Opera Chic

Slatkin On Gheorghiu's Driving Skillz

Leonard Slatkin is a good guy:

"They needed to save the soprano [Angela Gheorghiu], no matter how willfully she distorted the phrasing, moment to moment. The conductor was expendable. My lowest point opening night came at the big ensemble number closing the third act. I cut off and everyone ended on cue, but she just hung on. It finally threw me. Yes, things got very wobbly after that.

"So why would I want to stay on as a traffic cop, when she was running all the red lights, anyway? Bottom line, it's a blip on the radar."

Conlon (et al) Conducting In Colorado's Musical Summer

Conlon, Falletta, Gilbert, Robertson, Slatkin, van Zweden... Colorado's summers are not only made of glorious woods and creeks and lakes and mountains (and the Jesus-loving Colorado Rockies games): they're also chock-full of conducting goodness. Opera Chic's more accustomed to oceany or Mediterraneany summers (Montauk @ land's end, Pantelleria, Isola del Giglio) and winters in the mountains: but Colorado's clearly not all about the skking holidays. The full list of performances is here.  

Leonard Allan Slatkin: Conductor, Composer, Goth & Addams Family Nut

Leonard Slatkin kicked out the scary jams in Baltimore and conducted the BSO in, among other good stuff, his own "The Raven", his musical hommage to the great American poet and generally nuts Edgar Allan Poe composed in 1971 to be narrated by howwor movie legend Vincent Price.

The other night, since Mr. Price's ghost had a prior engagement, another legend, of the TV variety, saved the night: il signor John Astin, unforgotten Gomez Addams & Poe scholar.

Friend of Opera Chic, Tim Smith, was spooked (and unimpressed) but there for the Baltimore Sun readers sake, and our own.