In Brief

Here is your regular Sunday dosage of interesting items, from Blogville and beyond:

• Mark Swed shows up everywhere, including at the North American premiere of Philip Glass's 2005 opera, Waiting for the Barbarians, at Austin Lyric Opera, of all places. [LA Times]
  
• On his toward retirement, tenor Plácido Domingo will realize a long-held dream and sing the title role of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra (an opera I adore, too). The only hitch is that it's a baritone role. [CBC]
  
• David Gockley does it again, now at San Francisco Opera. Philip Glass will premiere his new opera, Appomattox, there in 2009. [San Jose Mercury News]
  
• You thought had worries. Anne-Carolyn Bird may have to sing in Czech, while pretending to be ten years old, on the stage of the Met, and not knock Karita Mattila's wig awry with the force of her consonants. [The Concert]
  
• Dig anywhere in or around Rome and you will find something. Check out the photographs of spectacular relief sculptures of gladiators locked in combat, recently excavated from the garden of a private home near Fiano Romano. [Cronaca]
  
• My doctoral dissertation dealt with the many operatic adaptations of stories from the epics of Tasso and Ariosto. It's nice to see these things getting mainstream attention. [Washington Post]
  
• Dicapo Opera Theatre will present the New York premiere of Tobias Picker's third opera, Thérèse Raquin (February 16 to 25). Gene Scheer wrote the libretto, based on the novel by Emile Zola. [All about Opera]
  
• The London Philharmonic will have a big Erich Korngold year, for the 50th anniversary of the composer's death, including the U.K. premiere of Korngold's opera Das Wunder der Heliane. [Jessica Duchen]
  
• Teenage composer Jay Greenberg's honeymoon with the press is over. In The Guardian, Philip Hensher says it like it is about Greenberg's Fifth Symphony, recently recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra. Thanks to Bob Shingleton for bringing it to our attention. [From an Overgrown Path]