a southern gal in the north

not enough knitting.  The balance of life is disturbed, the goal of this week is to get it back in sync and that includes knitting again. 

Sadly Branching Out has visited the frog pond – not sure if its going to be resurrected – lots of problems with the cotton yarn and needles that i was using.

Picked up the shawl again tonight while watching HALLMARK's Night of Mysteries (well, PBS let me down tonight, what's a gal to do?).  Not the most sophisticated or best written but fun – Kellie Martin as a mystery solving mystery-bookstore owner and then Lea Thompson with John Rubinstein as the victim's husband and Joe Penny as Thompson's boss (they work for the CSA). 

hopefully some time off soon to relax and knit.

Independent Online Edition > Features : app6

Audience hits fever pitch for Domingo’s Prom debut

THE TIMES

THE GUARDIAN

THE INDEPENDENT – Review

THE EVENING STANDARD – Review

THE TELEGRAPH – Review

Bryn Terfel interview (GUARDIAN)

this week – Bayreuther Festspiele  Opening Day at the Festspiele. Not that I have recovered from last weeks PROMS imPASSioned steamy DIE WALKUERE… but as a good little Wagnerite onward we go.

10 am Monday its TRISTAN with the HOT American Robert Dean Smith*  (from Kansas!), and Nina Stemme essaying Tristan and his Isolde.  Go to Operacast for schedule and stations.

* did you catch him in DIE WALKUERE  two years ago with Violeta Urmana?  it rivals the Dominog/Meier heard last week – I think it is actually hotter (you can’t imagine!! – the entire Bayreuth audience roared!)

Not many second chances to get a recording from the web for these so pay careful attention to the times and stations.

This is a non-RING year at the Festival – TRISTAN, LOHENGRIN, HOLLANDER, TANNHAUSER and PARSIFAL

Well, i only heard bits and pieces of this first act (i AM at work) but what i heard was STUPENDOUS.  Things are quiet now and I am fully intending to listen to the rest of the afternoon…. hotojoho!

A banner day at the PROMS – the First Chamber Music Concert and then DIE WALKUERE (the hottest ticket in London) with Domingo, Meier and Terfel!!!! Fans around the world are waiting….then throw in a rebroadcast of the interview with Karita from earlier this year…. what a treat this will be!  Oh and this is Domingo’s DEBUT at the PROMS !!!!

ENJOY!!

8 am  EDT BBC Proms Chamber Music 2005  Concert 1
Live from Cadogan Hall in London, a tribute to Peter Warlock – one of England’s greatest song writers, who died 75 years ago. Presented by Stephanie Hughes.

Fauré: L’Horizon chimérique
Barber: Dover Beach
Warlock: Songs, including Hanacker Mill, The Night and My Own Country

Thomas Allen (baritone); Imogen Cooper (piano); Royal String Quartet

9 am EDT   BBC Proms 2005 Rebroadcast of the Live performance from the Royal Albert Hall, London The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus launch the 111th season of Henry Wood Promenade Concerts. Sir Roger Norrington conducts an all-star line-up in Tippett’s powerful oratorio marking the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, Janine Jansen, performs the ever-popular Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and this year’s Proms theme of the Sea is launched with Berlioz’s thrilling overture.Presented by Stephanie Hughes.

Janine Jansen (violin); Indra Thomas (soprano); Christine Rice (mezzo soprano); Ian Bostridge (tenor); Sir Willard White (bass)

Berlioz: Overture, The Corsair
Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in Em
Elgar: Overture, Cockaigne

BBC Symphony Chorus; BBC Symphony Orchestra; Sir Roger Norrington (conductor)

11:00    Stage and Screen  A short series of this season’s most-requested editions of Stage and Screen. Kicking off with another chance to hear the great Finnish soprano Karita Mattila in conversation with Edward Seckerson at the Royal Opera House. Including music from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Strauss’s Elektra, Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades and Verdi’s Don Carlos.

12 noon BBC Proms 2005 Presented by Christopher Cook live from the Royal Albert Hall, London, the first instalment of the Proms Ring cycle. Antonio Pappano conducts a performance of the new Covent Garden production of Wagner’s Die Walküre.

