Open Thread November 9 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Nov 092025
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was “Parsifal” by Wagner – a good four hours. “Parsifal” is the way Germans spell “Percival,” and the allusion to the Round Table is intentional, although no other character’s name follows through. The opera traces how Parsifal became the king of the knights who are charged with protecting the Holy Grail. I won’t go into detail. Wagner quotes the Dresden Amen in it more than once, but especially at the (happy) ending. Wagner’s ideas about Christianity were somewhat warped, but if they were as warped as MAGA, that does not come through in his operas. His ideas about sexuality were also somewhat warped, also (as far as we can tell) not as warped as MAGA. I won’t push that any farther either. The man could and did write beautiful music. To anyone – and I have heard it a lot – who thinks that music, especially classical music, is “ennobling,” I say “It certainly didn’t work for Wagner.” Not that his record can compete with the Mango Monster – but pretty much everything the Monster has done hundreds and thousands of times, Wagner did at least once.

I found this through The Smile on a day when most of their news was both political and pathetic. This is neither, and I applaud the educators who are facilitating this.

I knew some of this, because last month The Root had an article on several philanthropists, of whom she was one. The article doesn’t really answer the question the headline asks, but the answer is really “because she has a soul.” If she is not already on your list of secular saints, this might be the time to add her to it.

If you can’t see the video, I couldn’t either, until I turned my browser’s media player on. I’m sorry that I won’t be around to vote for this young man for President.

Crazy Soup Mr. Tangerine Man – not the world’s best singer, no CC, and it’s from last year’s election season, but hey. It’s amusing.

Dog

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Open Thread November 2 2025

 Posted by at 6:02 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Nov 022025
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” by Wagner. It is his only comedy – and it’s a comedy not just because it’s a sweet love story with a happy ending. It’s also about musical pedants who fall apart if any composer does anything new – and there are many in every generation (there’s a book called “Lexicon of Musical Invective, originally published in the 1950s IIRC to record every awful thing that was said about great composers, starting with Mozart and Beethoven. It’s full of doozies – an has to keep getting reissued because the pedants just keep coming.) Historically, the meistersingers were not professional composers, but a guild of tradesmen and craftsmen who were dedicated hobbyist composers. Hans Sachs (an actual historical person) was a cobbler, for instance, and Beckmesser was the town clerk. Beckmesser is the quintessential pedant, and Wagner lets him have it every time he is on stage. I always feel for the singer who has to play that part. One has to be really smart yo play that stupid, and really self confident to withstand that much embarrassment. Hans Sachs, on the other hand, is the teacher that everyone wishes they had had in every subject. I have seen this opera once, on television, not in person, and James Morris sang Hans Sachs and really made the whole thing worth watching – all five hours. I recorded it on VCR – yeah, it was a while ago. Off to see Virgil; will of course check in.

From The Root. With the regime acting like a demolition crew and loving it, it can be easy to forget there are still plenty of good people in the world. Like Sabrina. And like I expect Riley will grow up to be.

OK, this from Democratic Underground is not good news. It is in fact not news at all. It’s just for fun.

Also from the Root, I’m calling this good news. It dates back a long time, but it was certainly news to both McCullough and Smith.

From a local TV station via The Smile, I never expected to find something like this in my own back yard. Although I probably should have. I too remember Nick Venetucci and his wife Bambi – if you weren’t inspired by them you needed your vitals checked. It should not be surprising that someone was inspired enough by him to go the distance for kids, particularly disabled kids, at Hallowe’en.

