Metropolitan Museum of Art, Handel's Messiah at NY Philharmonic
Metropolitan Museum of Art
I toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art this afternoon. It's a big place. I went on a tour of modern art. I think tours are the only way I can navigate such a huge museum. The tour guide helped me appreciate paintings that I would have walked by without her. We started with Matisse and Picasso and moved into contemporary artists. One painting was a huge canvas with paint dripped on it. Hard to appreciate, but the tour guide pointed out some interesting stuff about it.
Handel's Messiah at New York Philharmonic
In the evening we saw a performance of Handel's Messiah by the New York Philharmonic. I thoroughly enjoyed it (the pre-show nap helped). The orchestra seemed perfectly coordinated and played very tightly. The chorus and soloists sang well too. The highlight was the famous "hallelujah" line.
I was amused that the entire last song was a single word: "Amen". It lasted for 10 minutes or so. The chorus and soloists just kept repeating it in different ways. The performance lasted more than two hours but the entire libretto fit on five "Playbill" pages. The lyrics were lines from the Bible describing the life of Christ.
Handel wrote the music for the Messiah in just three weeks (!) in 1741. It was apparently well-received from the beginning.
I toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art this afternoon. It's a big place. I went on a tour of modern art. I think tours are the only way I can navigate such a huge museum. The tour guide helped me appreciate paintings that I would have walked by without her. We started with Matisse and Picasso and moved into contemporary artists. One painting was a huge canvas with paint dripped on it. Hard to appreciate, but the tour guide pointed out some interesting stuff about it.
Handel's Messiah at New York Philharmonic
In the evening we saw a performance of Handel's Messiah by the New York Philharmonic. I thoroughly enjoyed it (the pre-show nap helped). The orchestra seemed perfectly coordinated and played very tightly. The chorus and soloists sang well too. The highlight was the famous "hallelujah" line.
I was amused that the entire last song was a single word: "Amen". It lasted for 10 minutes or so. The chorus and soloists just kept repeating it in different ways. The performance lasted more than two hours but the entire libretto fit on five "Playbill" pages. The lyrics were lines from the Bible describing the life of Christ.
Handel wrote the music for the Messiah in just three weeks (!) in 1741. It was apparently well-received from the beginning.
