Opera’s Switch Hitter

http://www.nysun.com/article/69271

Simon Keenlyside, Wigmore Hall, London

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7f976a24-bfa3-11dc-8052-0000779fd2ac.html

Opera Manager Joan Ingpen Dies at 91

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iz_De0NUsuiZsjxUrtH-rsyv-vLgD8U2EOU00

Maazel at the Met, Br¸nnhilde in a Bind

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/arts/music/09walk.html?_r=1&ref=music&oref=slogin

ROUSSEAU: Le Devin du Village

This is a valuable new recording of a work that is only rarely heard, but was widely influential and wildly popular during the eighteenth century. Philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote both the libretto and the music, with mixed success.

Les …lÈmens

This disc is well worth the price for the first track alone: the opening measures of Jean-FÈry Rebelís ìCahos,î (Chaos), written in 1737 or 1738, may cause you to wonder if you accidentally left a Stockhausen or Ligeti disc in the changer.

Oppenheimer opera charts new course in music

In this country art and politics are rarely bedfellows — strange or otherwise; indeed, it’s seldom that the two meet under the same roof.

Hansel and Gretel, Metropolitan Opera, New York

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/001e30ec-b86a-11dc-893b-0000779fd2ac.html

IphigÈnie en Tauride at the Met

Regarded, until the modern vogue for earlier masters, as the senior surviving grand master of opera, Gluck never quite becomes fashionable and never quite vanishes.

Prokofiev’s War and Peace at the Met

There is no middle ground in War and Peace ó or, rather, itís all middle ground, like a battlefield, and you may feel as if every soldier in Russia (and in France) has marched over you.