Music
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I am truly listening to Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff was born in Russia, on the first of April of 1873 into a musical family, and began playing the piano at the age of four. He spent many years living in New York City. Thinking of him as a neighbor, gives me a wonderful sensation, knowing that such an iconic human lived…
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Humor at the Opera / Die Fledermaus
Alfred: Where is my Attorney? Frosh: He probably went to the restroom. Alfred: Will it be long? Frosch: He stutters! Die Fledermaus (The Bat), 1874Operette in three actsby Johann Strauß II (1825-1899)Libretto: Karl Haffner and Richard Genée
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Happy Birthday, Mary Violet Leontyne Price!!!
Leontyne Price stood like a fortress, her hands in another intertwined, her voice streaming as strong, distinct, and colorful as bells from a cathedral telling time to believers and non-believers all the same. A clear sign of patience is hearing her phrasing and seeing her face expand. Think of the iconic three minutes following her…
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Love is…
when, on June 13 of 2018, Martha Argerich enters the stage of the Esplanade Concert Hall to perform with Darío Alejandro Ntaca and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at the Singapore International Piano Festival, and the audience applauds incessantly.
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Two hundred and twenty-four years ago, Schubert
Today I continue to celebrate life in details but also in the joy that adds two men to the spirit of celebratory thankfulness — music. Besides the birthday of Philip Glass, there is plenty of reason for celebrating two hundred and twenty-four years today. Franz Peter Schubert, the young man who composed the “Winterreise” (Winter…
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Celebration Day — twenty-six
Many lives stay with us in spirit, memory, lessons, inspiration. Some stay with us even as measuring kingdoms. Jacqueline Mary du Pré was born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, on the twenty-sixth of January of 1945. She could have never known that she, and her year would never be forgotten, and both would become significant in the…
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Celebration Day — seven
This is pure celebration, in part because the opera world has been an important source of joy in my life for the last four decades. Magnificent as realm of music composition and theater since the sixteenth century in Italy, it is a school on human condition, with its comedies, tragedies, and transcendental exercises, a school…
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Imprisoned with tails and top hat — words from the opera on mindset
(On the Viennese New Year’s Eve of 1899, Gabriel von Eisenstein is preparing to serve an eight-day sentence, for striking a police officer.) Gabriel von Eisenstein: My friend Falke is right. I’ll go to prison in tails and a top hat, in protest. They may lock me up but they will never humiliate me! Die…
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Existential Exercise I
Part one: In my teens I sat at the piano on a path of poplar trees, and felt confident in the assertion that no human, no swimming nor crawling nor flying creature dislikes music. As of that moment it was evident that whenever I compose sounds and words, it needs to be under the premise…
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Coffee in the Opera
MIMÌLet me look around.How wonderful it is here.I’ll recover… I will…I feel life here again.You won’t leave me ever… RODOLFOBeloved lips,you speak to me again. MUSETTAWhat is there in the house? MARCELLONothing. MUSETTANo coffee? No wine? MARCELLONothing. Poverty! SCHAUNARDShe’ll be dead within half an hour! “La bohème” (1896)by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)Libretto by Luigi Illica, Giuseppe…
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I’m back in Vienna!
Storytelling à la Norway, in the words of Henrik Ibsen. “Peer Gynt” his five-act play, set to the music of the incomparable Edward Grieg, interpreted as an expressive evening of ballet and movement, is loosely based on the Norwegian fairy tale. Beautiful music and sounds Poetic pictures Surrealism … It pleasantly points out that, while…
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Today I am in Vienna!
Today I will be in the most magnificent city on this planet. The Metropolitan Opera in New York is playing operas I am not interested in, so I will not be here. Today, mind and ears will be in Vienna. To my wonderful friends in Vienna, do not try to meet me, for I will…
Sila Blume 