Nearly three years ago, I announced a new podcast called “Lost Music: Exploring Literary Opera”. I truly had no idea what I was doing, and proudly said so. I’ve always been a medium-is-the-message guy, and the podcast medium just has an energy and a freshness these days that attracts … Read the rest
Lost Music: RSS Feed (for your favorite podcast listening app)
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Season 4 Episode 1 ITUNES SPOTIFY STITCHER |
Talking to an Influential FairyIn Gilbert and Sullivan’s fairy opera “Iolanthe” empowered magical women crash into toxic privileged masculinity in 19th century London. Marc Eliot Stein interviews New York City singer and |
Introduction
PARIS – AUGUST, 1870 – An incorrigible, horrible genius. A fifteen year-old! disembarks at Rue de Maubeuge. A concussion of uncombed hair infested with a plague of lice. Soiled clothing. A homicidal cupid with the enormous hands of a strangler. A smarmy smirk, perfect skin, a beautiful terror with … Read the rest
It’s a new year and a new universe (because, let’s face it, the universe is always changing, and always new) … and I’m now writing with a new name. So I thought I’d reach for something familiar and easy and tell you briefly about what I’ve been reading and … Read the rest
I’m going to let other people remember David Bowie for his cultural importance — his brave and liberating embrace of sexual ambiguity, his clever shape-shifting, his sophistication as an actor, his sharp sense of pop art’s relationship to rock and roll.
He was truly great in all of these ways. … Read the rest
When I’m feeling stressed out, I head for nature. I found myself driving to Old Rag Mountain in Virginia’s Shenandoah range this weekend.
I’ve done a few amazing hikes in this region: Mary’s Rock, Catoctin, Hawksbill, Big Schloss, sometimes with others and sometimes alone. The challenging eight-mile Old Rag hike … Read the rest
In about four months we’re going to hear a few news blips about the 200th anniversary of Napoleon Bonaparte’s final defeat at Waterloo, which went down on June 18, 1815. It’s a good guess that the tone of these news blips will be apathetic and comical, that few attempts will … Read the rest
As Mike Leigh’s majestic new movie Mr. Turner begins, the famous British artist J. M. W. Turner’s father buys pigments for his son in a dusty London shop. The vast psychedelic arrays of glass jars filled with powders of viridian, chrome, cobalt, barium and ultramarine seem as magical as Diagon … Read the rest
1922 was a special year for modernist literature. On February 2, James Joyce was the shy guest of honor at a small publication party for Ulysses in Paris. Sylvia Beach showed Joyce the book for the first time that day, thus establishing 2/2/22 as its Joycily pleasing official publication date.… Read the rest