Other recent highlights have included conducting Bartòk’s “Dance Suite”, about the darkest work that one could imagine with that title, and therefore bad-ass, and taking the role of Sacrificial Virgin-cum-Conductor in Le Sacre du Printemps.  The former activity has me contemplating writing a satire piece called “Middle School Dance Suite”, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

In non-musical events, we continued a great tradition of the School Pig Roast.  Please notice the use, by one of my genius Southern colleagues, of mustard-based, Carolina Style BBQ sauce:

I think Maurice would be proud.  As would my South-Carolingian Great-Grandmother.

In other wildlife news, there was a firefly in my bedroom last night who thought he had found his Life Partner when my cell phone’s LCD screen lit up to confirm the completion of my battery charging.  Plus I saw a roach in my kitchen whom I strongly suspect of having been a free-verse poet in a previous life.

Quickly, my vigilant friend Mary pointed out in a recent blog comment that Alexander Bernstein called into “CarTalk”, and I think we’ve really got to sort through this one.  This is the link to the full interview.

We start with this:

Questionable.

Next:

Awesome.

Finally:

So, Dear Readers, will you take the challenge?

I didn’t realize that Stravinsky was still considered controversial.

Here is a movie about the artist’s process, frustrations and, most importantly, insecurities.  I immediately identified with the message of this film, the idea of isolation and the fears that an artist faces on a daily basis.  “8 1/2″ simply left me cold, alienated and bored.

Of course, “8 1/2″ is actually about a film-maker, whereas in HotW, a painter stands in for Bergman.  No concerns there.  However, this does get me thinking about the immense amount of art that concerns the artistic process, and the particulars a given artistic medium.

My favorite, and possibly the earliest example of a film about film-making has got to be “The Cameraman’s Revenge”, a parable about infidelity among the insects, created by the Polish entomologist Ladislas Starevich:

TV about TV goes back to at least the Jack Benny Program, and up through Seinfeld, and to a new favorite of mine, Extras. Painting about painting, well isn’t that kind of what the 20th century was about?  Examples of writing about writing are too numerous to mention.  Ballet about ballet?  Well, I have no idea, but I have a sneaking suspicion that much of Tchaikovsky’s music is Music about Ballet.

And then of course, there’s music about music.  Here, I immediately think of Stravinsky, who said, and I quote:

In general, I consider that music is only able to solve musical problems; and nothing else, neither the literary nor the picturesque, can be in music of any real interest. The play of the musical elements is the thing.

Well put, Igor.  Or, even better put:

This is actually the main reason why I find myself so interested in Rufus Wainwright’s new opera, Prima Donna, despite all of the nasty gossip about it — it’s subject is opera about opera.  How many of those do we have, really?  Tosca, I suppose, and… I can’t really think of any others (though there must be some).  There’s opera about singers (Meistersinger, et al…) but I can’t really think of any opera about opera, though I have a sneaking suspicion it’s the only trail left for new opera.

[And Mary Zimmerman's bogus staging of "La Sonnambula" at the Met does not count, but it does perhaps indicate that the opera world is crying out for some new repertoire that would cover these issues, but they just don't know how to get it.]

Of course, the list of backstage musicals goes on and on and on, from Kiss Me, Kate to A Chorus Line.  Oh, speaking of which, I saw this great movie yesterday, all about the casting of the 2005 revival of A Chorus Line: Every Little Step.  There’s a film about auditioning for a musical that is about auditioning for a musical.  It’s so meta that my head is schpinning.