Thanks to my living through the "early music revolution," other singers with less vibrato appeared (e.g., Julianne Baird, Emma Kirkby, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson) who did oratorio, and that eventually led me to opera. I had my on-ramp. I do worry about opera's future. /2
Conversion is a timeless story, though. "I have been among them, I scoffed, but now I know." But I get it. I couldn't stand opera for decades. I couldn't get used to wide vibrato; it seemed like shouting. /1
It's almost as though you could do a must shorter kid's version of Akhnaten, much like the Met's version of The Magic Flute. You could put all the symbolism in the supertitles, shorten by 1/3, and engage. Who knows? Maybe the current restaging solves some of the problems I saw at BAM decades ago.
But Glass's busywork in the orchestra was uninteresting. WAP WAP WAP WAP WAP WAP against TOOM TOOM TOOM TOOM. A half hour in, I had heard all I needed. And the action was all allegorical. A sandcastle arrived on stage, and the singers kicked it over. This symbolized the defeat of Egypt's dynasty. /3
For me, it was an experience in pure duration. I walked out 2/3 of the way in, despite the price of the ticket. Paul Esswood was a champ -- a huge sound for a countertenor, and he could sustain his line for ages. Glass wanted these long lines to float over his orchestra, which made sense... /2
I am not sure that I would give Chalamet free tickets to Glass's Akhnaten to make him into an opera true believer. I attended one of the first performances of Akhnaten at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Paul Esswood in the title countertenor role. /1
Investigators, especially those for whom English is a second language, are overconfident about AI as an editor/proofreader, which is one reason my wife still has a job. She has to rescue their drafts from the slop. /2
I get a lot of this from my scientific editor wife, but AI is not only LLMs. With one's own data and chosen algorithms, AI is like catnip for data analysis. Papers acknowledge this all the time; it's foundational. Investigators tend to transfer AI confidence to LLMs... /1
An improbable access of yiras ha'shamayim.
My student's chosen name is Jackpaul; he's an immigrant, a former boxer, and chose something he thought was tough and American. Most people parse it as the first name "Jack" and the middle name "Paul."
It's strange to look to the wicked for help, but some of this insanity may lessen once large economic actors realize they are losing more money with a hapless, anything-goes, chaotic president than by operating in a rule-based, taxed system with known costs.
A bodega must have a bodega cat; additionally, a bodega will have bits in inventory that anticipate the random but vital needs of its clientele with strange acuity -- e.g., a dust-covered GE toaster/oven -- at a considerable markup.
At this point, I can only hope that some brave American institutionalist has reset the nuclear codes. "I'm sorry, Mr. President. You have entered the wrong code. Would you like to try again?" "You have entered the wrong code three times. This call is over. Please try again in four hours. Goodbye!"
In a better world, before the members were seated, each Congress would have to take a six-hour continuing education course on the differences between communism, Marxism, socialism, and fascism. There would also be a mandatory eight-hour course in legislative ethics, with a traffic-school vibe.
Hegseth just doesn't get it. Rules of engagement save lives, including soldiers' lives. Dropping in and blowing people and things away only works in the movies; the screenwriter usually does not depict the consequences.
A friend's kid interned at Catholic Worker this past summer. They spent their days caching food and water in the Arizona deserts for migrants and nights learning and writing about CW culture. I have great respect for that young soul, who is going to go far.
The Catholic Worker movement certainly believed in Socialist Jesus, and still does.
No harm done!
Lewinsky or Lewandowski?
Victorian-style sadism at its finest. "If you are going to become a public charge, we are going to make you as miserable and downtrodden as possible. Maybe you'll 'drop out' rather than have us stomp on your soul and laugh about it every month."
Perhaps the n-war doctrine means Trump declaring more and more wars until the American public finally gets behind one and his popularity resurfaces.
I've said this before, but the "two-war doctrine," envisioning that the U.S. Armed Forces can carry out full offensive wars in two separate theaters, was ditched during the Biden Administration for a more realistic "one-and-a-half war doctrine." So now, an n-war doctrine? How can that work?
Yes. My Dad was like that. Between the hematomas and the long-lasting bruises, Dad was mostly blue and red from the neck down. I hope you are okay now.
I imagine they've now hired a full Vascular Access team at Bethesda.
B&N has a split strategy. It's stocking some stores as if bankruptcy were a day away. It's stocking others as going concerns, but the stock is no longer aspirational -- no lit. sections full of what you "ought to read," just what their data says sells several times a year, plus puzzles and toys.
Welp. 👀
Messianists love the idea that they don't have to clean up their own messes. They can eat all the seed corn or spread radiation around the planet; we're left behind, so it's on us to deal with it.
Wow. Rubio just threw a US ally with skin in the game under the bus. I am sure the rest of the world will be even less keen to strengthen ties with our country if we ever re-emerge.
I seem to remember that Updike's editor at Knopf gave him free rein as long as he put in a sex scene at least every ten pages. That was how we got Couples, God help us.
Exactly this is what my Dad had to deal with in the 1950s. To be hired as a mainstream big-firm litigator required that, if you were Jewish, you had to come from Harvard Law School -- a quota on top of a quota. Jewish + an undergrad degree from a public system like CUNY was the kiss of death.
