25th Anniversary of the Phantom of the Opera
Saturday, January 26th, marked the 25th anniversary of Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. There was an invited audience for the gala performance, featuring Hugh Panero as the Phantom and Sierra Bogus as Christine. A magical party followed at the magnificent New York Public Library.
Most occasions of this sort are by their very nature self-congratulatory. There was a pre-show video montage and an after-performance onstage tribute led by Hal Prince, the director, and the producer, Cameron Mackintosh. But on Saturday evening the performance spoke for itself. The performance demonstrated to all (as if the invited audience needed any convincing) why the show has endured for a quarter of a century.
The End of the Line
I am one of the thousands of people who lost their home in Hurricane Katrina. Eight years after the storm put eight feet of water into my house, I had pretty much convinced myself that I’d moved on.
My Baldwin SF-10 after sitting in the waters of Lake Pontchartrain for three weeks.
Not long ago, the New York Times featured a piece on what happens to unwanted pianos. The proverbial end of the line for these instruments that were once found in most American homes, and were a coveted symbol of the owner’s artistic aesthetic, reveals much about our society.