Dwight Fisk et al. - at the end of 1958
from The New York Diary: Pennsylvania and New York Autumn, 1958, page 358:
Last night Lee Hoiby played us his opera which only confirms my new convictions about the overall silliness of the genre. Why bother to sing such exposition as: the chamber pot has disappeared? Dwight Fisk fingered a continual elaborate improvisation as literal background to the text. His music wilted into descriptive padding but was funny because of it. Which is not to denigrate Lee, who's seriously in spite of it, and whose talent is singular and necessary. Yet jealously I see these boys, all younger than I, pulling down plump commissions while I go on living on $45 a week - too lazy to be … more >>
cite as
Ned Rorem, The New York Diary: Pennsylvania and New York Autumn, 1958. In The Paris Diary and The New York Diary 1951-1961 (New York, 1998), p. 358. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1398281443887 accessed: 16 April, 2024
Listeners
Listening to
hide composers
unknown opera
written by Lee Hoiby |
Experience Information
| Date/Time | at the end of 1958 |
| Medium | live, playback |
| Listening Environment | in the company of others, in private, indoors |
Notes
Not clear where experience took place, Pennsylvania or New York. Nor is it clear how the music was transmitted or which of the two operas Hoiby had composed by 1958 was heard, although it's likely it was 'Spoleto' from 1958 rather than 'The Scarf' from 1954. Also unclear is whether Dwight Fisk was actually Dwight Fiske.
Originally submitted by iepearson on Wed, 23 Apr 2014 20:30:44 +0100