There are certainly worse librettos, and this must have been exactly the one Carter wanted, since apparently he was an active, interventionist collaborator during the early development stages, no less so than such experienced opera composers and librettist-hounders as Verdi and Puccini. Still, I could never quite shake the feeling that the flaky language and tricky wordplays only mask a text more notable for its feeble wit and pretentious metaphorical posturing than for any real literary distinction. Of course, this is opera and not real life, so I suppose to that extent it’s possible to accept the disheveled nature of the work and the confused ramblings of its disoriented characters: a bride and groom, an aging hippie, a mother, a lady astronomer, and a young boy. Since I was just easing myself back onto the music beat after a bad fall and surgery, that subject struck a raw nerve. An absurdist conversation piece concocted by Paul Griffiths, a New York Times music critic and avid Carter partisan (obviously untroubled by any possible conflict of interest), the text deals with the reactions of six people moments after a catastrophic accident of some kind.

After all, how many composers of equal fame and prestige write their first opera at the age of 90? Besides, the plot, such as it is, touched me in a personal way. If pressed to highlight one event from this dizzy round, I would opt for What Next? by Carter, himself a musical phenomenon even more amazingly industrious than Barenboim. Later on, he found time to play Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto with the London Symphony under Pierre Boulez, spend an evening discussing his career with author and critic Edward Said, and make himself available for interviews and informal post-concert greenroom meetings with the audience. 365 and the local premiere of Elliott Carter’s new one-act opera, What Next? Without a breather, Barenboim then plunged into a three-day workshop for pianists and conductors, teaching sessions that culminated in a concert with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. To lead off his marathon, Barenboim conducted his own orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, in three programs featuring symphonies by Mahler and Bruckner the maestro himself as soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto, K.

Carnegie Hall recently presented Barenboim in one of its ambitious “perspectives” showcases, designed to display as many facets of such factotum musicians as possible. Although he has never made New York City a major focus for his multiple activities as pianist, conductor, chamber musician, accompanist, teacher, and opera impresario, anyone who may have felt deprived of this mercurial presence over the years has just had ample opportunity to catch up. Some musicians take the breath away simply by their sheer industry: Daniel Barenboim, for instance, now 57 and a driven overachiever since his prodigy days. Conductivity: Barenboim leads Elliott Carter's What Next? with singers Simone Nold and Hanno Müller-Brachmann.

One man band performances crossword