By Fred Kirshnit [NY Sun, 18 July 2008]
Summer in the city can be a difficult time for music lovers: The surging river of New York culture dries up to a mere trickle in a dry bed due to the mass exodus of the finest musicians to the comfort of the country and its wealth of interesting festivals. One of the few bright spots of the season is New York Grand Opera, which mounts fully staged productions of the Italian repertoire under the stars at the Naumburg Bandshell in our own verdant escape from urbanity, Frederick Law Olmsted’s soothing Central Park. The audiences always overflow for these free events and invariably one runs into old acquaintances enjoying good quality performances in the sultry night air.