Ms. Sonnabend's front curtain at the overture sets the tone.
Berlioz excels at raw bigness; the overtures, in particular, are striking for the hugeness of their movement, sending the whole massed body of instruments cascading down passages of rapid runs, conjuring up the image of an elephant gracefully negotiating en pointe.
While the likelihood of that meeting happening is slim to none -- and Slim has been exiled -- at least the overture could help us to get at the truth of wedge issues that continue to widen the gulf between the two parties, and by association, too many Americans.
In later years, Wagner played the overtures at the piano and sang melodies from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to his children.
It is sometimes tempting to wonder whether a bomb disposal squad would be better equipped to make the overtures at one of his press conferences.
The overtures proposed at the General Assembly are not about delegitimizing the State of Israel, but about ending its suppression of 4,000,000 Palestinian sisters and brothers.
In the second half, amid songs from West Side Story, Wonderful Town and other musicals vampishly over-performed by Kim Criswell, Alsop's tilt at the Candide overture was significantly less zippy than Antonio Pappano's with the same orchestra at the LSO's recent centenary gala.
At the Salzburg Festival $25 would probably get you half the overture, at the Metropolitan Opera a little more.
Jan Philipp Gloger's production of Mozart's comedy apparently starts not at the beginning of the show, but at the end: during the overture we witness the curtain call of a traditional, period-costume staging, which is almost painfully well observed.
The Mets rejected the overture at first, in part because of Justice's deteriorating physical condition and performance.
