Back from the dress rehearsal for SHOW BOAT, tonight's Carnegie Hall concert. Tonight's audience is in for a treat. The cast is large and quite good, the music is mostly well-handled, although a couple of tunes are way too fast, "Queenie's Ballyhoo" and the cakewalk music for "Goodbye My Ladylove." I wonder if that's Gemignani or Robert Longbottom? As a concert it leaves the tres-lousay CAMELOT in the dust. I had a great time, and I saw lots of friends running from the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization to the Bratislava gay porn industry. On a sad note, I saw my friend Charlie Harmon, who was Leonard Bernstein's personal assistant; he's selling his co-op and relocating to Alabama to become an orchestra librarian for one of the symphonies. I will miss him.
Wuorinen's opera of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN will be a hard listen, I suspect, for both audience and singers. I'll be curious to see how it's cast.