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Open Thread October 26 2025

 Posted by at 6:07 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 262025
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was “The Pearl Fishers” by Bizet (who is more famous for “Carmen”). Carmen overshadows it, but it is performed occasionally. It contains an absolutely gorgeous duet for the tenor and the baritone which is frequently recorded and sung in concert, though. When the Met presented it on a Saturday with Matthew Polenzani (a tenor who is very popular and therefore had sung the duet a fair amount prior to playing the role) and the host asked him about the duet, he pointed out that until doing the full opera he had no idea that everything he was singing in it was a lie (and he is correct in that. But it’s still gorgeous.) The plot relies heavily on coincidence (not unusual in opera) and ends with massive destruction of property but no loss of life (both unusual in opera.) Not much of it rises to the standard of the duet, but it is still all very listenable. It’s also pretty short – barely two hours. I think I mentioned that my local station, which is public radio but not affiliated with NPR, couldn’t afford the second half of the summer broadcasts – especially after the federal funding loss – but what they decided to do was to play a recorded complete opera every week until the Met starts again. The announcer who owns a huge collection of recordings is not as old as I am, but is old enough that they may, like mine, all be on vinyl. Because The Pearl Fishers is short, when it was over and I went back to local, the opera he picked for today was still going – and I didn’t recognize it. Heck, I didn’t even recognize the language at first. My first guess was Russian, but I couldn’t exclude Czech – enough popular operas were written by Czech composers that it’s not all that unlikely. But as I heard more, I realized it was German and almost certainly Wagner; I thought I recognized the sword motif from the Ring Cycle. But when did a tenor have such a long monologue, followed by input from a bass and maybe a mezzo soprano? Maybe Lohengrin? And then I heard the tenor address the soprano as “Elsa.” Yup. It was Lohengrin. Sorry/not sorry about the “stream of consciousness” there. It seemed like a good opportunity to demonstrate that not only do I not know everything, I don’t even know as much as I think I know. The WFMT will be broadcasting Lohengrin from Bayreuth in three weeks, so I’ll get my chance to hear the whole thing (not for the first time either.)

I saved this from Democratic Underground for Sunday, so it’s not brand new. But it’s definitely good. I hope it catches on elsewhere.

This from The 19th is about a good response to a very bad situation. I’m sorry about the situation – but glad that at least something is being done.

This is from Wonkette Thursday, which I thought close enough to Sunday to hold. Even my Mom bought into the theory that if you tax rich people “too much” they’ll just move away. I guess this tax isn’t “too much” – whatever that means. (My feeling about that theory was always “Good riddance” anyway.)

Yes, four links. But can we ever have too much good news? This is from Wolves and Sheep and was written by Chris Bowers. It is neither complete not graven in stone, but as far as it goes, it looks good.

Marsh Family – “The Randy Duke of York”

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Open Thread September 21 2025

 Posted by at 6:06 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 212025
 

Yesterday, I was able to hear the radio opera from my laptop. Even set up to the max, the volume was low, and I hope I won’t need to do it again. Faure was one of the Impressionists like Debussy and Ravel, but is much less known. His best known work is probably the Dolly Suite, written for a little girl nicknamed Dolly. This opera, Pénélope, based on the last part of Homer’s Odyssey (when Odysseus finally gets home), doesn’t sound much like the Dolly suite, but it is attractive. Why it’s not performed more than it is is mostly bad luck. It wasn’t a huge hit in the provinces, but when it made its Paris premier, it was well received by the audience and the critics. But within two months another premier at the same theater stole all the oxygen from everything else – it was a little ballet called “Le sacre du printemps,” or in English, “The Rite of Spring.” It actually caused riots, in which people were physically hurt. And it’s not pretty – but it is a masterpiece. But I digress. It has been so long since I read the Odyssey I had almost forgotten about the lack of trust which was normal back when there were no certain ways to establish one’s identity. Odysseus arrives in disguise, and when recognized, orders the person not to reveal him – because all the dudes waiting around for up to 20 years to try to marry his wife would have killed him (instead, he kills them.) When he does reveal his identity to Penelope, she tests him with a fib about having replaced the bed in the master bedroom (not really possible, because the bed was a four-poster and one of the posts was a living tree, and the room was built around it and the bed), and of course he freaks because he knows that, which establishes he really is Odysseus. Off to see Virgil now – will check in.

You are welcome to argue with me about whether this from The Root is good news – since it’s mostly not new, but history. But I maintain the news part is that someone whose name should have been in people’s mouths along with the names of Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and many others is finally getting recognition – at least from the black community, and it should be from us also. It’s not exactly anyone’s fault it’s coming late. Photographers speak with the images they create, not with their mouths, and images are not physically attached to them, so its too easy to forget the people behind those images.

