It’s bad enough that there will be no holiday concerts this year – at least not in halls and churches full of people. But now SiriusXM has discontinued its Met Opera station in the month with the most beautiful and moving choral music.
It’s quaint and naïve to complain about a music service in an age of infinite options and personal choice, but I am a person who loves serendipity. And learning. One of the pleasures of driving for me – the greatest – is wondering what I’m going to hear on my way to the store or the tennis court. And Met Opera was a station – along with Symphony Hall, Bluegrass Junction, Coffee House, Ici Chansons – that pleased me a lot. Not when they played Wagner, as they often did (I’m not really a big opera fan) but when they played shorter pieces. I heard old favorites, like Canteloube’s Songs from the Auvergne and Rachmaninoff’s Vespers (most recently while driving along Lake Okeechobee) and discovered new gems, like the songs of Schumann and Schubert. And every December I would eagerly await the little-known carols, the Swedish choirs, the gorgeous Medieval and Renaissance works that would swell in my Honda as I drove I-95 like a small Christmas miracle of their own.
Of all the indignities of 2020, this, admittedly, is a minor one. But they could have at least waited till January.