Wagner
Die Walküre (concert performance; sung in German) (3 hrs 52
mins)
Act I (62 mins)
interval (25 mins)
Act II (91 mins)
interval
(55 mins)
Act III (67 mins)
Total time 5 hrs 15 mins

Cast includes:
Siegmund Placido Domingo (tenor)
Sieglinde Waltraud
Meier (soprano)
Hunding Eric Halfvarson (bass)
Wotan Bryn Terfel
(baritone)
Brünnhilde Lisa Gasteen (soprano)
Fricka Rosalind Plowright
(mezzo-soprano)
Gerhilde Geraldine McGreevy
Ortlinde Elaine
McKrill
Waltraute Claire Powell
Schwertleite Rebecca de Pont
Davies
Helmwige Iréne Theorin
Siegrune Sarah Castle
Grimgerde Clare
Shearer
Rossweisse Elizabeth Sikora

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Antonio Pappano conductor

1:05  Twenty Minutes  Return to Berlin  Professor George Brandt was born in Berlin, and returned to the city as a guest of its mayor under a scheme that provides a gesture of reconciliation to exiles around the world.  The trip is a moment of emotional and intellectual reckoning, as well as an opportunity to lay the past to rest. Professor Brandt remembers his Berlin childhood which ended with his abrupt departure as a young teenager in 1933, and he reflects on the experience of the Berliner in exile.

1:35  BBC Proms 2005  Part 2

3:05  A programme about Nietsche’s time in Basel.

4:00 BBC Proms 2005  Part 3

Near a Breakthrough at the Baltimore Symphony By JEREMY EICHLER (NYTIMES)

The conducting podiums of large American orchestras have historically been an all-male province, but the Baltimore Symphony may finally be changing that. On Wednesday, a 21-member search committee voted to make the American conductor Marin Alsop the orchestra’s next music director. If her appointment is ratified by the orchestra’s board on Tuesday, she will become the first woman to lead a major American orchestra.

Ms. Alsop, 48, is currently principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in England, but insiders have long speculated that a major American post was on its way. Her three-year contract with  Baltimore, which has not been finalized, states that she would serve as music director designate starting in the 2006-7 season and begin her official tenure in the fall of 2007, said James Glicker, president and chief executive of the Baltimore Symphony. She would succeed Yuri Temirkanov, now in his sixth
season with the orchestra.

"I’m absolutely thrilled," Ms. Alsop said yesterday from a cruise off the coast of New England. "I’m very honored to be able to be the first woman to have this position, and I’m hoping it will soon become a  nonissue for the women who follow me."

Deborah Borda, president of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, said that if the appointment goes through, "it would be a great leap forward and a significant moment in American musical history."

It would be highly unusual for an orchestra’s board to reject the recommendation of the search committee, which was headed by the board chairman and included six other board members, as well as orchestral staff, musicians and an outside consultant. Ms. Alsop’s probable appointment was first reported yesterday in The Baltimore Sun.

Continues..

What interesting gods of scheduling aspired to give us (almost) an entire day of Ms. Voigt from Beethoven to Wagner. And after the crazy work week this week (two nights til 3 and an all nighter last night)… i need some relief!

First …FIDELIO in a concert version recorded last year at Carnegie Hall.

1:30PM WRTI Opera Stage [From the WFMT Radio Network]
Beethoven: FIDELIO
Leonore: Deborah Voigt, soprano
Florestan: Thomas Moser, tenor
Don Fernando: James Morris, bass
Don Pizarro: Tom Fox, baritone
Marzelline: Harolyn Blackwell, soprano
Jacquino: Stanford Olsen, tenor

Robert Bass,  The Collegiate Chorale and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s;  Recorded last year (4 hrs., 30 min.)

AND then tonight – the piece de resistance… a LIVE Tanglewood webcast with Wagner and Levine (this is rare folks!).   This is Ms. Voigt’s debut as Brünnhilde – she will be singing the “Immolation” from Wagner’s Götterdämerung.  The concert opens with Act One of Walkuere in which she will sing the part of Sieglinde. Maestro Levine leads the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra for this concert.

8:30 PM EDT – WQXR***  SPECIAL PROGRAM: TMC Orchestra: All-Wagner Program
The Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert

Wagner
Die Walküre, Act 1
Götterdämmerung, Act 3 
James Levine, conductor
Deborah Voigt, soprano (Sieglinde and Brünnhilde)
Clifton Forbis, tenor (Siegmund)
Christian Franz, tenor (Siegfried)
Melanie Diener, soprano (Gutrune)
Lyubov Petrova, soprano (Woglinde)
Maria Zifchack, soprano (Wellgunde)
Jane Bunnell, mezzo-soprano (Flosshilde)
Alan Held, bass-baritone (Gunther)
Stephen Milling, (Hunding in Walküre I)
John Creek, (Hagen in Götterdämmerung III)
Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra
Men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, conductor

** A note about listening to WQXR on the web – you can only do it thru AOL (so you must be a member).

ok its 238 am and now i am going home… suffice it to say i am a very sad southern gal right now.

back at work in what 7 hours?  sigh.  so here is another photo of where i would rather be…