Alan Rich

Three diverse concerts in four nights at Disney: proof enough of the splendid variety of music in these parts — even in May, when the season is supposed to be winding down. The difference in the sounds echoing through these marvelous premises in close succession was, to put it mildly,......

Getting It Right Of a couple of dozen productions I have attended of the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, the one currently at the Music Center (through this weekend) is by some distance the finest and the most enjoyable. It contains the most of George’s music, in an opera often cut,......

{mosimage}Minimal MerrimentOf all the unreasonable choices for operatic fare to sweep cheery breezes across this season’s repertory, a revival of 2001’s The Merry Widow, in the San Francisco production by Lotfi Mansouri — originally conceived by him in 1981 as a gala vehicle for reigning diva Joan Sutherland, padded out......

{mosimage}The Tristan RejectNot content with merely presenting the inscrutable masterpiece, the opera that changed the course of artistic thought forever, the Philharmonic offered further ennoblement under the rubric of “The Tristan Project.” First injected onto the Disney stage in 2004 with Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde kibbled into three separate acts,......

When People Die . . . Back in 1992, the host of KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic — what’s-’is-name? — let himself be hypnotized by the Third Symphony of the Polish composer Henryk Górecki, and passed it on to the rest of us. For several weeks, it seemed as if that......

When People Die . . . Back in 1992, the host of KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic — what’s-’is-name? — let himself be hypnotized by the Third Symphony of the Polish composer Henryk Górecki, and passed it on to the rest of us. For several weeks, it seemed as if that......

{mosimage}Moving AlongOne day in 2005, Ernest Fleischmann, former honcho of the Philharmonic and now of the musical world at large, invited me to lunch, a frequent and pleasant occurrence. This time there was good food, plus a command. On no circumstance, came the order from Ernest On High, was I......