Reviews, journalism, musings
A review by Peter Bates of the Blu-ray recording of Bellini’s opera I Capuleti e i Montecchi for Audiophile Audition.
Here’s a review of a DVD recording of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Joyce DiDonato et al, as it appears in Audiophile Audition (www.audaud.com).
Continue reading “Review of Blu-ray of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi”
Fidel Castro dead? Big deal. What about Batista?
The recent death of Cuba’s Fidel Castro has got me thinking: I am starting to miss the glorious days of Presidente Fulgencio Batista. Continue reading “Where’s Batista Now That We Need Him?”
The St. Petersburg Opera presented an Il Trovatore that met all the requirements of a classic Verdi opera production.
IL TROVATORE. Opera by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto by Salvatore Cammarano. Cast: Michael Morrow (Manrico); Alexandra Batsios (Leonora); Claudia Chapa (Azucena); Christopher Clayton (Count di Luna). Stage Director: Karl W. Hesser; Costume designer: Glenn Breed; Conductor and executive director: Mark Sforzini. Produced by St. Petersburg Opera.
If you have never seen a Verdi opera before, Continue reading “A Stirring Il Trovatore by the St. Petersburg Opera”
Poet Susan Eisenberg has published three previous books, all worth reading, all notable for their lack of pedantry and abstractions affecting so much poetry today. Her poems are immediate, dramatic, and firmly rooted in day-to-day reality. With this fourth volume, she reveals something personal you’d appreciate knowing about. She is unwell: a cancer survivor, she also has lupus, an insidious autoimmune disease you can read all about in Wikipedia. So what does she do? She writes about it. How? Astoundingly well.
Continue reading “Best Poems Ever about Illness”
Perhaps this book is too modestly titled. True, it does begin as an account of the author’s father and his struggles with failing eyesight, as he falls victim to the hereditary disease of retinitis pigmentosa. In the opening scene he takes the author, a six-year old, for a seemingly harmless ride in the family car. Soon it is revealed that he can barely see the road and almost has a traffic accident. Continue reading “An Affliction of Many Dimensions”
You may learn a lot about botany when you read Mark Pawlak’s Reconnaissance, his newest volume of verse. “No way!” you say. Continue, dear reader. Continue reading “A Reconnaissance Deep into Poem Territory”
In 2013 Faith Justice listed her book Hypatia: Her Life and Times on Amazon, both in Kindle and paperback format. In 2016 it appeared in the The Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative (FL) as an e-book, both in MOBI (Kindle) and EPUB (Apple, etc.) format. How? Continue reading “Self-Publishing E-Books: An Interview with Author Faith Justice”
Here’s a review of a DVD recording of Giulio Cesare in Egitto by Cecilia Bartoli et al, as it appears in Audiophile Audition (www.audaud.com).
Continue reading “Review of Blu-ray Recording of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Caesar in Egypt)”
TIP: Use the inner scroll bar. Continue reading “Review of Mozart’s Complete String Quintets DVD”
