Jane Campion’s Power of the Dog, now out on NetFlix, recognizes no borders. It’s a Western that crosses the frontiers of geography, genre, and gender with unapologetic, well-funded ease. Set in 1920s Montana, the film…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
One of the most famous trees in music is the one hymned by the title character in the opening scene of Handel’s 1738 opera Xerxes. The Persian King—in the original production sung by a male…
As the flag-waving scenes of this election week recede in the rearview mirror of the campaign bus, the numbers of the discontent increase in the ether like those brooms in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice: the inundations…
Less than a month before the first presidential election of December 1788, Francis Hopkinson published his Seven Songs for the Harpsichord or Forte Piano, dedicating the set “To His Excellency George Washington, Esquire.” Hopkinson was a Philadelphia…
He had oil in his beard and defiance in his eye. Both gleamed in the October sunshine streaming through the windows at the back of the immigration hall at Heathrow Airport Terminal 2. The meticulously…
The playlist of life follows patterns, tends to the familiar. We don’t need Silicon Valley algorithm makers to seduce us into routines. We fall into them ourselves. Once these tastes are formed, we continue to…
One has come to accept, even perversely enjoy, the full foolish fury of America’s National Anthem as patriotic prelude to the country’s most brutal sports. Why not introduce the bone-crushing, brain-rattling hand-to-hand combat of football…