Live Music
West Side Story as directed by Steven Spielberg is currently streaming on HBOMax and Disney+. I have long thought about having my kids, ages 18 and 14, watch the original so I thought this was …
I was golfing with a friend at San Diego’s classic Balboa Park Golf Course when he suddenly started playing opera on the Bluetooth speaker he had mounted in one of the cup holders. Previously, the …
Way back in October of 2018, Valery Gergiev stopped by San Diego with the Mariinsky Orchestra and performed Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7: Leningrad. The symphony was written between 1941 and 1942 during the German siege …
Martha Gilmer, CEO of the San Diego Symphony, has announced a major project to restore and renovate its historic home, the Jacobs Music Center. The project, with an estimated cost of $125 million, will honor …
There is a phenomenon happening among fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings The upcoming Amazon Original show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has created a title wave of …
I attended San Diego Opera’s production of Cosi fan Tutte on Saturday, February 12. I was somewhat dismayed at what I saw. The singers were fine. The production was yet another ill-conceived re-imagining of a …
Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte opens at San Diego Opera on Saturday, February 12, 2022, at the Civic Theatre. This is the first time SDO has performed a fully staged indoor opera since Hansel and Gretel …
The San Diego Symphony gave their first indoor concerts in nearly two years on January 29 and 30, 2020. I was scheduled to attend on the 30th. I started to develop some omicron symptoms on …
I miss nationalism in classical music. Nationalism is looked upon by certain contemporary elements as bad because the nations in question were colonial powers, and colonialism was bad. I take a different perspective. Nationalism started …
The end of January and the entirety of February appear to be a return to some semblance of normality with the San Diego Opera and San Diego Symphony. Of course, there's always a chance of …
“Due to the recent surge of Covid-19 cases in San Diego County and after consulting with local health experts, the San Diego Symphony has made the difficult decision to cancel this concert.” Thus reads the …
Every now and then I wonder about composers of classical one-hit-wonders. You know, composers such as Ruggero Leoncavallo with Pagliacci, Pietro Mascagni with Cavalleria Rusticana, or Max Bruch with his Violin Concerto. What else did …
I was watching an NFL game while scrolling through Instagram stories when I came across a clip of the Act Finale from Verdi’s La Traviata. Violetta implores Alfredo to love her as she departs for …
From time to time I find it necessary to update “The Depressed-Disney-Dad at Christmas when his Ex has the Kids” playlist. This playlist is also known as “Contemplations Upon the Mysteries of Solitude at the …
This is the time of year when we ordinarily take a look back over the previous season and select the top concerts. We could do that, but 2021 was not an ordinary year for classical …