Cashing in on the worldwide success of The Rest Is Noise, Alex Ross hinted that his next book won’t be as esoteric as his history of the twentieth-century’s art music. The working title is Josh Groban and Andrea Bocelli: Singers by Our Time, of Our Time, for Our Time.
And John Adams announced his next operatic commission will go back to his Nixonian roots, exploring the Alger Hiss trials which launched Nixon’s political star to such heights. Hiss-story will feature a libretto by J.D. McClatchy reportedly drawing on Whittaker Chambers’s Witness, and will be directed by Peter Sellars, who has called Hiss’s trial, “A moment in American life in which all the forces of history converged – political, ideological, chimerical.” He then paused thoughtfully and added, “Hiss shows what happens when the crowd is aligned against a man, and when the government of a country is complicit in that aligning.” Hiss will be portrayed by Ian Bostridge.