Miscellany: The Cavalli craze, etc.

In 2008, Opera Omnia put on a feisty staging of Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea at (Le) Poisson Rouge, then brand-new. The company is back with a new production, of Cavalli's Giasone, which has lately become something of a pop hit; I wrote about the Yale Baroque Opera Project's staging in 2009. The Opera Omnia show opens at LPR tomorrow and runs through Sept. 7.... A new company called Opera Moderne is setting up shop at Galapagos in DUMBO. The inaugural program, tonight, consists of Libby Larsen's Songs from Letters, George Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children, and Britten's searing vocal scene Phaedra. Next May the company is planning a rare stateside performance of Gustave Charpentier's opéra-vérité masterpiece Louise.... Also tonight is a showing of Nixon in China in the Met's Summer HD Festival in Lincoln Center Plaza.... The Cage-Wagner nexus? Robert Moran's Buddha Goes to Bayreuth, which will have its premiere at the Ruhr Triennale on Oct. 1, manipulates sixty-four chords from Parsifal according to the I Ching. Cage's Ryoanji is also on the program.... Those who live in or near Woodstock NY will have a chance to hear Othmar Schoeck's sublime vocal cycle Notturno at Maverick Concerts on Sept. 4. The Daedalus Quartet is joined by Andrew Garland, baritone.... The pianist Daniel Beliavsky has made a documentary film about the composer Donald Harris, a somewhat overlooked figure in the American modernist tradition; it recently aired on CUNY TV. Above is a video of Beliavsky playing Harris's Sonata (1957).... Are you, like me, trying to come to grips with Spotify, the new streaming music service? Steve Smith, quite possibly the wisest music critic in America, assesses its strengths, limitations, and moral quandaries in characteristically deft fashion.