Ig, so right.

jimmyk, you too! It's coming. Thank you both for wanting to watch it.

Hi, Jack--it's not there now, but in a few weeks there will be a cleaned-up youtube (with the better of the scenes from the two performances merged) which I will send you by email and also post here. So it's coming, just not available yet.

Hi, Beasts! there were 39 people in that orchestra pit--three percussionists and a harpist and two keyboardists included. How they all crammed in is a marvel.

Oh, I'm so sorry, Kev, but you are a truly great man and will overcome this and other things because you know the most important things and are directed toward Christ. That's awful about Tua--prayers. He was in the Heisman running and a sure top draft pick so who can say what his future will hold.

JMHanes! Thank you so very, very much for all your generous comments and all this great context. The 100th Meridian is still a sign in Cozad—they’re proud of it, and of the opera (they not only turned out in Cozad but a bunch of them chartered a bus for Sunday! And of course it was mostly Cozad people who got the commission together—otherwise, I would never have written the libretto. The “Lucky John Cozad” theme is the first thing Ty played for me on the piano and I knew it was going to be a good opera (he had the libretto then and was just starting on the music). I think it really works throughout, even when he’s leaving Cozad as an ostensible failure. I’m so glad you liked the “what were the signs” theme—the words come from Henri’s The Art Spirit (1923), but I played with them. I think the music there is beautiful. Theresa’s aria was the first thing I wrote and it’s all original words—I knew the fairly plain words would be really haunting once Ty set it mindful of her pain and regrets. That last high note she sings is a real E! It sounds unearthly. Yes, all the singers were students (the principals, all grad students). Also, yes, Lauren the set-designer dug up info on Henri’s studio and it is as he had it, roughly. That Salome painting in the rear of the studio is actually a copy by my daughter Caroline, the second oil painting she ever did. How nice of you to look up my Austen data-mining project—it was so, so much work (much more than the libretto, for instance), but it turned out well, I think. I love that Henri self-portrait—the Sheldon here owns both that and the portrait of his father and they were on view all week there (usually the Sheldon keeps them locked up so they can show a lot of rather abominable contemporary stuff). The novel closes with the 1903 portrait-taking, but it’s not a frame—we added that, and Bill Shomos, the opera director, was the one to blend the studio and the past in Cozad by having the past stumble out of the studio (and the rear projections) into the present, as memories often do. I am so glad you liked it! Thanks to everyone who watched it, sbw, all! There’s another performance Sunday but not web-streamed, but I’ll let you all know when the webstream is archived so you can watch it if you want.

And Beasts, what part did you see? I also want to ask JMH which parts tore at her heart the most!

Thanks Beasts and clarice! Jack, ultimately it will be posted at https://www.youtube.com/user/UNLSoMusic/videos but it's not there yet, though some of my husband's orchestra concerts are. I'll keep you posted when I find out.

Thanks, JMH, jimmyk, all! Just got back from the second after-party and am bushed--but it did go well, didn't it? Be glad to talk about it and answer any questions tomorrow. But now I am going to try to calm down and go to sleep!

Thank you for those, jimmyk! I have four kids, and if one did something so evil, I would probably know why or close to it, but I myself would rather be dead first, so I think I'm with MM on this one. The poignancy of our love for our children--GUS's testimony for instance--is so hard to describe, and sometimes so painful.

My dad was a classics prof so I took Latin. I loved it because it all made sense but I never got to the level where it didn't (my dad assured me that was in fact the case if one went far enough--he was an expert on Cicero). Lots of nice news today, except for the shooting. It is, it seems, totally possible to not notice a pregnancy--I have a hard time believing it, given my own experience, but not every fetus kicks and not everyone is sick as a dog and swells up and so on. But there really seem to be such cases. But most often it's with really obese women--not the case in this most recent story. But I believe her.

JHM, I know you're a good poet, so vis a vis your comments this morning two things, one from Neil Young: "This old world keeps spinning round / It's a wonder tall trees ain't laying down" and then then more somber assessment from Auden about our sinful relationship to the world's movement: "Sob, heavy world / Sob as you spin, / Mantled in mist Remote from the happy." I think you are right that the sky is blue--think what it took to manage things thusly, and heavens! the clouds!

