Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Janet Baker sings Hector Berlioz’ “Le spectre de la rose,” from Nuits d’été, accompanied by Herbert Blomstedt and the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, at a 1972 concert:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“This is one of the greatest menaces there is; people with intelligence deciding that the point is to become grimly gray and intense and unhappy and tiresome because the world and many of its people are in a bad way. It’s a form of egotism, a supreme form. I’ve toyed with it myself and understand it a little. It’s as dangerous as toying with a drug. How can these bastards hope to get hold of what’s the matter with the world and do anything about it when they haven’t the slightest idea that something just as bad and unnatural has happened to them?”
James Thurber, letter to E.B. White, January 20, 1938 (courtesy of Thomas Vinciguerra)