I arrived in New York City on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 6. My daughter and I checked into the hotel and walked over to The Metropolitan Opera to buy her a student ticket and …

It’s December and the Depressed Disney Dad at Christmas when his ex has the kids is rousing himself to make his annual rounds of self-loathing. The Depressed Disney Dad is the Jungian shadow of the …

The best concert I’ve been to in a while happened on Friday, November 18 at The California Center for the Arts Escondido. Rafael Payare proved, yet again, that the San Diego Symphony is a force …

The San Diego Symphony concert on Friday, November 11, at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, featured a boat horn. For whatever reason, a boat was crisscrossing the harbor blowing its horn at very regular …

If I were to recall the soundtrack for Thanksgiving from my childhood, it would have to be The Dallas Cowboys and The Detroit Lions. These two teams always play on Thanksgiving and that’s what I …

October is coming to an end and it has been a solid month for classical music in San Diego. November is looking even better. There are a few concerts in November that shouldn’t be missed …

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 5 by Johannes Brams brought the October 2022 Mainly Mozart Festival to a close with a flourish. The festival started on Wednesday, October 12, with an explanation of the new venue in …

When Rafael Payare conducts the San Diego Symphony it’s not a concert, it’s an event. Such was the case on Saturday, October 8, at The California Center for the Arts Escondido. The first virtues of …

The best news I’ve heard in months, nay, perhaps years, is coming to fruition on October 12, 14, and 15. The Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra is returning to the great indoors for the first time …

This is the final chapter of our tour of all 32 NFL teams and the music that fits each team the best. We start with the NFC East and The New York Giants. The Giants …

As we continue to pair NFL teams with classical music indicative of their style, location, or history, we arrive at the NFC South and the AFC North. For decades, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were pirates …

Giving the teams of the NFC North and AFC South their classical music patronus.

With the NFL season upon us, I’ve decided to match each of the 32 teams with their own classical music soundtrack. We will look at eight teams each week for the month of September. This …

As I stare down the barrel of yet another season of opera, for which I will need to travel, I can’t help but feel as though I’ve become less tolerant. I was once willing to …

As I continue to slog my way through the dog days of summer, I lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. The hills are October and the help is the …

I’ve come to the conclusion that August and September are, by far, my least favorite months of the year. There are several reasons, not least among them is the disgusting weather, pre-season football, and summer …

I paid 9.9 euros to watch the live stream of Götterdämmerung from this year's Bayreuth Festival. It was atrocious. I felt guilty for helping finance this production with my window’s mite. Austrian director Valentin Schwarz …

The 90th birthday of John Williams will be celebrated by the San Diego Symphony on Saturday, August 13. In a previous article, I mentioned the lack of well-known composers after World War II. The one …

I’m not sure how the conversation started, but an opera friend of mine asked if I had ever heard soprano Leontyne Price's rendition of “The Liebestod” or “Love-Death” from Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. I …

There are several factors in a successful concert experience. There’s the music being performed, the performance of said music, whether or not one attends the concert alone or with a companion, whether or not said …

The San Diego Symphony has canceled Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture for the final concert of their summer season. They are replacing it with Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture. Here is the complete statement from The Symphony: “While …

“It sounded like a bunch of random sounds.” This was the answer my 18-year-old daughter gave when I asked her what she thought of the new piece of music performed by the San Diego Symphony …

The Rady Shell 2022 Summer Season kicked off on Friday, June 24, with a concert by the San Diego Symphony conducted by music director Rafael Payare. Though the day was warm, the evening became chilly. …

The 2022 San Diego Mainly Mozart Festival concluded with concerts on Friday, June 17, and Saturday, June 18. They were, as always, excellent. An unlooked-for treat came in the form of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The …

Now we come to the easiest and most difficult articles I write each year, the Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra articles. These are easy because the orchestra is nigh unto flawless. These are difficult because I …

I’ve been watching the fourth and final season of Stranger Things with my kids. This Netflix Original show had a fantastic first season, a solid second season, and a terrible third season. The third season …

