Having said that, there's really nothing so dead as The Norton Anthology,or ponderous, and I do order it with a little--well, some misgivings for that.
The tenor, a journalist who comes to interview the diva, turns out to be a wannabe opera singer himself, and in a fantasy sequence the two tediously execute the love duet of the diva's opera (about Eleanor of Aquitaine, of all things), aponderous event with not one scintilla of musical heat or passion (that's the bit that ends with the bells).
But the bigger problem is finding a way to discuss Russia's problems in a way that does not immediately lead to a sterile argument reminiscent of the ponderous tirades of the 1980s.
