Email Author Alan Rich

2000 Stories by Alan Rich

• Dust Bowl

  published July 27, 2000

  More >>

• Ruling Passions

  published July 20, 2000

  Up north, Good Friday came late this year. Three daunting artworks translate Christendom’s central tragedy into music that churns in th... More >>

• Something for (Nearly) Everyone

  published July 13, 2000

  ”Someday we shall all be free,“ Garth Brooks sang at the end of his stint at the Hollywood Bowl the other night, and the crowd of 11,000 or ... More >>

• Dieties of the Big Bang

  published June 29, 2000

  ”We were playing in Fargo,“ Amy Knoles remembers, ”and there was this old woman in the front row who wasn‘t very happy with what she... More >>

• Notes in the Key of H

  published June 22, 2000

  A London coal dealer named Thomas Britton had a loft above his shop, reachable by ladder, where, for several decades starting around 1680,... More >>

• Shipshape

  published June 22, 2000

  The Motherland reclaimed some of its territory these last few weeks: Benjamin Britten rampant at the L.A. Opera and some magnificent noises... More >>

• Not With a Bang but a Whisper

  published June 15, 2000

  The quiet blessing that ends Mahler’s Fourth Symphony receded into silence, and the Philharmonic’s season was over. The last weeks we... More >>

• Family Picnic

  published June 8, 2000

  More >>

• The Notes Between the Notes

  published June 1, 2000

  I‘m still obsessed with memories of Marino Formenti’s piano concerts at LACMA; you would be, too, if you‘d been there. On the third concert,... More >>

• It Took a Weill

  published May 25, 2000

  More >>

• Good, Bad, Beautiful, Ugly, Etc.

  published May 18, 2000

  There was chamber music in town last week, the wrong pieces beautifully played. On Wednesday, three delightfully earnest and talented young... More >>

• Legalized Violence

  published May 11, 2000

  More >>

• Phantoms of the Opera

  published May 4, 2000

  Will American opera audiences ever see the Light? I wouldn‘t count on it, not while the Mmes. Butterfly and Tosca fatten their lead in th... More >>

• Mom Domingo Gets It Wrong

  published April 27, 2000

  I have seen the operatic future -- part of it, anyhow -- and it makes me nervous. I view the L.A. Opera under the Domingo dynasty as a... More >>

• Fiddlers Free

  published April 20, 2000

  In common regard, the violin concertos -- even the last three, which are the most often played -- are a violinist‘s throwaway pieces, the eas... More >>

• Bach and Forth

  published April 6, 2000

  In another 75 years I might -- just might -- run out of things to say about Johann Sebastian Bach. Then again, I might not. The evidence is at... More >>

• On My Mind, In My Face

  published March 30, 2000

  More >>

• Faceless Defacement

  published March 23, 2000

  The greatest of the romantic operas -- the panoramas of lovehate, deceptionredemption, hearts broken and hearts aflame that drew the sellout... More >>

• The Uncle of Us All

  published March 16, 2000

  I smoked my first joint to the Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper, and my second to George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children. The year was 1970 ... More >>

• All's Well That Ends Well

  published February 24, 2000

  photo by Fredrik Nilsen & Daniel Marlos HOTSHOT GANGSTER MEETS PURE-AT-HEART SALVATION Army lass; they kiss, they sing, they fall in love; at... More >>

• The Bear That Plays Like a Man

  published February 24, 2000

  Hotshot gangster meets pure-at-heart Salvation Army lass; they kiss, they sing, they fall in love; at the curtain, the gang vows to abandon its... More >>

• Vintage Volts, Future Sound

  published February 17, 2000

  Down in the depths of Lower Manhattan there stands the Knitting Factory, a dilapidated four-story walkup where Avon Products once stored its... More >>

• Heavenly Length

  published February 17, 2000

  I left the Paris Opera on a damp November night in 1983, bored out of my gourd. I made it to the last Metro with only seconds to spare,... More >>

• Forgive and Forget

  published February 10, 2000

  THERE'S SOMETHING TO BE SAID -- although I'm not sure exactly what -- for the process of confronting the spirits of eminent dead composers with... More >>

• Opera Velveeta

  published February 3, 2000

  Comes a time when even the youngest at heart among the critical confraternity simply runs out of new ways of expressing the awfulness of... More >>