As spring ends and summer begins, it is quite possible that love is in the air. If you’ve ever visited The San Diego Zoo at this time of year then you know that of which …

I went to the San Diego Symphony concert at the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park on Sunday, May 22. The concert was at 5:00 pm and was locked in the throes of a greyer May …

The name Frederich Nietzsche often elicits a strong response from adherents and detractors. The author of The Antichrist who claimed that “God is dead," has startled the faith of the ultra-religious for decades. Whether or …

The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park is gearing up for what appears to be a massive summer of concerts and events. In addition to the popular fare, which is standard for the summer, there are …

Few things in life give me more pleasure than having a cup of classical music coffee on a sunny San Diego morning. If I actually drank coffee it would probably be even better. Even so, …

It’s the time of year when San Diego’s classical music collective consciousness bends its attention to The Mainly Mozart Festival. This year’s iteration takes place June 10-18 at the Surf Sports Park, formerly known as …

On May 6, 2022, the first commercial recording of Rafael Payare conducting the San Diego Symphony will be released on the Platoon label. The subject of the recording is Dimitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11: The …

I opened Facebook on Sunday evening, April 10. As I began scrolling as saw a post announcing Brahms’s Requiem at Mission Valley United Methodist with members of the San Diego Symphony at 7:00 pm. I …

Given the final performances of Charles Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette are in the books, the San Diego Opera mainstage season is at an end. The season consisted of Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte and the aforementioned …

Charles Gounod’s Romeo et Juliet opened at the San Diego Opera on Saturday, March 26, at the Civic Theatre in lavish production proving that opera is still a reality in San Diego. This production had …

West Side Story as directed by Steven Spielberg is currently streaming on HBOMax and Disney+. I have long thought about having my kids, ages 18 and 14, watch the original so I thought this was …

I was golfing with a friend at San Diego’s classic Balboa Park Golf Course when he suddenly started playing opera on the Bluetooth speaker he had mounted in one of the cup holders. Previously, the …

Way back in October of 2018, Valery Gergiev stopped by San Diego with the Mariinsky Orchestra and performed Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7: Leningrad. The symphony was written between 1941 and 1942 during the German siege …

Martha Gilmer, CEO of the San Diego Symphony, has announced a major project to restore and renovate its historic home, the Jacobs Music Center. The project, with an estimated cost of $125 million, will honor …

There is a phenomenon happening among fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings The upcoming Amazon Original show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has created a title wave of …

I attended San Diego Opera’s production of Cosi fan Tutte on Saturday, February 12. I was somewhat dismayed at what I saw. The singers were fine. The production was yet another ill-conceived re-imagining of a …

Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte opens at San Diego Opera on Saturday, February 12, 2022, at the Civic Theatre. This is the first time SDO has performed a fully staged indoor opera since Hansel and Gretel …

The San Diego Symphony gave their first indoor concerts in nearly two years on January 29 and 30, 2020. I was scheduled to attend on the 30th. I started to develop some omicron symptoms on …

I miss nationalism in classical music. Nationalism is looked upon by certain contemporary elements as bad because the nations in question were colonial powers, and colonialism was bad. I take a different perspective. Nationalism started …

The end of January and the entirety of February appear to be a return to some semblance of normality with the San Diego Opera and San Diego Symphony. Of course, there's always a chance of …

“Due to the recent surge of Covid-19 cases in San Diego County and after consulting with local health experts, the San Diego Symphony has made the difficult decision to cancel this concert.” Thus reads the …

Every now and then I wonder about composers of classical one-hit-wonders. You know, composers such as Ruggero Leoncavallo with Pagliacci, Pietro Mascagni with Cavalleria Rusticana, or Max Bruch with his Violin Concerto. What else did …

I was watching an NFL game while scrolling through Instagram stories when I came across a clip of the Act Finale from Verdi’s La Traviata. Violetta implores Alfredo to love her as she departs for …

From time to time I find it necessary to update “The Depressed-Disney-Dad at Christmas when his Ex has the Kids” playlist. This playlist is also known as “Contemplations Upon the Mysteries of Solitude at the …