Category: music
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Oh Nature!
There are signs that this “fragile Earth, our island home,” as the Book of Common Prayer refers to it, actually has the capacity to recover from humans’ destructive behavior towards her, in some cases with help from contrite members of our species who have invested heavily in clean energy; in…
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Golden Voices
If there were an Olympics for opera singers, diva Renata Tebaldi would be a perennial gold-medalist.
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Singing from the Soul: a Tribute to Sir Donald McIntyre
McIntyre was one of those artists whose characterizations were so right that one never wanted to watch anyone else in one of his roles. Once seen, he couldn’t be replaced.
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When Ya Gotta Glow….
For me, lightning bugs provide an instant mode of time travel back to the very best days of my childhood, when I believed in everything and never doubted that the best things in life were free.
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Musical Echoes for Father’s Day
My favorite radio station, WQXR, spent much of today playing listeners’ requests for music that was in some way connected with their fathers. It was rather a sweet idea, even if it yielded a lot of very well-worn chestnuts such as Bolero and the New World Symphony. It seemed a…
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The Lavender Season
Best of all, for their wafting fragrance as well as their stately beauty, are the delicately, well, lilac lilacs and the classic irises with several subtle hues blended into one glorious effect and a scent that my mother always amusingly likened to grape soda. This week, the English bluebells and…
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Great Queens in Story and Song
Before women’s history month is over, I thought it would be fun to consider a couple of women who shattered the glass ceiling in spectacular fashion long before women’s rights were even a thing. Cleopatra, the fabled Queen of the Nile, reigned in Egypt with a succession of co-rulers but…
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Celestial Voice: Roberta Alexander
Though she felt some initial pangs at giving up the dream of singing dramatic Verdi and Puccini roles, she found her niche as one of the most luminous and elegant light-lyric sopranos of her time.
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The Food of Love
The great thing about romance is that enjoying it vicariously can be almost as enchanting as actually being in love….
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Magic Dragons
The world has lost a lot of important people in the past year (not least among them my mother) — people representative of a generation that took responsibility, modeled grace under pressure and faced challenges, both personal and national, with courage humility and patience. Yarrow believed in changing hearts and…
Louise T. Guinther 