Micaela Baranello

9 Feb 2024

TIL that when people refer to the Chicken Man in a Philly context they don’t necessarily mean the guy who got blown up in the Springsteen song. Sometimes they’re referring to a guy in South Philly who is famous for eating 40 rotisserie chickens in 40 days.

thebaffler.comAn Almost Classical Mode | Kevin NgThe Eurocentric elitism of classical music offers rich terrain for the social novel.

17h

Kevin!!!!

The Baffler@thebaffler.com

“Literature, like music, often exists in dialogue with its past and with its peers, and ‘Music Against the Night’ and ‘Partita’ offer the opportunity to deconvolve the relative contributions of theme and form.” thebaffler.com/latest/an-al...

Real jackpot at the South Philly Goodwill this morning. I picked up a Brooks Brothers skirt suit and a pair of brocade pants for $3 each

So I also got this cute dress for $3 more. Then I looked up the label and these dresses go for HOW MUCH? Excuse me???

A lot of local thrifters claim this Goodwill is inferior to the Depford and Berwyn ones, I very much disagree but that’s fine because it means more finds for me

My neighbor has decorated for Halloween

I know it's the film festival and all but Philadelphia are you really going to make me drive to New Jersey or King of Prussia to see The Devils???? It's not a suburban movie ffs

I cut out the whole bodice of my Phantom Thread Halloween costume and suddenly and belatedly realized everyone is going to think I’m Little Orphan Annie aaahhhjjbjhhh

the early modern equivalent to having a class with two Aidans and four Joshes

I saw the trailer for The Debut and that movie is going to hit weird here considering our theater directing prof is Paul Giamatti's brother

I am seated (it’s the Nathan Fielder, they didn’t have a sign or poster even though I suspect this movie’s demographic is extremely, ridiculously online)

WILD MOVIE

I was told to go in blind; it was worth the effort to see it right away and I won’t say anything more specific yet

I recently got a fancy lady briefcase (thrifted but thrifted on the Main Line lol) and I like it but use it 75% of days because sometimes you just need the giant backpack full of snacks and books and bizarre teaching props

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social

I'd say some version of "you can pry my backpack out of my cold dead hands" only i'd assuredly be alive with my hands would be free and ready for melee engagement because of the backpack's superior, S-tier design features. and i'd also have snacks for everyone waiting inside the backpack

Yesterday my seminar had a masked ball and I taught them a 1706 contredanse from original notation while wearing a black domino cape I copied from a bunch of paintings. Cape wouldn’t fit in my briefcase!

Y’all who told me that this Glyndebourne Hippolyte is “set inside a refrigerator” really left out the important caveat that only the prologue is set inside a refrigerator, which really isn’t the same thing at all

I don’t give a final in this baroque opera class but if I did it could be “here’s the plot of the sex purge movie. Choose one of the composers we studied who would be a good fit and describe who would write the libretto, its mythic/ancient setting, and how it would be set to music.”

My favorite part of the Lully-Rameau querelle is how in the French press Lully, an Italian, comes to represent France and Rameau, a French guy of limited Italian experience, comes to represent Italy

Also Act 2 of Hippolyte et Aricie is one of opera’s longest and least plot-necessary side quests but without it we wouldn’t have weirdly tuned demons so it’s worth it

It happened to me: so involved in reading 18th-century French music theory that I missed my subway stop

I like how this sounds like it could be the Baroque opera prologue to the sex purge movie

Micaela Baranello reposted

@sarahhennies.bsky.social

21 Dec 2024

Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume? Musicologist: I would never be so gauche as to clap between movements

I support Somali-Americans@adamrothman.bsky.social

Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume? Historian: Some call those years the Dark Ages but in reality that was a time of great intellectual ferment.

Micaela Baranello reposted

Sarah Hennies

Botstein out fully at Bard: “Professor Botstein informed Bard earlier today that he is resigning immediately from all Bard-affiliated positions, including his professorship and roles with The Orchestra Now and other music programs.”

first time I spent a week of my medieval music unit running a large roleplaying game and then the highest average grade on the medieval exam of any section I've taught! (it was basically the same exam format as previous iterations.)

I’ve started introducing assignments by explaining exactly what the learning goals are (including “will help you ace the test” for lower-division classes) because I thought it was obvious but it really is not

Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social

One thing I find endlessly funny about the rise of AI is that it has revealed that there is a large number of people who believe that the reason they wrote essays at school or university is their teachers were desperately waiting for them to provide a definite answer to “Lear: what’s up with him?”

Putting this on my syllabus

Eric Pazdziora@ericpazdziora.bsky.social

"Opera doesn't make money. Opera’s what you spend money *on*.” “But . . what do you get out of it?” “You get opera. You put money in, you see, and opera comes out,” said Salzella wearily. --Terry Pratchett, 'Maskerade'

when you're composing for a text in German but kind of wish you were working in French

“This class has shattered my sense of truth” -student in my opera seminar I want to use this to advertise future course offerings

(The topic under discussion was the limitations of the work-concept)

Next semester, lose touch with reality and experience a psychic break in MUST 8709: History of Opera 2 that’ll fill the seats

Micaela Baranello reposted

The Onion

@theonion.com

27 Dec 2025

Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give A Shit

As usual I’m following the Eagles game by listening for when everyone else on my block starts yellling

this Met Macbeth is really bad???? seriously what are we doing here???

Also I’m going to start a band called Banquo’s Ghost

I’m reading some more reviews and am SO perplexed. I was sitting in the balcony and wonder if the production didn’t suit the large space and there was more to see up close?

“Being trapped inside a tuba for two hours” is an instant classic and I say this as someone who works with tubas and tubists on a regular basis, thank you @bilgeebiri.bsky.social

Micaela Baranello@micaelab.bsky.social

I love it when a critic takes care with their words

I once had a TA who was a tubist, he carried around a gallon milk jug full of water and his method to make students pay attention was to stare at them very intensely. This was his main pedagogical skill when teaching medieval music. He’s now in a Marine band.

I love it when a critic takes care with their words

this Met Macbeth is really bad???? seriously what are we doing here???

I do think the director has been good elsewhere and something went very wrong here, maybe starting when she had to work with another’s Konzept

You might say “Macbeth was revised after Luisa Miller was composed” but I say that revision is early Verdi wearing a hat and the hat is mostly annoying little ballets

this Met Macbeth is really bad???? seriously what are we doing here???

Lise miscast, production making me long for the genius of Bartlett Sher, score reminding me to reinstate my rule of not fucking with Verdi operas composed before Luisa Miller

Bafflingly terrible production. Some scenes don’t appear to have been rehearsed We can and should do better than this!!!!!

Why are the floor tiles at 30th St Station labelled like for a large train-based variant of Battleship (sorry for the bad photo, Amtrak line situation) Cc @donoteat.bsky.social

grateful to teach at a store-brand college

Sophia_Nyx 🐰@sophianyx.bsky.social

Name a film quote you use all the time.

unfortunately the Instagram algorithm discovered my fashion weakness and gave me this photo, I am now bankrupt

did not realize tweedy blazer lady would show up so big

have to note that blazers are a VERY practical thing to thrift: easy to try on, plentiful stock from the corporate people who are seemingly always donating things, less likely to show wear than shirts or pants, way to save a lot of money because they are expensive

the Apple TV trailer where John Cena positively yells "I work for a covert division of the CIA!!!" ....... that's not good tradecraft IMO