Third Avenue, a British expat's general blog (found via the Big Apple Blog Festival). Besides some leftish thoughts on UK politics, it offers regular crisp reports on the author's full-blown if less-than-year-old Met-going habit. Nice to have a perspective from outside the usual NY opera scene. For what jaded local would write anything like this?
Sometimes, brash, modern New York can easily outdo old-world London or Paris in its sheer aristocratic extravagance. Tuxedos, ballgowns, pearls, diamonds, pearls, rubies, pearls and a few more pearls assaulted the eye from every corner. Munificent donors to the Met's coffers strutted their stuff, the occasional Dutch surname bearing witness to the fact that their ancestors were eyewitnesses to the Netherlandish beginnings of this city. They saw and were seen. The spectacle was superb.
Canadienne, Erin Wall's fantastically honest and eloquent performers' blog, currently from Paris where she's Fiordiligi in a troublesome production of Cosi. I've never heard Erin, though I nevertheless wonder if I'm one of the scornful, ignorant reviewers she's derided of late. Best not to ask, I guess. Still, if she's as expressive onstage as in her entries, I'd love to hear her work.
First of all, JSU, let me congratulate you on your always gimlet eye for finding sleek, elegant webpages with intriguing content.
ReplyDeleteOne can often find the one. One can often find the other. Rarely does one find both.
Third Avenue, a British expat's general blog (found via the Big Apple Blog Festival). Besides some leftish thoughts on UK politics, it offers regular crisp reports on the author's full-blown if less-than-year-old Met-going habit. Nice to have a perspective from outside the usual NY opera scene.
I liked his/her webpage a lot. I'll keep an eye on it, certainly.
But if you'll allow to speak out of school here:
(1) I don't think this blogger is British...British. I dunno. I just got a funny impression that they are either foreign-born but perhaps raised in the UK, or were Anglophilic by temperament.
Something about the syntax, or the spelling, perhaps. Just a feeling, is all, not a condemnation of character.
Also, the writing was too self-conscious -- but then which blogger who is starting out, is not, especially as they try to find their "voice"?
And because I would, I also caught the gauchiste slant of the blog, both in the blogroll and the handful of posts I read. OTOH, the blogger seems fair and erm, non-ranty. :)
None of these quibbles take away from the overall presentation, which was very good.
As for Canadienne, what is it with every music-centric blog that MUST mention Bebel Gilberto in their sidebar??
I also very much liked her blog layout. Clean, crisp. Perhaps not the coloratura, pre-Raphaelite layout of Prima La Musica's Sarah, but then, there are few true romantics left.
Cheers,
Victoria
And speaking of sidebars, I found this on a site I just blogrolled today:
ReplyDeletePolitics in Opera
It's the Amazon.uk site, but I'm sure it's available in the US too.
Cheers,
Victoria
Thanks for your plug - good to find other opera-orientated blogs.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit, though, to being thoroughly gobsmacked that Victoria thinks I'm not British. I need to take a flight back to Blighty pronto and eat a few Marmite sandwiches...
What I like about the site is the British political flavor. The blog informs me about the political scene in England. I just want to compare it with other states in the world. Like an ordinary British citizen, I am more than curious.
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