Archive - Critical Drift

Excerpts from a “Sex and the City” Revival in which Carrie is Replaced with Edward Said

I couldn't help but wonder… was every single empire, in fact, exactly like all the others?

May 29

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's Inner Life and Chaotic Surroundings

Art, war, politics, and the baritone at 100

May 23 •

Olivia Giovetti

Zweigvanshchina

Stefan Zweig, Modest Mussorgsky, and the microcosms that mirrored the macrocosms in the Salzburg Easter Festival's Khovanshchina.

May 8 •

Olivia Giovetti

Dirtbag Dichterliebe

Happy May, dirtbags.

May 1 •

Olivia Giovetti

April 2025

Casting Out Nines

Mythbusting the Curse of the Ninth, and mythmaking with the Mahlers

Apr 26 •

Olivia Giovetti

How Joseph Haydn beat Katy Perry into space

Apr 17 •

Olivia Giovetti

"more like Blow-engrin"

Apr 1 •

Olivia Giovetti

March 2025

Absolute Music Doesn't Exist

Gabriel Kahane, Frédéric Chopin, Jorge Luis Borges, and Anselm Kiefer's searches for meaning

Mar 25 •

Olivia Giovetti

Two or Three (Other) Things I Know about Aida

How one opera topples several empires.

Mar 18 •

Olivia Giovetti

The New Imperial Spectacle

What Arizona Opera's generative AI concert production of Aida gets right about Verdi's imperial spectacle — and why it's not good.

Mar 11 •

Olivia Giovetti

Dirtbag Puccini

"More like Nessun Whore-ma."

Mar 3 •

Olivia Giovetti

February 2025

What You Like Will Rule a Sentence

Lessons from Ukrainian class and the Lviv National Opera.

Feb 27 •

Olivia Giovetti

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