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 The operas of Giachino Rossini are staples of the operatic stage, and the overtures from those operas are staples of the concert world. But even within Rossini’s well-known work, some works are more well-known than others. William Tell and The Barber of Seville are some of the best-known works of all time, including their overtures, which have enjoyed (or endured!) second lives in popular culture outside of the context in which Rossini originally wrote them. Less well-known, but still a staple of the repertoire, is Rossini’s take on the Cinderella folk tale, La Cenerentola. La Cenerentola was Rossini’s follow-up after the hugeDown the rabbit hole….

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UPDATE: The video for the performance I chose, for some reason, won’t embed here, so click through to hear the music.  A day late, but not my usual excuse this time! I wasn’t too busy…in fact, I was all set to post, but I couldn’t pick out a piece of music for this. You see, yesterday Sheila O’Malley posted about the work of painter Edward Hopper, the artist behind Nighthawks and other famous paintings that suggest urban loneliness and solitude. In Sheila’s words: I love the loneliness in Edward Hopper’s work. The insomnia. The urban midnights. The voyeurism. The emptiness. If you’re heartbroken,Down the rabbit hole….

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 A contemporary work today, by Belize-born British composer Errollyn Wallen.Wallen’s family moved to London when she was just two, and it was there that she grew and matured into her professional life as a prolific composer and teacher. Of this work, Wallen says: Composing for the orchestra is my favourite challenge, [and this] work is an especially important one for me. It is an innate human instinct to be free, just as it is a low of nature that the river should rush headlong to the sea. That is the concept behind Mighty River. Slavery claimed the lives of countlessDown the rabbit hole….

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 First things first: it’s not a bridge. Also, I am quite literally the only person who calls it the Dumas Bridge. Let’s back up. One of my favorite locations for nature walks in my neck o’ the woods is Knox Farm State Park. This park is located in East Aurora, NY, and it constitutes the house, stables, farm buildings, and grounds of the old Knox Estate. The Knox family was, for a time, one of the richest families in the region (if not the richest family in the region). Seymour Knox was one of the founders of the famed Woolworth Company,Down the rabbit hole….

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 For some reason I have Jim Croce on the mind, so here are two of my favorite songs of his. Both are sad songs about the endings of relationships. “Operator (That’s Not The Way It Feels)” is the better known of the two. It’s one side of the conversation between someone who is pining for a lost love, and the operator on the other end of the phone line as the singer searches for that lost love. Why? Not to catch up with them or to learn about their new life and new relationship (with “my best old ex-friend Ray”),Down the rabbit hole….

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A repost, first published in 2014, on the occasion of the anniversary yesterday of inventor Erno Rubik’s birth on July 13, 1944. Thank you for all the puzzling fun and intrigue, Professor Rubik! And as noted below, I *still* need a Megaminx, because of its dodecahedral shape…. My uncle Jerry once told me an awful joke: What goes, “Click–do I have it yet? Click–do I have it yet? Click–do I have it yet?” Answer: Stevie Wonder doing a Rubik’s Cube. I know. Awful. Anyway, many squeals of delight reverberated through the online world yesterday as Google’s doodle turned out toDown the rabbit hole….

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 This one I owe to YouTube, which served this up as a completely random suggestion based on however their algorithms work. In 1950, conductor Arturo Toscanini had plans for a large-scale symphonic suite inspired by New York City, but he never got the project finished. Before the idea foundered, though, he commissioned a part of it from Duke Ellington, who is only one of the great jazz musicians of all time–in fact, Ellington might well be the greatest jazz musician of all time. The result of this was a symphonic work titled, simply, Harlem. Ellington intended the work as a musicalDown the rabbit hole….

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 OK, here’s a question regarding driving behavior and roundabouts: Do you use your turn signal when entering one? But before I get to that, let me just note that I love roundabouts. I find them civilized and much less prone to idiotic bullshit than your typical 4-way intersection. There’s no running red lights, and there are no pesky left turns which always gum things up. Studies a-plenty have demonstrated that roundabouts are not only safer (producing far fewer accidents per capita than standard intersections), they also move more traffic through an intersection in a given time than lights or the combinationDown the rabbit hole….