I was nosing around the New York Philharmonic website just now, trying to figure out how many tickets they had left to sell for opening night next week, when I was distracted as usual by something totally ridiculous.
September 16, 2009: What a truly magical night for The Big Apple! Not only is a New Yorker finally leading the Philharmonic again, but the orchestra will perform at two major New York cultural institutions–Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall–at the same time. This will mark the unveiling of the New York Philharmonic’s extremely-under publicized American Orchestra Cloning Initiative, and promises to bring the city’s leading interpreters of 20th century music, Trey Anasastio and Renée Fleming, together in song, albeit not on the same stages. From the homepage of the Philharmonic’s website:
Before I saw that nonsense, I had planned on saying nice things about the Philharmonic’s (new?) live chat feature. I love online customer service chats! If the IRS had an online chat option, perhaps a certain “Miss Patton” wouldn’t have hung up on me yesterday when I asked her to please be more polite. Apologies to Bonnie at the Phil’s box office, who I bothered with my test run. I didn’t want to waste her time, so I didn’t ask her to help me find tickets to something obscure, but try it for yourselves and see how it goes.
Speaking of cloning – there was one September when Fleming sang similar programs at two American orchestras’ opening nights. I could not believe it. Well, I could, but I didn’t like it.