In response to DJA -- thanks for alerting me to check whether the new comments process really does work. Apparently it does, with just one glitch. All comments are posting automatically, as they're supposed to. Except for one, a comment on my formal dress post, which somehow landed in my inbox, marked "unapproved." I have no idea why that happened. Maybe there's a delay, sometimes or always, before comments appear, but with the one exception I've noted (and which I don't understand), everything you all post is getting on the site.If any more … [Read more...]

While I was away, I had many thoughts I could have posted in the blog. Here's one of them: This photo was taken in 1937. It shows two boys from Eton, one of England's leading public schools (we'd call them prep schools in the USA). They're visiting London -- not to go to the opera, or meet the king, but to attend a cricket match, with Eton's rival, Harrow. Working-class boys are gawking at them.The photo ran in the Guardian, the British paper, at the end of August. They used it to illustrate a piece on continuing inequality in British … [Read more...]

Singing in the shower this morning. "Il balen," the baritone aria from Il Trovatore, a good exercise for breath support. And as I sang, I suddenly heard the words I was singing:Il balen del tuo sorrisoD'una stella vince il raggioThe light of your smileOf a star outshines the raysStilted, no? I had to laugh. "Balen," also, is a poetic or obsolete shortening of the current word, "baleno." So how often, when we're reading titles in the opera house, are Italian operas translated in their full archaic glory? Hardly ever, I'd think, maybe never. The … [Read more...]

So, yes, I'm back from vacation, and already plunged deep into the new year. (Years really do seem to start in September.) Wednesday my Juilliard graduate course on music criticism began, and today, Thursday, I spent the day at a major music school outside New York, serving on a private panel to help the school decide what to do with technology. My Juilliard link, by the way, takes you to the same webpage the students use in the course, so you can do the assignments along with them, if you're somehow interested in doing that. You can also look … [Read more...]

I was going to return from vacation with a post about -- what else -- myself? (I'm a blogger, right?) But then I thought it'd be more fun to start with something about Joan Tower's concert last Saturday night, at Merkin Hall in New York. She celebrated her 70th birthday, and some top musicians played her music. I love her stuff, and especially liked hearing pieces live that I only knew from recordings. Even though I'd studied some of the pieces, and wrote liner notes about them for Joan's Naxos CD, I was struck by how physical they sounded … [Read more...]