Blah and Goodness

Last Thursday we saw a blah performance at the Chicago Symphony. What could have been an exciting evening turned out to be lackluster performances of Stravinsky's Petrushka and the Rachmaninov 2nd Symphony. Maybe it was the Conductor (Valery Gergiev from the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg) -- maybe we were not in a receptive mood -- but we came out feeling blah. We had high hopes based on a thrilling performance of Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet that we managed to see in St. Petersburg last July. In retrospect, that was silly. Just because Gergiev uses the same hall does not imply anything. Duh!

OTOH, on Sunday we saw Silk at the Goodman Theatre, by Alessandro Baricco, directed by Mary Zimmerman. Magical goodness.