Turns out this year's Belmont Stakes might be fun to watch, after all:
A horse-racing season that has been filled with so much unrealized potential is getting a pleasant and surprising jolt of energy from the buildup to tomorrow’s Belmont Stakes.
Bio: Bob Hardt is the political director and executive producer at NY1 News. An amateur classical pianist as a youth, Hardt became obsessed with opera after taking a required course in Music Humanities at Columbia College.
A horse-racing season that has been filled with so much unrealized potential is getting a pleasant and surprising jolt of energy from the buildup to tomorrow’s Belmont Stakes. More
Posted on June 10th, 2011 1:46pm
One way to look at the scratch of Uncle Mo from the Kentucky Derby on Friday morning is that a New York horseracing dream was denied—a potential savior of the sport has fallen by the wayside because of a fluke injury. More
Posted on May 6th, 2011 1:36pm
Saturday afternoon's Wood Memorial race at Aqueduct was supposed to be a hometown coming-out party for a celebrated horse, Uncle Mo, and its owner, Queens native and regular-guy-made-good Mike Repole. Instead, the day turned into a shocking disappointment for Repole and his hundreds of supporters who filled the normally empty stands of the dilapidated track in Ozone Park. More
Posted on April 11th, 2011 11:39am
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla.—Mike Repole was happy. After a four-month layoff, his undefeated horse, Uncle Mo, ran his first race as a three-year-old colt and swept away the competition on an inexorable path to the Kentucky Derby. "It's the first time in three months that I've taken a deep breath, so it kind of feels good to take a deep breath,'' said Repole, standing in the winner's circle at Gulfstream Park on Saturday after Uncle Mo easily dispatched four relatively unknown rivals. More
Posted on March 14th, 2011 11:20am
A lack of arts education, expensive tickets, the total domination of film in the mainstream culture, high and low, that Generation X grew up with are all part of the picture. But above all, it's the fact that opera has presented itself to people under 50 as if it were something stuck in amber. It’s a terrific milieu for two amazing Bugs Bunny cartoons but not something that people see—or feel the need to see. If “Angels in America” with its ersatz Roy Cohn can become a major cultural event, there is no reason why opera can’t deliver the goods as well. Making and remaking versions of The Ring Cycle or Tosca is all very well and good, but the dozens of living composers out there who are toiling away in near-anonymity are creating stuff that could be a tonic to this dying art form, if only the institutions that pull the levers would take the risks on them. More
Posted on February 25th, 2011 6:55am
At its best, opera is the most powerful art form out there and it’s perplexing to see it lurch forward on a global scale so haphazardly. I think its future is extremely dark unless its promoters find a way to appeal to aging baby boomers (a generation that starts turning 65 this year) and a way to convince members of Generation X and Generation Y that opera is relevant. More
Posted on January 4th, 2011 2:42pm
