Comments on: Did Rupert Buy the Times?

By: Phil Fried

Phil Fried — Wed, 21 May 2008 04:03:29 +0000

Remember folks — as the NY Times states:

Bang on a Can is not political, or are they?

By: zeno

zeno — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:04:56 +0000

And no, or little, sign of DOK librettist Alice Goodman anywhere, either.

(Rather, John Adams, Peter Sellers, Alice Goodman, and Penny Woolcock appear to be, at least partially, professionally safe at Peter Gelb’s MET Opera House — as it should be, in my view.)

[On a separate note, I see that the Chicago Lyric Opera production of Doctor Atomic is going to be broadcast on radio, here in D.C., at 1 PM. on Saturday, May 17. I thought that I'd have to wait for the MET Opera production and broadcast next winter.]

By: Jerry Bowles

Jerry Bowles — Thu, 08 May 2008 02:52:46 +0000

But, no Death of Klinghoffer anywhere.

By: zeno

zeno — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:19:02 +0000

Mr Ramsey, I believe that there is a world of moral difference between Stockhausen’s perhaps publicity-seeking, perhaps superphrenic comment after 9/11; and Richard Wagner’s history of published anti-Semitic writings.

You are free to disagree.

Parsifal at Auschwitz/Oswiecim? Nein/nie!
(No operas or music dramas there, for that matter.)

Richard Wagner in Israel? Possible if done carefully, as done by Daniel Barenboim.

By: Walter Ramsey

Walter Ramsey — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:19:29 +0000

I don’t think it’s phony, and I think people have a right to be offended. Nobody is calling for an outcry because Stockhausen had his 15 minutes in the popular world back in the 60′s.

Even though Wagner didn’t commit any crimes in the Holocaust, nobody would endorse performing Parsifal at Auschwitz. The decision to program Stockhausen at the WFC seems to be analogously insulting. This is what you get when you contaminate arts with politics.

Walter Ramsey
ramseytheii@hotmail.com

By: Daniel G.

Daniel G. — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:48:36 +0000

The NY Times misreporting? No, you don’t say.

By: Christopher Zimmerman

Christopher Zimmerman — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:59:01 +0000

Stockhausen was commenting on and lamenting the fact that mediatized terrorism has usurped the role and impact that the avant-garde ‘traditionally’ held. Don DeLillo in interviews from the ’80′s said some prescient things about the terrorist taking over the role of the novelist.

By: zeno

zeno — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:08:47 +0000

Interesting comments, Jerry and Joe. Thanks.

Perhaps the cultural reporter will also wake up and realize that the Metropolitan Opera — under Peter Gelb, no less — has buried in its 2008-09 programming a work by one less than perfect Richard Wagner, called ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’. (I also can’t quite recall the outcries that greeted Hans Pfitzner’s ‘Palestrina’ being produced on the MET stage a few years back. Maybe someone else can.)

Personally, an announced performance of Stockhausen’s ‘Stimmung’ — even at the WFC — strikes me as less interesting than would an announced performance of Carl Orff’s ‘De temporum fine commedia’ (or even Arnold Schoenberg’s ‘Pierrot lunaire’.)

(It would be another matter if, for example, Gerard Mortier were to hire — for shock value — an avowed anti-Semite, anti-Muslim, or anti-Christian director to stage all seven parts of Stockhausen’s ‘Licht Cycle’ with the NYCO at the NYC Armory…)

By: jodru

jodru — Mon, 05 May 2008 02:31:55 +0000

Total nonsense. The remark was insensitive, to be sure. The number of outraged comments on that article underscores just how raw those wounds still are for a lot of us. But talk about a comment stripped of all context! The Times misreported the story along with everyone else when it first happened. Why should they stop now?