In Brief

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

• From Mark Barry, take a look at Irving Sandler's interview with New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz. [The Brooklyn Rail]


• From Michael Lodico, the Philadelphia Orchestra will help celebrate the 150th anniversary of Macy's, by playing a concert on September 27 in Philadelphia's Wanamaker Building, the department store now owned by Macy's, joined to the sounds of the Wanamaker Organ in the building's grand court. This outlandish instrument was built for the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis and later purchased by John Wanamaker for his department store. The Wanamakers brought Marcel Dupré, Louis Vierne, Nadia Boulanger and many other great organists to Philadelphia to play it. [Wanamaker's]


• The opera company that mounts those amazing summer opera productions in the Arena di Verona has gone bankrupt. [The Guardian]


• With hat tip to Opera Chic, Tim Smith reports that the editors at the Cleveland Plain Dealer lost what was left of their spines this week, when they took feisty critic Donald Rosenberg off the Cleveland Orchestra beat. Rosenberg was not given to pulling his punches, it's true, but isn't that exactly what a good critic should be like? As for the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst, Jens and I have both expressed reservations recently, as have many listeners. If someone has some extra spine, please send it to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. [Clef Notes]


• Lisa Hirsch's "classical music blog" will apparently be a political blog from now until the U.S. presidential election. Let's focus instead on her helpful roundup of reviews of The Bonesetter's Daughter at San Francisco Opera. [Iron Tongue of Midnight]