New York Provincial

BY ELI JACOBSON | All New Yorkers think of their city as the center of the universe and that anything and everything significant that is going on in culture, music, art, whatever, can be found here. Yet in some areas New York is a cultural backwater. In Europe, the surviving operas of Antonio Vivaldi are being […]
Smart Operatic Heroines, Foolish Choices

BY ELI JACOBSON | Operatic heroines are always throwing themselves after unattainable men with tragic — or at least ridiculous — results. Donizetti’s elderly Elizabeth I and Rameau’s frog princess Platée play love’s game for high stakes but end up alone, rejected, and swearing revenge. The English queen jealously covets Roberto Devereux, earl of Essex, but […]