Are you grading exams and reading Supreme Court opinions? No? Then you'll have time to watch Lego TOSCA!

Check it out: a 1919 NY Times review of L'AMORE DEI TRE RE. Can't agree with his dissing of FRANCESCA, but on everything else -- good piece.

I didn't know until this past weekend's Commencement ceremony (or Common Cement, as the electric traffic sign always manages to put it) that at the Ed School that's part of my university we had an MA student named Amneris Lopez Boyd!

Well boil my borscht. Pimen's narrative of the murder of Dimitri is in the 1869 version of BORIS but not the 1872 version. Guess Mussorgsky deleted it to "make room" for the Polish Act, but the later performance tradition -- correctly -- deemed it essential (as is the Polish Act) and put it back.

One of many things you learn from listening to Gergiev's side-by-side recording of the 1869 and 1872 versions.