In Brief: Buona Pasqua Edition

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

• Thanks to a member of La Cieca's commentariat, the most colorful bunch of snarky readers on the Internet, for drawing my attention to this exquisitely bad soprano, who will provide your Easter entertainment with her unforgettable rendition of Sempre libera. The hilarious subtitles, added by the YouTube poster, make this video. [YouTube]


• One of the things that actor Alfred Molina did to prepare for the New York run of Red, in which he plays painter Mark Rothko, was to come to Washington last week to see the Rothko Room at the Phillips Collection and the Rothkos in the tower at the National Gallery of Art. [New York Times]


• The real problem with canceling the revival of Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles at the Met, besides being cowardly? Leonard Slatkin did not really know the score of what replaced it, La Traviata. Disaster ensues. [Parterre Box]


• Anne Midgette ponders the role of encores, and whether a reviewer should write about them. [The Classical Beat]


• Mark Berry reports that the Jerusalem Quartet faced another angry protest at one of its performances this week, this time at Wigmore Hall. Long-time readers may recall that there was a related incident a couple years ago, here at the Library of Congress, again apparently related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [Boulezian]


• Hahaha. Every cartoon in The New Yorker can work with the caption "Christ, what an asshole." [Boing Boing]


• Criticism is dead, or maybe it isn't. Film critic A. O. Scott has the good news and the bad news. As one of the "nattering gaggle of bloggers," it is good to know that I am only the latest in the ongoing murder of criticism. [New York Times]