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Posts published by “David Yearsley”

L’Opera è Mobile: Rigoletto in Berlin

Opera thrives on competition as much as collaboration—on who can sing higher, louder, longer, more passionately; what production can seduce or scandalize most abundantly; which company can hoard the most prestige while staving off bankruptcy…

Sic Transit Gloria Maestro

It’s a tough time to be a star conductor. When the world goes to hell, everyone wants to point the finger at the maestro—at the one whose job it is to point at others. Last…

The Agile And The Aged: Paris Comes To Berlin Musikfest

Midway through its near non-stop, culture-packed calendar running from August 30th to September 24th, the Berlin Musikfest last weekend brought two French symphony orchestras to the German capital’s famed concert hall, the Philharmonie. On Friday,…

Salonen & The Swans

I had come from the State Library on my bike, a long-term rental courtesy of an excellent and cheap Dutch company called Swapfiets with outlets in many European cities. I’d just pedaled down Unter den…

Vinyl Afterlives: Lots O’Liszt

Claudio Abbado was conducting Mussorgsky right next to the Dave Brubeck Quintet. The collision made crazy, coincidental sense, a compelling mash-up: Taking Five on Bald Mountain. Nearby, Elly Ameling sang Bach while leaning on a…

Smoke & Pianos

The evening light was a sickly sepia. The haze from the wildfires gave the clapboard houses on the steep hillside above one of Ithaca’s many gorges a simultaneously antique and apocalyptic cast. Down below in…

Disembody & Soul: From ‘Feels So Good’ To The Lighthouse

In Christian art across the centuries, angels have been depicted playing musical instruments: harps, trumpets, and organs. But how is it possible for immaterial beings to hold objects of wood, metal, string and wire? Theologians…

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