Nebraska DMV is great--online except every ten years and even then they are fast and polite and nice. Nebraska nice. Dr. J, I might have time for something at Eastman. My husband's DMA is from Cornell (in composition). He had lots of contacts at Eastman. I'll definitely go to the Eastman Museum (by far the most attractive of the NCSA "extra" options). The conference is on "Radicalism and Reform," and that left me rather stymied, but then I came up with a paper on the way the Oz books try to come up with a quasi-utopia that's based on problems in the US. I know a lot about Oz. As you all know, I hate radicalism and only like reform when it's pushing back on whatever radical things have already transpired.

rse, you are a very very good daughter. Prayers for you and your parents. sbw, that's great news! Looking forward to meeting you and mrs. sbw! Dr. J, the conference isn't at the University, actually, but at the Hyatt Regency on Main (probably more comfortable).

Dr.J, jimmyk, I did not know your Rochester history! But totally reasonable, your desire not to be reaquainted with it in the dread month of March!

DrJ, it's just determined by a conference, the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association. I wish they'd done like last year's North American Victorian Studies Association--met in St. Pete in October! I stayed with my parents and swam off Fort DeSoto--that's how conferences should go!

Hi, Beasts! You'll really like it--great music, great singers, and if I do say so myself, a great libretto/plot. It's really economical, a great virtue in an opera (you know how they can splay). I must say I am actually getting excited about the whole thing--there's been a lot of hoopla here and I've done publicity a lot, presentations to city groups and the Sandoz people and the Cozad people and our Nineteenth-Century Studies people and the grad student colloquium for the School of Music and an English department podcast (you get the idea)--but I think it will indeed be a boffo hit! My favorite bit is the trio at the end where the boy Henri, his brother, and his mother say goodbye to Nebraska (they have to go lest lynching)--the brother particularly regrets his Nebraska ponies, which he'll never see again, and which I named after our now-deceased corgi Nell and our very alive new cat Bonnie. Our now-deceased collie, Bianca, didn't make the cut because who would believe in a Nebraska pony named Bianca?

Such good news, sbw--maybe Mrs. sbw can come to our meet-up in March--also Mrs. CH? Robin can come, it turns out. Rochester, the 19th or 20th!

Reposting for the morning: Here's the webcast info for my opera, this Friday, 7:30 CST (The Gambler's Son, libretto by me, music by my husband): Live webcast link: http://netnebraska.org/interactive-multimedia/television/glenn-korff-school-music-gamblers-son-opera-tyler-white-kimball This link will go live at 7:30 CST on Friday with the performance--it will probably be archived then for people to see later. JMH, here's a link to the Sheldon Art Museum holdings for Robert Henri--his self-portrait and portrait of his father and mother are on the sixth page (his father is the main figure in the opera, along with Henri himself): https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1062&context=sheldonpubs

Here's the webcast info for my opera, this Friday, 7:30 CST (The Gambler's Son, libretto by me, music by my husband): Live webcast link: http://netnebraska.org/interactive-multimedia/television/glenn-korff-school-music-gamblers-son-opera-tyler-white-kimball

Great pieces, Clarice--thought the end was particularly effective, pointing out all you've said is based on transcript evidence (unlike the nonsense peddled elsewhere). Prayers for your boy, peter!

First rate, JMH!

IT was the best of times, it was the worst of times when Epstein didn't kill himself. Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but that didn't matter when Epstein didn't kill himself. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, which explains why Epstein didn't kill himself. Thanks, JimsunnyvaleCA, for getting the ball rolling!

Late, but many happy returns of the day, CH! You are a treasure here.

Ig, Marcy didn't know when she wrote that that the DOJ has just fessed up that the two agents' notes were mixed up--whoops! The whole question of which agent wrote what when is hugely important and it looking like Pientka was not the main note-taker but our friend Peter S., who was of course out for blood.