Editor’s note: This Q & A, originally published on August 6, 2019, has been republished for the first anniversary of Toni Morrison’s death. On August 5, 2019, the revered novelist Toni Morrison died at age 88. News of her passing was met with grief around the globe, as writers, artists, political leaders and readers reflected…
As the novel coronavirus outbreak continues, social distancing remains the cool thing to do — just listen to Mel Brooks. Luckily, our favorite cultural figures and institutions continue to find creative ways to keep us entertained. In case you missed our first installment, as the country enters an unprecedented period of isolation to stem the…
Mere weeks after releasing a gospel album featuring Kenny G, Kanye West is set to bring the world an opera about one of the Jewish people’s greatest tormentors. That’s right, folks: Kanye is going full Verdi and giving us his riff on Nebuchadnezzar II, the Babylonian king who, in the Book of Daniel, went mad…
Maurice Sendak had many reasons to be unhappy. He was born to Polish Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn in 1928, and his childhood was defined by the deaths of his extended family in the Holocaust, a loss that scarred him early and deep. He was a gay man who, sure his parents wouldn’t accept him if…
Erich Rosenthal, a Jewish scholar, watched the rise of the Nazis from the United States. He’d managed to escape his native Germany, but his family wasn’t so lucky. Now his son, the composer Ted Rosenthal, is poised to give new voice to the tormented years his father spent praying for his family from afar. In…
The title character of Anton Rubinstein’s opera “Demon,” appearing at Bard SummerScape through August 5, is an anomaly. He’s not really interested in sowing evil. He doesn’t yearn for heaven; he always found it boring. He’s profoundly skeptical of the unquestioning worship of God. He doesn’t care for the idea of divine love, convinced only…
The first performance of Anton Rubinstein’s opera “The Demon” at London’s Covent Garden was memorable — to say the least. A spurt of flame, a New York Times reporter reminisced in 1893, “burst out from the Demon’s den, and set the adjoining scenery on fire.” Rubinstein was conducting and helped put out the fire, an…
The composer Richard Strauss has a complicated legacy. Beginning in 1933, Strauss served as the President of the Reichsmusikkammer, the Nazi Reich’s Chamber of Music, a damning collaboration with the regime. But in 2014, prompted by celebrations of Strauss’s 150th birthday, many music scholars took to editorial pages, to reconsider the extent of the artist’s…
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