On Orlando, the Opera and Growing Up in Brooklyn

A reflection on fear, terror and the massacre at Pulse.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Frame-grab from The Simpsons episode "Bart the Genius"
© 1989 Gracie Films/20th Century Fox.

When I was a kid, you didn't talk about going to the opera.

Concert Review: Massacre at Lincoln Center

The New York Philharmonic plays Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Bloody Sunday Massacre by Ivan Vladimirov.

The month of October in New York has been a bit of a mini-celebration of the works of Dmitri Shostakovich. No fewer than five of the composer's 15 symphonies are appearing on concert programs this month, and his early opera The Nose continues to run at the Metropolitan Opera. This week, the New York Philharmonic contributed to this accidental festival, performing the composer's Eleventh Symphony under the baton of Semyon Bychkov.