Two Items Of Note

We're still on an instructive blogging-break odyssey of discovery in another online domain (again, more on that here when it's completed), but here are two more items of note.

First, this it-was-inevitable article on the late Luciano Pavarotti by Philip Gossett for The New Republic:

How do you judge a life, especially a life played out so completely in the public eye? You begin, of course, by identifying what was so extraordinary about the figure, and in this case everyone is agreed: that voice, that sound, that ability to match syllables and notes. Unmistakable. Unbelievable. When Pavarotti first appeared on operatic stages during the 1960s, he seemed a revelation. There were other great tenors, to be sure, but this voice that joined the most sensitive lyricism with extraordinary power, this artistry in which word and tone were a single unit, this singer had a presence that seemed unique. Here was a tenor who could finally show us what Donizetti and Bellini had in mind.

[...]

And yet ... and yet ... This most beautiful tenor voice in living memory seemed gradually to lose its bearings. It was not just the circus show of the "Three Tenors"; it was not just the "Pavarotti & Friends" extravaganzas with pop stars and television personalities; it was not just the fluttering white handkerchief. Before his death, he said repeatedly that he wanted to be remembered as an opera singer, but that was the profession he seemed to have betrayed.

Ah yes. Quite so. All of it.

RTWT here.

And then there's this on his first-time reading of George Orwell's 1984 from off-off-Broadway theater director and blogger Isaac Butler of Parabasis which gets our vote for Bon Mot Of (at least) The Month:

Jesus Christ, this thing was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual!

Isaac has further thoughts on 1984 here.