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Our state has lost a remarkable citizen, Charleston gardener and hostess Patti McGee. Her love of gardening originated under her mother’s tutelage in Marion, South Carolina. Her husband Peter was supportive of constant tweaking and additions to their Anson Street property. McGee’s inquisitive mind and love of new people as well as plants, made her beloved by both the artistic and gardening community.

The da capo aria, which I talked about yesterday, was a form that by 1750 had begun to lose its once enormous popularity. It was a form that was essentially killed by excess. The reign of the da capo aria coincided with the reign of the castrati as the stars of Italian opera.

No piece of music is ever just “about” any one thing. In Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, Don Giovanni stands beneath Donna Elvira’s window and sings the aria Deh vieni alla finestra, “Come to the window, O my treasure.” It’s a serenade, a love song, and a very beautiful one. But there’s one big problem: it’s a fake.

Imagine, for a moment, Mozart walking down Broadway, in New York City. It’s not so easy. But Lorenzo da Ponte, who wrote the librettos for Mozart’s operas Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and Così fan tutte, died a New Yorker.

Maurice Ravel was certainly a composer who pushed boundaries, including the technical boundaries that musicians faced when performing his music.

For about a hundred years, roughly from 1650 to 1750, the principal type of aria in opera, and also in the oratorios and cantatas of such composers as Bach and Handel, was the da capo aria.

The aria - a musical form that’s a kind of song, but more elaborate and vocally demanding than the pieces we usually call songs. The development of opera in Italy in the 1600's is what brought the aria to glory.

The flute is one of mankind’s oldest instruments, and in one form or another it’s been known to virtually every culture around the world.

Operetta is light opera...or opera light. Its goal is to amuse: to be witty, charming, funny, not serious either in style or substance.

December 13, 2022 — A conversation with U.S. Attorney for South Carolina Adair Ford Boroughs about her role as the top federal law enforcement officer in the state; why Gov. Henry McMaster wants TikTok banned on state electronic devices; and more.