A couple of years ago, at the height of the #MeToo movement, when I found myself accusing myself of complicity in the case of the Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine, an abuser I sort of knew was an abuser but whose victims I never gave any thought to, I mentioned some video I'd seen of him rehearsing the soprano Kathleen Battle, as an example of how an artist who is a bad man can also be a good man, and a great artist can also be a person of extraordinary tenderness and generosity, on the job, but I didn't post the video, or even look for it, and I just happened to run across some of the same tape, a longer thing featuring not only Battle but also the wondrous Jessye Norman, in the 1988 Met production of Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, and I wanted to post it now, for the record, by way of trying to explain the thing I couldn't articulate. I guess that means open thread.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
For the Record: Rehearsal
A couple of years ago, at the height of the #MeToo movement, when I found myself accusing myself of complicity in the case of the Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine, an abuser I sort of knew was an abuser but whose victims I never gave any thought to, I mentioned some video I'd seen of him rehearsing the soprano Kathleen Battle, as an example of how an artist who is a bad man can also be a good man, and a great artist can also be a person of extraordinary tenderness and generosity, on the job, but I didn't post the video, or even look for it, and I just happened to run across some of the same tape, a longer thing featuring not only Battle but also the wondrous Jessye Norman, in the 1988 Met production of Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, and I wanted to post it now, for the record, by way of trying to explain the thing I couldn't articulate. I guess that means open thread.
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