Jean Déré News
French organist, composer and music educator
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- organist, composer, music teacher
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ArtsJournal: music
2018-02-15 13:15:11
Comedian Marty Allen, Of '60s Duo Allen And Rossi, Dead At 95
"[He] was a short, pudgy comedian who found his greatest success from 1957 to 1968, when he teamed with [Steve] Rossi, a tall, handsome singer who set up his partner's vaudeville-style, groan-worthy gags. ... With the bulging eyes and innocence of a Harpo Marx-like fool, Mr. Allen ambled onstage with his trademark catchphrase, 'Hello dere,' […]
2017-01-15 14:07:13
It is a rare and supreme lyric that can double-up as a poem. Lyrics tend to rely on words of just one or two syllables. Generally, that way words fit a melody, or a melody fits the words. Also, songs rely a lot on repetition which sometimes makes reading the lyric without the music sometimes boring. However, watching TV the other night I discovered by accident an immense lyric from a time and place I’d never considered or studied before. The TV narrator was analysing the sections of the lyric to Old Man River, a song about racism, slavery and despair and written in the first person. A song comparing the struggles of a conscious mind to the ease with which the natural world just flows along. The song was from a 1920’s musical called Showboat. I hate musicals with a vengeance normally. They are not my genre. But this […]
2016-11-14 16:30:17
Battlemania
If Kathleen Battle had any concerns about how she might be greeted by the sold out audience at the Metropolitan Opera on Sunday afternoon, those concerns were assuaged the moment (35 minutes late!) she appeared on stage. Miss Battle, clad in a striking, form-fitting garnet colored gown with voluminous gold silk wrap, was greeted with a thunderous ovation befitting a beloved singer at the end of an illustrious career. That career did not follow what seemed a natural trajectory. I was in attendance for Battle’s debut at the Metropolitan Opera on December 22, 1977, as the Shepherd in a new production of Wagner’s Tannhauser. That evening’s starry cast included Leonie Rysanek, James McCracken, Grace Bumbry and another debutant, Bernd Weikl, all under the baton of music director James Levine. In his review in The New York Times, Donal Henahan wrote: “Kathleen Battle, a Met newcomer, gave a piping quality […]
2013-02-10 22:14:17
‘L’Elisir d’Amore’ (‘The Elixir of Love’) – Old Wine in a New Bottle
Ambrogio Maestri in L’Elisir d’Amore (Sara Krulwich/NY Times) Opera, by its very nature, is tragic. Blame the ancient Greeks, who were credited with “inventing” what we usually refer to as tragedy. They’re also responsible for the farcical side of things, bless their Aegean hearts. Thank goodness for comic opera, I say, which helps to dissipate some of the gloom surrounding the more tragic variety. One of the ways this was done is rather formulaic but no less effective: the use of the proverbial love potion, which has become a favored tool of composers from time immemorial. It’s no coincidence, then, that the fanatical German genius Wagner based an entire work on the damaging effects a love potion can have on a doomed couple named Tristan and Isolde. Their story turns up in the least likely of places, most notably Gaetano Donizetti’s two-act comedy L’Elisir d’Amore, or “The Elixir of […]
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