jmc's classics
I have seen some Facebook links to a video of Edouard De Reszke singing the Don Juan Serenade from 1903.
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I have heard that Pavarotti had a lot of strange habits. One of them is that he hid food around Metropolitan Opera that he could eat between breaks. Also when Pavarotti went to China, he had an entire restaurant packed up and taken on tour with him.
The local classical station is sponsoring the Beet Beethoven run on April 21. I am not in to running. This is a fundraiser.
The eclipse is coming up. I am tryin to find music that has to do with the eclipse. I am not finding much in the way of Classical Music.
"Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler and "Dancing in the Moonlight" are two. The first song mentioned it the only one that has the word "eclipse" in the title. There are a lot of songs about the moon. It is Ester for most Christians today except in the Orthodox Church. There are about
2,000,000,000-250,000,000 Orthodox Christians right now. As I have mentioned, earlier there is a lot of good music for Lent and Easter. There are some pieces of music that I think go good together. Some of them are:
Schubert's Fifth Symphony and Dvorak's String Serenade, Schubert's Ninth Symphony and Dvorak's Violin Concerto, Sibelius' Second Symphony and Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, Brahms' Fourth Symphony and Tchaikovsky's String Serenade Brahms' Clarinet Quintet and Richard Strauss' Violin Concerto Today is the birthday of British composer Andrew Lloyde Weber in 1948. He is famous for his musicals including Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita and Phantom of the Opera. He has also written film scores, a song cycle and a setting for the requiem mass. He wrote 18 other musicals as of now. He is the brother of cellist Julian Lloyd Weber.
Concerning Phantom of the Opera, I have not yet seen it. However I like the 1943 movie version with Nelson Eddy and Claud Rains much better. It is not as graphic and more appealing to me. The story line is different. There seems to be a lot of newer operas being written in the past few years. The Metropolitan Opera and several other opera companies are staging newer operas now.
There is now some controversy with the Metropolitan Opera and the Opera Turandot by Giacomo Puccini. Turandot was Puccini's last opera and it was completed after his death by Franco Alfano. It premiered in 1926. It is based on a play of the same name by Italian playwright
Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806). The German-Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) also wrote an opera based on that play The Metropolitan Opera issued a statement that said that the opera may be offensive to some people. Turandot is set in ancient China. No specific date. Some Chinese could take offense. To recap it would take too long. Italians have always had an interest in China and Chinese culture. Marco Polo and other Italians visited China during the late Middle Ages and during the Renaissance periods. In a statement which said that the opera is "ripe with contradictions, distortions and racial stereotypes". According to an article in the New York Post. it would be too long to describe the plot of this opera. However it may show some Chinese stereotypes which could offend some Chinese. I can see how this can be offensive. Stereotypes of any kind can be offensive. We have too look at the time when the opera was written which was in the early 1920's. China was over run by foreign powers. It became a republic and in 1949 went communist. In America Chinese and other Asians were sometimes thought to be inferior. Many other operas of that time may not be considered to be politically correct today. Puccini also wrote some instrumental music and some religious music. Like most Italians, He was Catholic. This opera should be heard with these things in mind. I attended a performance of J.S. Bach's St John's Passion today. This work tells the story of Christ's Passion and Burial based on the Gospel of St. John. It is not as famous as Bach's St Matthew's Passion which is slightly longer.
The Bach Society is a choral society in St. Louis that deals with works mainly of Bach but also deals with other composers. I have seen live performances of St. Matthews Passion. The first was by the SLSO in November of 1997! Not what you would expect-it would have been expected during Lent.bachsociety.org Both are good organizations. Many other metropolitan areas have similar such organizations. This work first appeared in Leipzig Germany in 1723. He wrote three more versions of St. John's Passion. The final version appeared in 1749. It runs about two hours. Bach was a Lutheran and worked as music director for two churches in Leipzig. During that time the city of Leipzig had a population of about 23,000. Today it is a major metropolitan area in Germany. The Gospel of St. John unlike the other three gospels leaves out the part of Jesus' disciples falling asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane. also left out of this gospel are the death of Judas and the dream of Pilot's wife. The majority of this work is based on chapters 18 and 19. It is in two halves intending for a sermon between the two halves. It also includes some commentary by the composer. Some people have accused this work of being Anti-Semitic in nature. Music scholar Michael Marissen of Swarthmore College has concluded that both St. John's and St. Matthews have less derogatory statements towards Jews than other similar works from that era. Both works are good listening during the Lenten Season. I have a copy of the work in German with the Gewandhausenorchestra Leipzig with Gunter Ramen conducting. Unfortunately, I can't find any copies of this work in English. I enjoy the work of the Bach Society and have attended their concerts when there is something that interests me. |
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