Born in Parma in 1880, Ildebrando Pizzetti had a career as musicologist, teacher and composer of music ranging from concerti to film scores. In this beautiful poem by Gabriele D’Annunzio, the narrator fondly remembers his days as a shepherd and the journey his crew would take every fall from the mountains down to the Adriatic Coast.
Read MoreWhen I was invited to write this week’s Song of the Day blog, I knew I wanted to include something from Hamilton, but I’ve been struggling with what to feature. I waited to listen to the soundtrack until I saw the show because I wanted to experience Hamilton the first time like a piece of theatre. Therefore, I’m not going to feature a song today that pertains to the main plot of the show (I’m saving those surprises for you!)
Read MoreStephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Sunday In the Park with George opened on Broadway in 1984 starring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. Act One centers around Georges Seurat as he paints his pointillistic masterpiece, Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte, which was unveiled exactly one-hundred years before the musical premiered.
Read MoreTo start off my week of blogs, I wanted to feature the first song I ever sang for Maestro Blier. This somber poem by Johann Mayrhofer asks the prettiest star in the sky why it stays secluded, not joining the other stars around him. The star replies that it is because all the other stars don’t want the kind of love he has to offer and, no matter how hard he tries, they will never accept him.
Read More…He culled them to create seven Zippo Songs, from the very moving to the raunchy. Throughout is Theo Bleckmann’s spare vibrato-less voice, like a ghost, or an angel. WNYC’s John Schaefer wrote that in these songs, “Kline channels both Franz Schubert and Jim Morrison” in “a psychedelic haze of love, loss, lust, drugs, war and more drugs.”
Read MoreLorraine Hunt. I have NYFOS (and Michael Barrett, who programmed the 92nd Street Y and presented Lorraine’s NY recital debut in the mid-90’s) to thank for introducing me to Lorraine.
Read MoreI’m a huge Sondheim fan. When I was 12, my father took me to a preview on Broadway of Sweeney Todd starring Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury. He told me this was a new musical by Sondheim and that it was a masterpiece—Sondheim’s best yet.
Read MoreLast year I had the pleasure of working with the young opera director RB Schlather and his ingenious storefront Handel opera trilogy at Whitebox Gallery just off the Bowery. The whole experience was unlike anything I had witnessed in the music world. It was something I will never forget—and I don’t think my 8yo daughter will either.
Read MoreIt’s January 1996 at the 92nd Street Y in NYC. The great German baritone Hermann Prey is rehearsing a recital devoted entirely to songs by Carl Loewe (just weeks before The Schubertiade, the celebrated 10-year examination of Schubert’s works, which Prey had masterminded since 1987). I’m a young music publicist at the Y and completely enthralled by the animated 6-foot tall Prey and his voice, which could go from ferocity to gentle and vulnerable—and back again. (Prey’s voice was so unique—I’ve never heard anything like it since).
Read MoreToday’s entry is from NYFOS@Juilliard cast member Gerard Schneider. Today, I have chosen to write about the Act II love duet, ‘Oh, come al tuo sottile corpo s’aggira’, from Pietro Mascagni’s 1896 opera, Iris. In an opera full of truly beautiful music – the serenade, ‘Apri la tua finestra’, and ‘Inno al Sole’ as prime examples – this duet stands as a crowning achievement […]
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