to i.h.

No offense, but French sounds lousy with an Australian accent, especially yours.

Don't get me wrong--I truly think it's quite adorable when pianists wanna be conductors so very badly. I suppose that's how Barenboim wound up (although he got the CSO handed to him by Solti, over far more deserving musicians), and I guess Ashkenazy's gotten quite a few good conducting gigs over the years, although he's not exactly recommended. Maybe if you hadn't concentrated on just piano for so long, you would be a much better conductor. But then again, you never would have made a name for yourself as a pianist.

And choruses are really inconsequential when you look at the entirety of an opera, don't you think? We are singing an opera that was meant to adhere to the earliest principles of opera--whereby music and drama are married according to the considerations set forth by the artists of late sixteenth-century Florence in order to recapture the great dramatic tragedies of the Classical era. And even though Enescu tried very hard to return to that ideal of the late Renaissance in this setting of Oedipus, I'm sure he didn't mean for the chorus to really play a very large role at all. Surely Sophocles himself didn't think the Greek chorus was terribly important.

So I hope you don't mind too much if I show up just a teensy bit wasted or stoned on Saturday night. It will be National Grouch Day, after all, and I think we'll be celebrating it with bells on. I'm sure you'll understand--I won't mean to be disrespectful; I'll just be showing you the same consideration you've been showing all of us this whole time.

Have a great day!

Sincerely,

me