The task at hand on this morning is to find the May Festival's out-of-town
concert.  The prospect: James Conlon conducting "Beethoven, Bernstein,
Brotherhood" (a cantata, the "Soldier's Song" from "The Lark," and a
spiritual), plus the Faure Requiem, with Cynthia Haymon and William Stone.

As you're leaving downtown Cincinnati's great towers of the "Third Fifth
Bank" (don't ask), you walk a couple of blocks to the river and realize
that the direction sign for Covington implies the need to proceed from Ohio
to Kentucky.

With the handsome new football stadium on your right (they have an NFL team
here?) and the old baseball stadium giving birth to the new one (a sight
not for the squeamish) on your left, you cross the bridge in the bright
spring sun, the water below filled with debris from nearby floods.

A mile away, across the street from a surviving White Castle branch
("Hamburgers since 1921"), stands St. Mary's, now known as the Cathedral
Basilica of the Assumption, one of 35 basilicas in the US, the term
denoting a church of special importance.  (The four "major basilicas" are
all in Rome.) Just renovated at the cost of $4.7 million (a "relatively
small budget," according to a spokesman), the church reopened this week.

Inside: a Spanish-language Mass, conducted by an obviously Anglo priest,
reading the text with difficulty.  For the Communion, a mariachi band
replaces the organ, playing well under the astonishing sight of the world's
largest stained-glass window, a central panel cluster of 67 x 24 feet in
the middle of 1,200 square feet of glass.

While waiting for the mariachi to yield to the Cincinnati Symphony, one
peruses the Kentucky Enquirer, local edition of the paper across the river.

Bad news there, about another small opera company biting the dust.
Reported two months after the fact, there is the bankruptcy of the
Whitewater Opera of Richmond, Indiana.  The main problem, says an official:
"Old-time supporters kind of died away." The Sorg Opera of Middletown,
which used to co-produce with Whitewater, carries on, with an intriguing
season: "La Boheme" and the G&S "Patience," plus.  "Ariadne auf Naxos"!
Good luck.

Also, a report on the Detroit Symphony's ailing Neeme Jarvi visiting
Cincinnati to watch his son, Paavo, take over the orchestra here in Music
Hall.  Looks like a first father/son duo heading two major American
orchestras at the same time.

And now, to White Castle, to await Faure.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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