Category: Fiction & Essays
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New Magic for a Classic Opera in Berlin (New York Times)
I profiled Yuval Sharon’s new production of The Magic Flute at the Berlin State Opera.
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Winter Words: An Interview with Garth Greenwell (VAN Magazine)
An interview with the brilliant and gentle Garth Greenwell about singing and writing, about bringing prosodic and musical shapes out of the body and into the world.
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What Would Queer Utopia Look Like? (Slate)
An essay on the complexities and contradictions of Leo Herrera’s gorgeous sci-fi webseries The Fathers Project.
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Bursting Through Confines (VAN)
I saw, and reviewed, five operas at the Aix Festival in July. An excerpt: The first thing I saw was groups of soldiers. Aix-en-Provence, a wealthy tourist resort and college town, is not their primary target, and France is only the latest in a long series of countries to be occupied by the French military.…
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Walls Stay Down (VAN)
A review of Simon Rattle’s last concert as Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic.
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Shush Money (VAN)
On James Levine’s lawsuit against the Met and that opera house as a symbol of the rot at the heart of the oligarch-driven and star-obsessed mainstream of classical music culture.
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Late Sonata (Apogee Journal)
A short story about HIV, music, and sex as connection and discovery; stylistically inspired by Grace Paley and the films of Douglas Sirk. Order Issue 10 of Apogee Journal to read the whole thing, I’ve excerpted the opening paragraph here: It was the end of October and it had been five months since Edgar started wasting…
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The Art Of Somebody Else: An Interview with Donald Runnicles (VAN)
An interview with the Scottish conductor focusing on psychology and collaboration.
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Awful Magic: On Franz Schreker’s “Die Gezeichneten” (VAN)
A review of Calixto Bieito’s disturbing production of an expressionist psychothriller of an opera.
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How Saving The Stud Put Queer Politics Into Practice (Slate)
On the history and worker-owned future of a legendary San Francisco gay bar, feeling like a cockroach but in a good way, and action as a source of hope.