23 May 2011

An interesting Verdi Requiem

News and Notes: The Ottawa Classical Choir and a number of other choruses from the Montreal and Tremblant areas render a respectable account of the Verdi Requiem.

27 April 2011

Evenings at the opera

News and Notes: Reflections on two recent opera productions, Montreal's Salomé and Ottawa's Lucia di Lammermoor.

8 April 2011

Making haste slowly

Opus Pocus is redeveloping a mite gradually, but I pledge to keep at it. Today I've posted reviews of CDs of music by Britten, Walton and d'Indy, and added an item to the Music Answer Man column. In the next little while I'll be adding a piece on operatic productions I've seen recently in Ottawa and Monteal. And there there are a few other things in the works for the near future.

Il riturno di Ulisse in patria

Not long ago I promised to write about two DVDs of Monteverdi's Odyssey-inspired opera. It turned out that I actually had three and in the course of studying them, I fell madly in love with the work. So I ordered a fourth version. There are major textual difference among them, quite aside from musical and production details, and I'm enjoying them enormously. I'll synthesize my observations after I return from a week-long French immersion homestay in Quebec City.

My work is made a little easier by an excellent Wikipedia article that provides a synopsis, background and other information, so I can refer you to it rather than providing all that stuff myself. I hope to publish my essay on the DVDs by the end of this month.

24 February 2011

This time we're really back

Okay, it's excuse time: Blame it on Internet Explorer. The previous version of Opus Pocus worked reasonably well on Firefox and on Explorer. This one works on Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome, but on Explorer the layout is seriously messed up. I've spent two months trying to fix the problem, but have been unable to find it. Therefore all I can do is offer readers three suggestions:

1. Install Firefox, Safari and/or Google Chrome. You'll see, it's really easy; or
2. Put up with it. Explorer users put up with so much already, one more thing won't hurt; or
3. If you have a good knowledge of Web design, help me find the problem.

Would you believe that I used to design for a living?

New content and stuff to come

This week there are three new CD/SACD reviews and an essay on magic and music.

In a few weeks there will be more sound recording reviews, a comparison of two DVDs of Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and the Music Answer Man will be back at his post.

13 November 2010

New Review

The Ottawa Choral Society
in a program of Willan, Stravinsky, Britten and Kodály

1 November 2010

We're back !

Alison and I are pleased to present the first issue of the born-again Opus Pocus. It will be almost identical in format to previous issues, with a couple of exceptions:

• Reviews and news items will be posted as soon as they are available instead of all at once every second month. I will announce each of these on my Facebook account. Readers who are not on Facebook can send me their e-mail addresses and I will make up a mailing list to keep them informed.
  
  
• About the first day of every second month, I will announce a new "issue" with new features, interviews and so on.
  
  
• We have added space for advertisements to the page layout . Because our market penetration will be small at first, we will be offering a limited number of free spaces to selected advertisers. We expect to keep that up for about a year after which we'll try to work out a realistic system of rates.

Dormant but not dead

A few years ago I made a mistake in a setting on Dreamweaver, the program I use to create Opus Pocus. Before I could catch it, virtually all the links and references on the site were broken. At about the same time, I lost access to the copy of Dreamweaver I'd been using. It's an expensive program and I attempted now and then to repair the site via other means,but with little success.

Now there seems to be renewed interest in Opus Pocus. A number of people have told me over the last six months or so that they'd like to have it back, so I bit the bullet and purchased a copy of Dreamweaver. You see the results before you. You will doubtless find the occasional link that is still broken. If you do, I'd appreciate hearing about it.