1. It's been raining, a little. Not quite the first storm of the season, as one hit while I was in LA (where it did not rain at all). Owing to Berkeley's more exposed location, I should have expected it'd be worse there went I went to see The Magic Flute on Wednesday. It wasn't so much that it was cold and drizzly as that it was windy. When I ( Read more... )

Last June, I went to the San Francisco Opera's Magic Flute, which I found so boring and dreary that I got up at intermission and never went back.

This week I decided to give Mozart's wayward opera a chance again with The Matchbox Magic Flute, adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman and given by Berkeley Rep, which is a theater company and not an ( Read more... )

I attended and reviewed an unexpectedly unusual concert on Sunday. Here, the headline my editors put on it says it all: San Jose Chamber Orchestra Plays Two Works With Three Conductors.

Not really concerts as I normally go to them, but certainly musical ( Read more... )

And the other artistic expedition that I made on my trip to LA was to venture down to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, because it was hosting the touring version of the British Library exhibit by the above title ( Read more... )

In a living room east of LA on Monday afternoon, five locals who are Mythopoeic Society regulars but were not able to attend this year's Mythcon gathered to hear me, come down from NorCal for the occasion, give my paper from this year's Mythcon on one of the most elusive and atypical Inklings, CSL's pupil John Wain ( Read more... )

Having another free evening in LA, searching the events listings beforehand I found what I thought would be a Rodgers and Hammerstein revue ( Read more... )

I attended a whole sheaf of productions of Sondheim shows in the first half of last year; here's a supplement. It was Pacific Overtures, a show rarely done, perhaps because it requires a cast of Asian ethnicities, and all-Asian theater companies are not thick on the ground, perhaps? I don't know. But the East West Players in Los Angeles is such a ( Read more... )

Joshua Kosman, retired newspaper reviewer who's now blogging, is "at the moment struggling to imagine what purpose is served by going to concerts, listening to music, and thinking and writing about it" in our new authoritarian reality ( Read more... )

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Michael Tippett, A Child of Our Time