Good Morning,
Beginning this month, the Metropolitan Opera will give away 10,000 tickets a month — about one in ten seats for the season — to New Yorkers who haven’t set foot inside since 2019, under Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new “Opera for All” partnership. He tied it to Fiorello La Guardia’s 1943 “People’s Opera,” which sold seats for 75 cents (The New York Times).
Mark Swed filed his last column as the Los Angeles Times‘ classical critic after 50 years and 121 seasons, closing with a trip to a church organ in Halberstadt, Germany, that has sustained a single John Cage chord since 2001 and won’t finish until 2640 (Los Angeles Times). Steve Reich, the minimalist composer turning 90 on October 3, offered a blunter standard: “Good music is good music, and most music is not!” — his test is whether it can play next to Charlie Parker or Bach and sound worthwhile (The Guardian).
Cleveland Orchestra players struck at 12:01 a.m. Friday, saying their pay trails the other “Big Five” orchestras and that management withheld a healthcare-cost breakdown until a day before talks broke down (Ideastream Public Media). In Kentucky, rare-book dealer Brandon DiSabatino has spent two months fielding bulk orders from Blue Angel, a company that calls itself an industrial supplier, for obscure titles — including a scarce self-published book by the conceptual artist Chris Burden. When he called to ask why, a rep named “Crystal” giggled and said the call was breaking up (Mother Jones).
All our stories below.