Music and Mental Illness
Monday, April 28th, 2008
The opera stage is filled with tragic characters who have lost touch with reality—one of the best-known examples being Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, seen in Mary Zimmermann’s new Met production earlier this season with the high-flying soprano Natalie Dessay.
But, as Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez tells it in his new book The Soloist, out from Putnam on April 17, real-life tragedies with mental illness at their center are playing out on our streets every day, and some of them involve musicians. Lopez literally stumbled on a story one day three years ago: a middle-aged, schizophrenic homeless man playing a violin in Pershing Square, who had attended Juilliard much earlier in his life. Read more…
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