Archive for the ‘Opera’ Category.

A problem child?

The latest issue of the New York Review of Books contains a book review by George Stauffer about Alban Berg with this bewildering sentence about Berg’s childhood:

He showed few signs of musical talent as a youth aside from informal piano lessons, reading through the scores of songs and operas, and playing four-hand arrangements of orchestral and chamber works with his sister, Smaragda.

Well, well… “Aside from”? If you had a child who could only read through lots of opera scores and play four-hand arrangements of symphonies, would you immediately get to the logical conclusion that he is devoid of musical talent?

(Sorry about poor Alban, he is the shame of our family, let’s just hope Smaragda won’t turn out to be such an abject musical failure.)

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Just call me “Your Highness”

To buy a Zurich Opera ticket online you have to register on their site, including choosing a form of address from a list which beats any I have seen:

anrede

As a side detail, their system does not work: to enable registration and booking it is supposed to send you an email with your password, and it never did in spite of many attempts over several days. The only way to buy tickets turned out to be going to the theater and queuing at the box office. (There I was assured with extreme politeness that I am now registered on the site, but no, never got a password and cannot log in.) I agree with you, though: what a trivial quibble! You may never be able to book a performance, but by clicking the right menu entry you can call yourself Frau Stadträtin.

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