Bald Mountain Monologue

I'd like to tell you something about what I'm doing up here. I've been presenting for about 16 years now, and I have so much more to show you, that I'm going to need another 16 years before I run out.
I've made a lot of mistakes, because I was and still am learning. I recall a program on Mussorgsky when I introduced an opera that no one had heard of, Sorochintsy Fair; but we all knew a part of it: 'Night on Bald Mountain'. Thank you Walt Disney. That night I made a mistake . . .mixing up the performer's names on my handout. There was a wonderful gentleman, Mischa; an Austrian or Hungarian who had actually seen the opera and heard the singers on my recording, many years before. The names were archaic to me, but he told me: "This was not a
They might be expecting a Czech opera by Dvorak, Smetana or Janacek. No, no, no . . . it's always the opera I'm listening to!
Perhaps you have guessed where this is headed. I may play the great headliners that show up at the Met, but in my programs, I sneak in and try to introduce or reintroduce you to works that have for various reasons slipped away in to some dusty corner of an Opera House; or perhaps failed to cross the Atlantic but still reigns well in Europe. Often it's the small houses that try out those old Forgottens, and new works. I'm certain that some of those works deserve to be forgotten . . . but not All.
Rossini has written 38 operas and only a half dozen have lifejackets on. That's terrible. I have 30 of them on DVD and a couple of additional operas that are only on CDs. (I guess that shows I am a Rossini fan). Well, he was the drug for a lot of composers . . . Meyerbeer, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and even Wagner. Some of his librettos are awful. He had to use the librettist assigned by the opera house. Some of his music is below his standards. It just proves he was
If I went to the Louvre, of course I'd want to see the Mona Lisa again. That would not end there. I'd be looking for many of the Masterpieces that fill that structure. In one of my classes we were invited to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to visit the restoring and preparatory room. They explained how they work and they mentioned the works in storage below that museum that they protect from damage. My curiosity was activated, I wanted to see those storage bins. In a way, that's what I do with operas. I want to decide by myself if it's a work that deserves a