I'd like to take the opportunity of having opera in our theater to post a few short cartoons that shaped my understanding of opera.

Yesterday morning I got a phone call from my mother. She had received word from Austria that her cousin, a woman I called an aunt, had died. In 1943 my mother was 6 years old. She and the rest of my family had been moved out to the countryside after an Allied bombing of Innsbruck destroyed their apartment building and killed her sister. When my mother talks about the war now, her memories are of the farm life, of how her siblings and cousins all played together in the barnyard and helped their grandfather tend the beehives.

Michael Upchurch at the Times has this to say about Heiner Goebbels Songs of Wars I Have Seen:

Yesterday Brendan Kiley began trying to piece together Goebbels and what will be happening onstage this weekend:

Once you've read the beginnner's guide and then followed up with the aesthetics of Heiner Goebbels, you're ready to hear from the man himself. A good place to start is  with this interview/feature on Heiner written by Jeremy Barker at the SunBreak.

Igor Keller from ArtDish came to the entire series of 5 concerts last weekend. His thoughts at the end of it all "...very often miraculously good." Read the comprehensive review.

Anu Tali is a world-class conductor (she's got cred)  who has been travelling the world to lead Songs of Wars I Have Seen and is in town right now with Heiner Goebbels helping put together the show for this weekend. A couple quick things to note about her: *By the age of 30 she founded an orchestra featuring the top musicians from around the world. *She conducts frequently in her homeland of Estonia, but makes international trips on special projects, such as this one.

by Byron Au Yong

Michael van Baker at the SunBreak posted a review of Icebreaker and a quick preview of Songs of Wars I Have Seen this weekend. How to sum it all up? How about this: