Words and Music

PERFORMING IN AN OPERA CAN’T BE EASY for any of the participants, but my vote for the hardest-working cast member in Rossini’s “Thieving Mag...

AS WITH ANY RACIALLY CHARGED SUBJECT, there are many contexts in which “The Merchant of Venice” can be viewed. Jews were still barred from S...

From the Food Vault Dept .: I’m pleased to see that Minissale’s Wine Cellar Café still is going strong at its perch on the edge of Troy’s 14...

PIANIST LINCOLN MAYORGA has been championing the music of George Gershwin with virtuoso accomplishment over the course of a long career, ess...

WHY WOULD AN OPERA AND THEATER DIRECTOR – a director with a long, long list of credits, thus implying a successful career – saddle a masterf...

COMPARING CONTEMPORARY NEW YORK CITY with Belle Époque Paris is convenient insofar as income disparity obtains, and living conditions for a...

The State of the Stage Dept. : A friend read my recently exhumed overview of the 1987 summer arts season, which skimmed over what would be ...

From the Vault Dept. : Here’s another in a lengthy series of workaday pieces I churned out over the years, a preview of such arts events as ...

From the Food Vault Dept .: In the restaurant business, Mother’s Day is the busiest while Father’s Day typically is a walk in the park. Rest...

THREE CHORDS UNDERLIE the Blues, the same three chords that inform much of the more popular examples of western music. In a Blues song they ...

IN 1959, THE DAY AFTER my third birthday, my father flew me from our home in Cincinnati to visit his parents in Astoria. We traveled on a D...

26 May 2016 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Welcoming You to the World Dept .: When I wrote the piece below, my wife was beginning her seventh month of pregnancy with our only child. B...

From the Vault Dept.: I suspect that, like bagpipers and Barack Obama, barbershop quartets inspire only the most extreme opinions. I took a...

From the Vault Dept .: I’m revisiting old technology. More specifically, I’m digitizing cassettes that seem worth keeping, cassettes that ha...

THERE’S A MYTH OF HEROISM handed down to young men that seems especially attractive as the teenaged years set in. It suggests that there’s a...

From the Nostalgic Dining Vault: Of the several review visits I paid over the years to Jumpin’ Jack’s, Scotia’s venerable seasonal burger m...

BY THE TIME THE PIANO MAKES ITS ENTRANCE in Brahms’s Concerto No. 1, we’ve been through a great deal of tumult. The piece is in D minor, emp...

From the Restaurant Vault Dept .: We’re only going back three years for this one because it’s important for you to celebrate the warming wea...

From the Recorded Vault Dept .: It appears now that most of the big-time record labels have run out of reissues. Boxed sets used to rain upo...