If you feel like taking a music break, let me suggest a post— more like a piece — at The New Criterion. I write about a new CD, Joyce & Tony, Live at Wigmore Hall. Joyce is Joyce DiDonato, the great mezzo-soprano from Kansas. Tony is Antonio Pappano, the music director of the Royal Opera House, a.k.a. Covent Garden. In addition to being a conductor, Pappano is a pianist, and a good one. He dons this hat for DiDonato.
Let me relate a memory, here in the Corner. Two years ago, I was doing a public interview of Pappano at the Salzburg Festival. He had recently been knighted. I said, “So, you’re ‘Sir Tony’ now?” He said, with perfect timing and inflection, “Sir Antonio.” I thought of an expression I learned from an old southern friend of mine: “Next time I’ll be more careful.”
P.S. In my New Cri. post, I comment on William Bolcom’s song “Amor” — and not just musically:
Cover your ears, children, because I’m going to talk politics for a second. “Amor” paints a picture of a wonderful, magical day. The words are by Bolcom’s frequent collaborator, the late Arnold Weinstein. His poem includes one of my favorite examples of economic illiteracy (no offense). It is a kindergarten Marxism, which I learned, and which almost everyone learns, I gather.
“The poor stopped taking less./ The rich stopped needing more.”
Most of us outgrow this kind of thinking. But others become poets, musicians, theater directors, leaders of the Labour Party . . . At any rate, “Amor” is a wonderful song, in its words and music.
I would love to know what Kevin Williamson and other economic whizzes think of the line that I have singled out.