In Brief: Rorate Caeli

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Ionarts has raved about the past chamber opera productions of the Châteauville Foundation, Britten's The Rape of Lucretia (2007) and The Turn of the Screw (2006). Its next production, just announced as John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, will reunite the production team of Rape of Lucretia. Christmas comes early to Ionarts: the chance to see a staged production of this classic ballad opera! [William Kerley]


• Jonathan Jones has a great piece on a favorite in the history of religious art, the Isenheim Altarpiece. [The Guardian]


• I pledge allegiance to my language. Creepy but real. [Languagehat]


• Matthew Guerrieri has a first-rate piece on interplanetary Zen Master, the late Karlheinz Stockhausen. [Slate]


• The Cloisters was always a favorite place, especially after it became the site of my proposal of marriage to Mrs. Ionarts. Holland Carter has a nice tribute to a complicated but ultimately glorious museum. [New York Times]


• A meme from Blogville: list the first sentence you posted each month of this year. The Ionarts Year in Review is below (not all the first month posts are mine: there is one by Jens Laurson and one by Sonya Harway). [James Tata]
  
  • January: Thank You for Smoking, an adaptation by Jason Reitman of the Christopher Buckley novel of the same name, was nominated for a Golden Globe this year in the category of Best Film, Comedy or Musical.
    
  • February: Benjamin Britten composed Gloriana in honor of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, when it was generally considered a failure.
    
  • March: When Yundi Li won First Prize at the 2000 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, no one had received the top honor in 15 years.
    
  • April: Here is your regular Sunday dosage of interesting items, from Blogville and beyond: Leon Dominguez wrote a great post about why the David Fielding production of Strauss's Die Ägyptische Helena failed.
    
  • May: For the conclusion of their 2006-2007 season, the Washington Concert Opera performed Rossini's Otello on Sunday night at GW’s Lisner Auditorium.
    
  • June: Classical Month in Washington is a monthly feature.
    
  • July: The Munich Philharmonic is better known for its Bruckner than its Mahler - Sergiu Celibidache and Günter Wand, the two conductors that shaped the recent history of the Munich Philharmonic most, rarely, if ever, touched the neurotic, restless music of Mahler and preferred the structure and spiritual conservatism of Bruckner.
    
  • August: Classical Month in Washington is a monthly feature.
    
  • September: I hope Teach will accept late work!
    
  • October: Violinists have enough excellent music written by Bach for their instrument that they should not have to plunder the piano repertory.
    
  • November: Emmanuel Pahud, one of the leading flutists of the younger generation (b. 1970), has made some spectacular recordings (we have reviewed him only tangentially, playing the flute part on Pierre-Laurent Aimard's recording of the Ives Concord Sonata) and played with the Berlin Philharmonic before embarking on a solo career.
    
  • December: Pierre Boulez is 82 years old.

Rorate cæli, desuper, et nubes pluant iustum:
Aperiatur terra, et germinet Salvatorem.
(Introit, Fourth Sunday of Advent)

Drop dew, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down the Just One:
Let the earth be opened and sprout forth the Savior.