Lecter at the Lectern: Sir Anthony Hopkins conducts in Dallas

Friday night's program at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra featured the world premiere of two works by Academy Award-winning actor Sir Anthony Hopkins. In addition to Hopkins' own Schizoid Salsa and The Masque of Time, the concert featured his dramatic music from the plays August and Slipstream.

Sir Anthony Hopkins looks over a few bars.
Photo from The Silence of the Lambs, © 1991 Orion Pictures

Sir Anthony (or "Tony", as he prefers to be called) took the podium for the encore, conducting a reprise of Schizoid Salsa. He also introduced each number on the program to the audience. His conducting was greeted with stomping approval from the orchestra members, a sign of utmost acclaim from veteran musicians. In return, each member of the orchestra, (most notably the flute section) appears to be alive and well.

In addition to Hopkins' original music, the imaginative program featured music from his great films. Excerpts from Howard Shore's score for The Silence of the Lambs and Richard Robbins' music for The Remains of the Day were featured, along with clips from these classic films. No word on whether the orchestral forces covered the Scorpions' Hit Between the Eyes from the soundtrack of the 1995 sci-fi flick Freejack..

Check out the Dallas Symphony website for more information on these concerts, and click here for a 70-second excerpt from one of Sir Anthony's compositions.

Opera Review: Short, With a Suite

La Vida Breve at the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Rafael Frühbeck di Burgos examines his baton.
Photo © Columbia Artists Management, Inc.

Thursday night at the New York Philharmonic featured the orchestra's first complete performance of Manuel de Falla's two-act opera, La Vida Breve. The opera was an unqualified knockout. Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, the Spanish conductor with the German name (he added the de Burgos) opened the concert with a pleasurable performance of his own orchestral transcriptions of Isaac Albeniz' Suite española.

Opera Review: Tick, Tick, Boom

Doctor Atomic nukes the Met.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

"Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!"
--Marvin Martian
Some of the greatest operas in history have bombed on opening night. John Adams' Doctor Atomic, which had its Met premiere on Monday night, is an exception--a very successful operatic work about the bomb itself. Penny Woolcock's new production finally gave New York audiences a chance to experience this powerful, oratorio-like work, that tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the launch of the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Los Alamos, The Trinity Project, 1945.

Correspondah Gioconda

(because every now and then I need to write something other than a straight-up review.)

Corresponda Gioconda

(with apologies to Almacore Ponchielli, Arrigio Boito and Alan Sherman)

(sung to the "Dance of the Hours" from Act III of La Gioconda, by Almacore Ponchielli)



It's your opera, correspondah
writin' 'bout La Gioconda
It's this opera, by Ponchielli
He's been dead long time by now he's kinda smelly.

This here opera's, 'bout this lady
Lives in Venice, think she's crazy
There's this creep who, wants to love her
So he sicks the Inquisition on her muddah!

Lady Laura, saves Mom's bacon
She sees Enzo, says "what's shakin'?"
But she's married, bursts his bubble
and it turns out Lady Laura is in trouble

That's not all 'cos, Gioconda
Loves old Enzo, He Don Juan 'er,
Cos he's lovin', Lady Laura
So he burns his boat and goes to the C'a D'oro

Laura's hubby's, (he's gonna kill her)
Dance of Hours, (he'll poison pill her)
But then G she switched the potions
so Laura and Enzo ex-cape to the ocean

In the fourth act, Gioconda,
saves ole Enzo, and his blonde-a
Then she waits there for Barnaba
Stabs herself in the gut before he can grab-ba.

Will it end? (when they abscond-a)
Four hours long (so help me Rhonda)
I think this one's, over-rated
Cos the opera's plot's too goddamn complicated

Did we mention, the blind momma?
She's thrown into the Orfana
A canal in, dear old Venice
She dies offstage which ties up the loose endies.

Dearest readers, this here story
has more twists than Trovatore!
But it's music, for the masses
Damn it now I went and lost my opera glasses!