June 27 New Yorker issue

I've been wondering what article it was, by Alex Ross, that I read in the last year and really loved. It was not the article on Philip Glass and film music in the June 27 issue though. That was dull. He explains that movie music can work in tension with the image, to produce critical thought on the part of the audiance and, whoa there, irony. They wish! Eisenstein, Brecht, Adorno and Eisler agree. Alex Ross is, indeed, a scholar of modernism. Alright, cheap shots, I know. Moving on . . .

Wait, I found it, Alex Ross reviewed a production of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. Now that's what I like - Southern California, Baudelaire, and Wagner, all on the ugly edges of modernsim. Who wants to see a production of Tristan and Isolde? After reading that review, I do, I do! What a review!



I really love swimming. Image from the video art of the opera. And I hate video art, or so I thought.

Pittsburgh Note: The water at Presque Isle State Park was full of pigeon feathers this past weekend. So I could not swim. Because a elderly relative has passed down a story about how her brother died of a pigeon disease. Granted, that was New York City in the early part of the 20th C but our knowledge of bird disease still leaves much to be desired. Call me paranoid.

Categories: outdoors, pittsburgh, newyorker