This was apparently a federal charge; I assume that because it was tried in a federal court house and at the Times there is an implication that the prosecution was by a U.S. Attorney. But it’s good news at any level.

There is a lot of good news in this from Wonkette, and it’s from Thursday, so you may have seen some of it. But probably not all of it.

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Open Thread September 7 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 072025
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was a double bill: “Dido and Aeneas” by Henry Purcell and “The Seven Deadly Sins” by Kurt Weill. The performance was from Copenhagen. The two don’t have much in common, but perhaps that was the intention. Purcell lived from 1659-1695, during the baroque period. Kurt Weill lived from 1900 to 1950. We all know Weill from “Mack the Knife,” of course – but (at least in my generation) know “September Song” equally well but don’t know that it was also from a Broadway show – “Knickerbocker Holiday.” His “The Seven Deadly Sins” was called a “ballet chanté” rather than an opera because the man who commissioned it was married to a dancer who bore a strong resemblance to Weill’s wife, singer Lotte Lenya, and it was written for them, so the central character, Anna, is written as a split personality. I have heard of it, and read about it, but never actually heard it until yesterday. It is satirical – I would not take moral advice from it. For just one example, the last sin addressed is greed – and the conclusion is that Greed is good – just like Gordon Gecko. Danielle de Niese, who doesn’t just sing opera, but also on Broadway, in films, and on television – though much of that is not in the U.S. – but y’all might have heard of her – sang both personalities as well as Dido in this broadcast. The most famous aria from “Dido and Aeneas” is one of those “Don’t Cry for Me” pieces which irritate me in principle, because I don’t think you need to be Elizabeth Kübler Ross to be aware on some level that grief for someone’s death is really grief for our own loss of that person, not “for” the person who has died, so telling us not to grieve is really telling us not to heal. Not that I would expect the character of Dido, who, if she lived, did so in the 12th or 13th century BCE – and the aria is well known because it is beautiful. Off to see Virgil – will check in upon return.

NBCU Academy is clearly associated with the National Broadcasting Company, since the peacock is in their logo. And it appears to be working to ensure that aspiring journalists can get excellent education for that career. Given that (for just one example) Alan Dershowitz was educated at (and later even taught at) Yale Law school, their participants are not going to be 100% ethical. But it’s still a good thing, and far better than nothing. And this story from their project really is good news.

And this story from The 19th is really just amazing – and, in Louisiana, you know they did not get a lot of encouragement or assistance from the state, so they were working with virtually nothing but themselves.

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Open Thread August 24 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 242025
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was “Werther,” by Jules Massenet, based on the (epistolary) novel by Goethe (who wrote it at age 24, which, coincidentally, was the same age at which Bruce Springsteen wrote “Born to Run.” (Massenet was in his 40’s when he wrote the opera,, and it took him two years to complete it. Composing operas is a lot harder than it looks.) It occurred to me that entitled straight young men haven’ changed all that much in the last few hundred years – the biggest change would be in the last fifty years – now, instead of self harm, they take it out on the object of their “affections.” And, yes, that is an unfair generalization, and not all of them are violent at all. But they surely tend to be whiny. Werther’s whine, the aria “Pourquoi me réveiller?” is heartbreakingly beautiful. Although the words and the music are very different, it has a strong similarity in tone and feel to Lensky’s aria “Kuda, kuda vï udalilis” in Eugene Onegin (usually just called “Lensky’s aria” here), also sung by a tenor about to die. And darn it, now I am reminded of Jerry Hadley. I don’t know when he recorded a CD with conductor Paul Geminiani of Great American Songbook songs every one of which is similarly whiny to Werther’s and Lenski’s, but I do own it, and have played it once and am in no hurry to do so again because Jerry shot himself in 2007. I could wish that life had not imitated art in this case. Sorry to be sharing such a downer today. I’m off now to see Virgil, which should cheer me up, and I’ll of course check in upon return.

Those of us who are melanin-deficient could learn a thing or two from this. From the Root.

Speaking as a person who lives in a more or less chronic drought area, I found this impressive.

“Friends” – guess there are things AI is good for.

