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: 12 December, 2024

Listeners

Lee Hoiby
Composer, Pianist
1926-2011
Ned Rorem
Critic, essayist, Composer, Diarist […]
1923-

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