Cocktail Party Fact: The composer, Igor Stravinsky, dedicated the music to Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine. Agon a series of “unwinnable games . . . and ceremonial competitions between them.” There are four sections, each divided into three parts each for twelve dancers. The first section begins with four men, then four women are added, [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Composer/lyricist Adam Guettel is the son of Broadway composer Mary Rodgers and the grandson of the legendary Broadway composer Richard Rodgers. The story of Floyd Collins was first dramatized in the 1951 film The Big Carnival (also called Ace In The Hole — the studio couldn’t decide what [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: The American version was much rewritten after the play was first done in England. Among other changes strengthening the character of Salieri was the pivotal scene in which Salieri convinces Mozart to betray the rituals of his fellow Freemasons in The Magic Flute.
Here’s The Plot: Salieri, the most successful composer in Vienna, [...]

Active Years: 1932 –
Position: Composer, lyricist
Career Highlights: Hello, Dolly!, Mame, La Cage aux Folles, Milk and Honey.
Career Totals: 7 Broadway musicals, 4 off-Broadway musicals, 1 TV musical (Mrs. Santa Claus), 1 orig. movie musical (Barney’s Great Adventure).
Personal Data: Born in New York City on July 10, 1932. Attended University of Miami and Parsons [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Composer Tchaikovsky lived to see only the first production of Swan Lake, which was generally considered to be a bomb. When he died in 1893, he missed by just two years the revival that carved a permanent place for the ballet in dance history.
Here’s the plot: Act I: It is Prince Siegfried’s [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Composer Tchaikovsky lived to see only the first production Swan Lake, which was generally considered to be a bomb. When he died in 1893, he missed by just two years the revival that carved a permanent place for the ballet in dance history.
Here’s the plot: Act I: It is Prince Siegfried’s coming [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: The composer, Igor Stravinsky, dedicated the music to Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine.
Here’s the plot: Greek for “contest,” Kirstein called Agon a series of “unwinnable games . . . and ceremonial competitions between them.” There are four sections, each divided into three parts each for twelve dancers. The first section begins with [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: This most English of symphonies began its life in France, where Ralph Vaughan Williams was stationed during the First World War. The sounds of a bugler practicing at sunset became the trumpet and horn solos in the second movement. The Pastoral Symphony can be heard as a kind of nostalgic farewell to [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Tchaikovsky always hated his most recent work–none more so that this, his most popular symphony. He called it “artificial” and “repellent.” Fortunately, no one else paid attention.
Commitment Factor: About 50 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1887). A four-movement symphony with a “motto” theme that returns in each movement.
What to Listen For: The [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: This symphony was composed as recovery therapy following a rather half-hearted suicide attempt. A tormented homosexual, Tchaikovsky foolishly married a neurotic music student he hardly knew, then tried to kill himself by standing naked in the Volga river in mid-winter. His wife, whom he never divorced, went crazy and died in an [...]