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Open Thread June 1 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 012025
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville,” One of two operas based on Beaumarchais’s trilogy which caused somuch scandal inits day by dissing the aristocracy (They barely made it past the censors.) The other is Mozart’s “Figaro’s Wedding.” There have been numerous attempts at operas intended to get the third play, “La Mère coupable,” into the repertory. So far John Corigliano has come the closest, with his “The Ghosts of Versailles.” It has received a fair number of performances (including one in Los Angeles with Patti Lupone in the role which Marilyn Horne created), but it’s not really in the repertory yet. But I digress. The story in “Barber” is how Count Almaviva courted Rosina with help from Figaro and even more from Rosina, in spite of opposition from her guardian, who wanted to marry her himself – the last thing she wanted. The cast appears to be from all over, and unknown to me, but I never saw or heard a performance I didn’t enjoy. I will say there’s only one tenor who has ever given me chills at the end when the count, his character, threatens the guardian and his sidekick with the Italian 18th-19th century version of “Nice life you’ve got. Be too bad if anything happened to it,” and that was a fellow named Rockwell Blake who must have just leaned on his white privilege. It’s kind of a plot point, so it’s unfortunate more tenors can’t do it. Anyway, I’m off to see Virgil and will check in as usual upon return.

This is good news for a number of reasons, and probably different reasons for different people. For me, there’s the factor that Yosemite means so much to me.

Not exactly news, but definitely good. Even though it’s blue, I can’t always be proud of my state. I can about this.

Kermit the Frog‘s graduation address at the University of Maryland (ending with The Rainbow Connection” and the presentation to Kermit of a Citation from the Governor.) I did not set out to do an double-frog post, honest. (Off topic, but the best-known orange frog will kill you.)

We’ll never know for sure why Harvard picked this moment to back fown on this – but from where I sit, it looks as though being attacked by a corrupt administration has provided a sense of proportion previously masked by privilege.

Randy Trump Derangement (That’s Entertainment) I clipped the ad, but if you want the whole enchilada you can go to YouTube.

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Open Thread April 6 2025

 Posted by at 6:05 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 062025
 

Yesterday’s radio opera, “Ainadamar” (“fountain of tears”) by Osvaldo Golijov, is based on the lives of Federico Garcia Lorca amd Margarida Xirgu, who is sometimes referred to as his muse. It was performed in 2005 at Tanglewood and revisedin 2003, this in Los Angeles and revised again, before having its official premiere in Santa Fe in 2005. In 2005, I was working at USAA and had recently been promoted, which put me at the bottom of the vacation request list. So I was not able to see it then, and became resigned to not ever seeing or hearing it. So this broadcast was an unexpected gift. The plot is kind of muddy, taking place as it does – or at least as it does in flashback – in Spain in the tome leading up to the Spanish Civil War. That was a place and time where and when, an nearly as I can tell from a not very deep dive into the history, when there were multiple political parties in Spain, and, though they ran the gamut left to right, all apparently were authoritarian, and all were violent. And none were tolerant of homoeroticism. Not a good time or place to be a gay playwright with opinions. The opera pins his death on the Falangist party (one of the Fascist parties.) It also calls his death an execution. His body was never found. Since 2005, the opera has been performed all over the world to critical acclaim, but last October’s run was the first time at the Met. What we heard this week was a recording from then. It’s short – only a bit under an hour and a half total – and very listenable, even if it’s a bit tough to follow the action. Also, today, it’s Pat B’s wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary, Pat! And it’s Tim Walz’s birthday. He is 61 (just a kid.) Happy birthday, Gov!  Off to see Virgil now – will post my return in a comment as always.

Good news – Democrats will be Doing Something. Several Senators who are no strangers to fights are mentioned in the article from Axios.

The Day of Visibility was last Monday (I posted a logo for it), but it’s good to know that state legislators are going beyond that. Colorado, like the nation, has two legislative houses, and since I moved in 23 years ago, both my representatives have been Republicans. But not now. My assemblyperson is still Republican, but my State Senator is a Democrat. And there is a Democratic majority in the Assembly, even though mine is not part of it. So I’m looking to see this bill pass.

This may not be the happiest song, but the selected founders, and their presentations, are so good I wanted to share it. And at least it ends with hope.

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