The year in opera, 2012: A report card, with a note to the Met:
Putting together my 2012 report card made me realize how little of what I saw at the Met was important and vital, which is incredibly disappointing for the grande dame of opera companies in the United States.
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.
In the end, the Belmont Stakes on Saturday was just a race.
Without the presence of I’ll Have Another, who was scratched from the race on Friday because of an injury, most of the sports-related drama (if not the political drama) had been removed from the event. There was to be no Triple Crown. More
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on June 11th, 2012 12:11pmThe David Milch-Michael Mann show was a gloomy, and accurate, portrayal of life at the track and the pitfalls of gambling. But its unceremonious real-life demise (after three horses died during the filming of its first and only season) was the most telling statement it could have made about the grim state of the horse racing industry. Here in New York, where the world's best horses are currently gathered for this weekend's races at Belmont, things have soured for the New York Racing Association, the group that has run the state’s three thoroughbred racetracks (Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga) since 1955. More
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on June 8th, 2012 10:39amThousands and thousands of Times-Picayune readers do not have easy access to the Internet or the wherewithal to read the paper electronically. These are the people who your newspaper was designed to help -- and they have loyally read it each day until their own name appeared in the death notices. Your paper championed their cause. These are the people who may miss your daily newspaper the most. More
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on May 25th, 2012 10:12amA 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
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on June 10th, 2011 1:46pmOne 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
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on May 6th, 2011 1:36pmSaturday 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
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on April 11th, 2011 11:39amHALLANDALE 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
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on March 14th, 2011 11:20amA 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
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on February 25th, 2011 6:55amAt 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
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on January 4th, 2011 2:42pm
