owen Bennett-Jones writes that the network is now so top-heavy with senior managers who are terrified of negative public attention that it takes months to get a project approved — and that reporters who have serious stories to break are sometimes reduced to leaking them to The Guardian or The Times because their managers will only feel comfortable broadcasting those stories if they’ve seen them in print. — London Review of Books
American Ballet Theatre’s New Skunkworks
“In the studio we’re so often created on,” David Hallberg, the American Ballet Theater principal who dreamed up the workshop, said recently. “I really wanted to give the dancers a chance to have a more inclusive part in the creative process.” Mr. Hallberg first introduced the idea of a choreographic workshop in 2010, but after a few tries it didn’t stick and he was too busy with his international career (and a major injury) to help keep it going. Now, he’s determined to make the Incubator a yearly fixture at Ballet Theater.