The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming

Andrew and I have nothing going on this weekend or next. I shall use the time to study while Andrew plans to occupy himself by force-feeding me all sorts of peculiar Norwegian eel dishes and playing the music of Milton Babbitt at horrific volume twenty-four hours a day.

In two weeks, Alex will come for a visit, a weekend visit built around three college basketball games. That should be fun.

The following weekend is a holiday weekend—Presidents’ Day—and Andrew and I have a very special weekend planned in Washington. Over a four-day period, we shall attend a Mariinsky Ballet performance of “The Sleeping Beauty”, hear Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra in concert, and attend a Bolshoi Ballet performance of “Spartacus”. Such riches are impossible for us to resist, and Andrew’s parents are of the same mind—they also decided that back-to-back appearances by the Mariinsky and Bolshoi, with a Concertgebouw concert thrown in for good measure, make Washington a splendid Presidents’ Day Weekend destination.

Everything is booked. It should be a wonderful weekend.

Andrew is trying to develop my interest in Bard’s SummerScape this August. He wants to attend performances of Franz Schreker’s “Der Ferne Klang” and Oscar Straus’s “The Chocolate Soldier”, neither of which sounds particularly appealing to me.

When Alex comes to Boston in two weeks, he will bring with him the Naxos set of “Der Ferne Klang” from Andrew’s father’s library so that I can listen to it and decide whether a trip to Bard is on the cards.