MetaFilter posts tagged with Bernstein

Master Class

ocherdraco — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:06:40 -0800

Two musical masters impart their knowledge: Stephen Sondheim teaches students from the Guildhall School of Music: "Send in the Clowns" from A Little Night Music (more), "My Friends" from Sweeney Todd, "Later" from A Little Night Music, and "Not Getting Married" from Company. Leonard Bernstein gives his lectures titled "The Unanswered Question" at Harvard (the full series on DVD here), speaks about Mahler's 9th, rehearses "Rite of Spring" with a youth orchestra (2, 3, 4, 5, 6), and performs "Journey into Jazz" (a "Peter and the Wolf" kind of story, but for jazz instead of classical music).

Mad Man with a Diary: Would-Be Assassin Arthur Bremer Released from Prison

jonp72 — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:52:15 -0800

Arthur Bremer was released from prison today, after serving a 35 years of a 53-year sentence for the attempted assassination of George Wallace. After Harper's Magazine published Arthur Bremer's diary in 1973, the manuscript inspired both the character of Travis Bickle in the film Taxi Driver and the Peter Gabriel song "Family Snapshot". After Bremer shot Wallace, Nixon obsessed about the shooting on his audio tapes and pestered FBI agent Mark Felt for information, which Felt a.k.a. "Deep Throat" leaked to cub reporter, Bob Woodward. Woodward's relationship with Felt would later crack the Watergate scandal wide open, but Nixon's plan to portray Bremer as a George McGovern supporter remains less well-known.

If I'm not pure, at least my jewels are!

flug — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:28:06 -0800

Glitter-and-Be-Gay-filter: Chenoweth, Anderson, Dessay, Damrau, Gruberova, Sumi Jo, Leigh, Young Dessay, Chenoweth again. Cunegonda's comic coloratura number, "Glitter and be Gay"is the centerpiece of Candide--Leonard Bernstein's brilliant non-American-non-musical, anti-operatic non-operetta, un-stageable and terminally unsuccessful Broadway show. "Among the most fiendishly challenging coloratura soprano arias," the difficult musical demands of "Glitter and Be Gay" combine with elements of comedy, parody, farce, and elaborate staging. It's the quintessential example of a work that requires an opera singer who can really act, or an actor who can really sing operatically. Can anyone really do both? More Glitter: score, lyrics More Candide: guide, 1956 libretto, 1956 original cast recording, 1973 libretto, 1989 Bernstein recording, 1997 update, 1999 update, place in history?

Leonard Bernstein: Miracle on 57th Street

matteo — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 10:41:43 -0800

Miracle on 57th Street.
Thomas Wolfe said that America is not only the place where miracles happen, but where they happen all the time. This is the story of a miracle, a true-life fairy tale, and appropriately enough it begins with the intervention of the Almighty.
Artur Rodzinski, music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1943 to 1947, was an eccentric, a health nut who drank only milk from goats he raised himself and who kept a loaded revolver in his back pocket whenever he conducted. Rodzinski said that God told him to hire 24 year old Leonard Bernstein, to be his assistant conductor. In the fall of 1943 Rodzinski decided to take a vacation, spend a little time with his goats, and called in Bruno Walter to conduct seven concerts in ten days. Only hours before one of those concerts (in the program, works by Schumann, Rosza, Strauss and Wagner) Walter fell ill. Rodzinski was only four hours away, in his farm. But he declined to come back to Carnegie Hall: "Call Bernstein. That's why we hired him." The concert was broadcast over radio and a review appeared on page 1 of The New York Times the next day: "Young Aide Leads Philharmonic; Steps in When Bruno Walter is Ill". In the same size type as another that read, "Japanese Plane Transport Sunk." More inside.

Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate Papers

kirkaracha — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 17:54:59 -0800

Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate Papers are now available online at the University of Texas web site (press release/about the collection) Deep Throat is still not uncovered (as discussed previously at MetaFilter, including the sale of this collection). [cross-posted from MonkeyFilter]

TrustUsTrustUsTrustUsTrustUsTrustUsTrustUsTrustUsTrust

troutfishing — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 07:42:22 -0800

"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month" (PDF, 112k) "The Covert News Network", on Project MOCKINGBIRD - "Watergate muckraker Carl Bernstein uncovered a list of over 400 reporters and a coterie of publishers and media moguls who had basically been rubber-stamping CIA propaganda since the 1950s." Alex Constantine on Mockingbird. "Investigators digging into MOCKINGBIRD have been flabbergasted to discover FOIA documents in which agents boast (in CIA office memos) of pride in having placed "important assets" inside every major news publication in the country. " ( from Geoff Metcalf on Mockingbird). Cheryl Seal on Mockingbird, with additional links. Enjoy the election!