It’s not exactly news that I’m no great fan of Tony Kushner and his public utterances, theatrical or otherwise, but sometimes we do find ourselves on the same page. On Tuesday Kushner gave a speech at a conference of the League of American Theatres and Producers. Most of it was variously silly and self-righteous, as is Kushner’s wont, but toward the end he delivered himself of this paragraph:
My little niece, Ciara, who lives in Vienna, has listened all her young life to opera, my brother is first horn of the Vienna Symphoniker and so Ciara has heard, since she was embryonic, great operas, Wagner, Verdi, Massenet, Schonberg, Tchaikovsky. But recently the Vienna Symphoniker played West Side Story. Now we sing Tony and maria duets together, Ciara and I