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“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness”
A new production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame opens at the Irish Repertory Theatre in February 2023.
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Cunk on Netflix
Diane Morgan’s glorious idiot streams in the US beginning on Tuesday, January 31.
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Back to basics
On the last (in a few senses of the term) play I wrote.
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Like father …
Theatre seems to be a family affair.
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Opera as high (and low) drama
Listening to Giordano’s Fedora.
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Mr. Flood’s Party
Today would have been my father’s 93rd birthday. Born on January 4, 1930, George W. Hunka departed this vale of tears on October 24, 2008, and at his funeral I read one of his favorite poems, “Mr. Flood’s Party” by Edwin Arlington Robinson, which I reproduce below as a tip of my hat — or, […]
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The Golden Ring
The 1964 BBC documentary The Golden Ring gathers together many of my enthusiasms into one 87-minute film: Wagner, Vienna, analog recording, and whatever pleasures all of these entail. Nearly sixty years later, it’s now a historical document of a particular moment in time, art, and technology, a portrait of one of the greatest recordings ever […]
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Schopenhauer on Beethoven
In seeking some solace over the past few days, I’ve been dipping into a little music now and again, specifically Wagner and more specifically Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Opus 132. The quartet is rather famously that to which T.S. Eliot felt a strong affinity as he was composing his own Four […]
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The analog way
I mentioned the other day that I’ve been enjoying the Solti Ring, and enjoying it the way it was originally meant to be enjoyed, on vinyl LPs. This, and a few other preferences for an analog versus a digital way of life, may be a form of nostalgia, sure, and I’m as guilty as the […]
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Aesthetic appetite
Today’s New York Times brings Pete Wells’s three-star review of Markus Glocker’s new restaurant, Koloman, in the Chelsea district. My wife and I are particularly delighted about this, since we’ve actually been enjoying Glocker’s restaurants for almost fifteen years — since 2010, when he was the chef de cuisine at the now-shuttered Gordon Ramsay at […]