Opera Today

As is perhaps well known (it's not?), I write reviews for the online magazine Opera Today, which not only has its own reviewers in many locales around the world (Chicago, Istanbul) but also links to many local reviewers and furthermore provides podcast opera. Gary Hoffman, the editor, shares my taste for less than usual fare, or unfamiliar versions of the usual, and unlike some podcast providers we could mention, he does not intrude commentary narration of his own – which can be delicious once, but rather palls when one wishes to go back to this or that recording.

Gary recently asked me to suggest themes for recordings he might then acquire and put up; he is upset by the lack of crowds for his offerings. This was a tough one for me since I like his taste. (Who else in the universe has not one, not two, but three different Marschner operas in his podcast content? Admirers of Der Templar und die Judin, rejoice! Plenty of Salieri and Meyerbeer and Handel, too. Not as much out-of-the-way Donizetti or Mercadante or Rimsky-Korsakov as I'd like to hear....) Also, my taste in everything (music, travel, art, books, dance music, sexual activity) is notoriously whimsical and minority. So I'm no damn help to him in this matter.

I urge you, dear reader, to hop over and look into it. And check out my reviews while you're at it.