Archive for the ‘A Rich Possession’ Category

Mozart@260: Ever Young and Ever Contemporary

Wednesday, January 27th, 2016

In Recognition of Mozart’s 260th birthday and in anticipation of LA Opera’s upcoming performances of The Magic Flute. By James Conlon “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe… the starry heavens above me, and the moral law within me.”—Immanuel Kant The Magic Flute is amongst the world’s most popular and beloved operas, […]

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DICK HOROWITZ: AN HOMAGE

Tuesday, November 10th, 2015

By James Conlon I can barely remember a time when I didn’t know Dick Horowitz. The Metropolitan Opera’s Principal Timpanist first joined the orchestra in 1946 and retired only three years ago, in 2012. Those sixty-six years are a record: the longest-serving musician in the history of the Met’s orchestra. It has been estimated that […]

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IL BARBIERE DI ROMA

Thursday, August 6th, 2015

By James Conlon “Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming… Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated.  For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.”  – Oscar Wilde I had an extraordinary experience in Rome on a recent […]

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Auto-Correct: The Great Leveler

Thursday, March 26th, 2015

By James Conlon   Question: What do Arnold Schoenberg, Edouard Manet, Francois Rene Chateaubriand and Titus Andronicus have in common? Answer: My spell-check doesn’t recognize their names.   About eighteen months ago, bending under a barrage of criticism and pressure to start tweeting, I began.  Entering the world of social media was not my thing. […]

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POLITICAL WALLS, CULTURAL EMISSARIES

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2014

By James Conlon Since arriving in New York in mid-October to rehearse Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at the Metropolitan Opera, and until finishing my last concert with RAI National Symphony Orchestra (Torino) on Friday night, I have not conducted a note of music that is not Russian.  I flew to Europe immediately after the last […]

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SHOSTAKOVICH AND LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK

Monday, November 10th, 2014

By James Conlon   On the occasion of the opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Dimitri Shostakovich’s opera, I have revisited an article that I wrote for Opera News in 1994 at the time I conducted the opera in its first presentation at the Met. I have expanded and re-written a great deal of […]

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The Oblique Censor, Part 3 of 3

Monday, October 20th, 2014

 By James Conlon The following post is adapted from James Conlon’s Keynote Address at the symposium “Music, Censorship and Meaning in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union: Echoes and Consequences” on August 9, 2014 presented by the Ziering-Conlon Initiative at the Colburn school with the cooperation of the Orel Foundation. A public cannot clamor for […]

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The Oblique Censor, Part 2 of 3

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014

By James Conlon The following post is adapted from James Conlon’s Keynote Address at the symposium “Music, Censorship and Meaning in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union: Echoes and Consequences” on August 9, 2014 presented by the Ziering-Conlon Initiative at the Colburn school with the cooperation of the Orel Foundation.  Is it justified to speak […]

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The Oblique Censor, Part 1 of 3

Friday, September 5th, 2014

By James Conlon The following is adapted from James Conlon’s Keynote Address at the symposium “Music, Censorship and Meaning in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union: Echoes and Consequences” on August 9, 2014, presented by the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices at the Colburn School in Los Angeles with the cooperation of the Orel Foundation. […]

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The Elephant in the Audience

Wednesday, May 14th, 2014

By James Conlon Last Friday night, May 9, I conducted a program at Carnegie Hall, the penultimate concert not only for this year’s installment of Spring for Music, but, it would seem, forever. In the audience, it seemed to me, was an enormous (they usually are) and benevolent elephant. I appeared there with the forces […]

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