I had the opportunity to watch a livestream of the new "Figaro" production at the Salzburg Festival and will be seeing the performance in person next weekend. A few quick observations on this new production. The director's conception, and the sets and state design, are edgy and modern -- far darker than Barrie Kosky's new production in Vienna, which I posted about some time back. In fact, the new Salzburg production is so dark it makes Kosky's look almost traditional by comparison. The Vienna Philharmonic is stubbornly traditionalist in how they play Mozart (and the rest of their core re ..read more

Here in Vienna, I attended, last night, a performance of the new Barrie Kosky production of "Figaro". This is the second in a triptych of the three Mozart/Da Ponte operas he's doing for Vienna over three seasons. First was "Don Giovanni", which I saw this past January (but which premiered the previous season, in the midst of a pandemic lockdown). Next season will see "Così fan tutte". Now, this isn't a review, or even an erudite commentary, but some random but hopefully interesting observations, riffing off Kosky's production. His stage settings (except in the final act) are fairly convention ..read more

Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm fanatical about two things in the performance of Austro-German classical music, the question of repeats and of antiphonal placement of the violins. Both remain vexed questions, despite the fact that the historically informed performance (HIP) movement makes it clear that repeats ought to be observed and that the first and second violin desks ought to be divide antiphonally, that is, firsts on the conductor's left, seconds on the right. Strangely, despite a half century or more of these insights, both precepts are honoured more in the breach than in the obser ..read more

 I was reminded recently of a beautiful British documentary https://youtu.be/YZBAkj54kfA film from the 1980s, exploring the works of Jacopo Tintoretto in the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice through the lens of the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. Of the "Crucification" -- see here -- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jacopo_Tintoretto_-_Crucifixion_-_WGA22516.jpg#/media/File:Jacopo_Tintoretto_-_Crucifixion_-_WGA22516.jpg -- Sartre, in Qu'est-ce que la littérature?, writes: "Cette déchirure jaune du ciel au-dessus du Golgotha, le Tintoret ne l'a pas choisie pour signif ..read more

 Well, perhaps that was a slight exaggeration in the title, but not by much. I've been struck by how rich the content of the recitatives in Mozart operas actually are. In bad, or badly prepared, performances, they're rushed through at high speed, sometimes almost unintelligible. Sometimes, often for practical, logistical reasons, the conductor will depute a répétiteur to prepare the recitatives. Michael Haneke once remarked that it would be better to do away with them altogether, if that's how they are treated. His filmed performance of "Così fan tutte" makes much of the recitatives, prov ..read more

 Dear Friends As my academic and professional comments and writings will now appear on Substack (see last posting), I've decided to restore this page to its original purpose, reflections on culture, politics, and society. Watch our for such new postings here. Be well. Vivek Dehejia ..read more

 Friends, you can find future posts on Substack. https://vivekdehejia.substack.com ..read more

 https://financialpost.com/opinion/vivek-dehejia-inflation-should-worry-the-left-too ..read more

 https://www.newleft.ca/episode/nlr-counterpoint-fitsum-areguy-vivek-dehijia ..read more

 https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/a-nobel-for-teasing-causation-apart-from-correlation-11634141114109.html Vivek Dehejia 2021 Nobel in Economics The anticipation in advance of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel — to give the prize its full title — is always palpable for academic economists, especially for those of us who’ve had the privilege of working with a future Laureate as doctoral students. To add to the sense of occasion, the Economics prize, by coincidence, happens to fall on Thanksgiving Day in Canada, a major national holiday. T ..read more