Lobenthal.com

Keith Ellison gives a thumbs-up but wants it “limited”–

Obama lets us know that the we are back in Iraq for the long, long haul.

And these morons expect to hold any majority at all?

He IS George W. Bush.

The question now is, will he cook the Democratic Party’s as well?

Richard D. Woolf at Truthout explains how Obama’s capitulation to the shackles of ruling-class conventional wisdom crippled his presidency.

You can be sure the Dem base isn’t coming out in November if he bombs Iraq.

Dropping food and medicine is another story.

Let’s not forget that the House was lost in 2010 to a great degree because Obama would not defend his own ACA against the Koch-ed-up lies of a Tea Party-infested GOP.

Will Obama blow it again?

In tribute to the recently deceased, endlessly listenable Carlo Bergonzi I request that you watch the Hardy Classics DVD of Aida at the Verona amphitheater in 1966. Not that Rhadames was his best role.  It always seemed a bit too robust for him and yet he performed it for decades w/o any apparent damage to his glorious tones. For the true trumpet blast called for by that role or Manrico he substituted a rousing vibrato.  It worked.

What makes this Aida particularly intriguing is seeing the way that Bergonzi and his stellar colleagues—Gencer, Cossotto, Colzani–must in full view of the audience traverse vast lengths just to get center stage. And then they have retrace their steps to get in close to their lover/rival/whomever and have some significant interaction take place.  Fascinating to watch their attempt to dominate that space and stage.  At times you feel that you’re seeing the actual architectural distance between stipulated locale. The Triumphal Scene goes on for miles.

As a bonus we have none other than the Kirov Ballet dancing in Amneris’s boudoir and in the Triumphal scene. They were in Verona to perform Sleeping Beauty and were slotted into Aida as well—Konstantin Sergeyev’s choreography. The Triumphal Scene is something indescribably gala. You can pick out some leading Kirov lights amid the crowd but it’s the firepower of ensemble cogency that vaults this into the history books.

I was walking through a Westchester park when my attention was directed by a local resident to a stretch of turf that was noticeably flatter than what surrounded it.  Seems that the area in question had been fenced off as a temporary pasture and a flock sent in to prune the midsummer grass with their molars. Ecologically sound and rather Downton Abbey-ish, no? Those English lords knew what they were doing.

We Flies, having covered ABT’s  Cinderella at the Met last month, now sojourn to the Joyce and catch–and comment upon–Pilobolus.

That’s how they went to Europe in those days.

Jonathan Watts and Tanaquil Le Clercq en route with New York City Ballet and the Boss,  April 1955.

By now, you’ve bought Vol. 3 of VAI’s New York City Ballet in Montreal series.

And you’ve taken a gander at the historical exhumation I was talking about.  More than one gander, undoubtedly. . . .

VAI’s Allan Altman just sent me a preview disc of Vol.4–and it’s a humdinger as well!!

What with all the empty storefronts. . .