Music
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Marriage of Figaro at the Metropolltan Opera
The Help Strikes Back
By: - Dec 16th, 2017As Mozart's most popular romantic comedy, Le Nozze di Figaro is more than just the story of a crazy household in Spain getting ready for two of its servants to get hitched. Based on what was (at the time) a controversial play by Pierre de Beaumarchais, Figaro is an opera that makes the listener confront ideas of social justice and shouts of the need for equality between different classes within the microcosm of Aguas Frescas, the Almaviva estate. Looking at the opera in this way, the Met's current revival of the company's 2014 production could not be better timed.
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Britten's Carols at St. Thomas Church
Bridget Kibbey on a Celestial Harp
By: - Dec 16th, 2017St. Thomas Church at 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City is known for its music. Its organ has recently been replaced, but was not called upon for a beautiful concert featuring Benjamin Britten’s Carols. Accompaniment was provided by a harp. Never has an instrument been displayed so fully in its glory as it was by Bridget Kibbey. The composer wrote for the harp and specifically noted that the interlude should not be played if a piano was used.
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National Chorale Hosts 50th Messiah Sing
16 Prominent Conductors Participate
By: - Dec 17th, 2017National Chorale mounted its 50th Messiah sing in at David Geffen Hall. The chorus of thousands, one of the largest in the world, was led by sixteen difference conductors representing such institutions as West Point, St. Patrick's Cathedral, colleges and even high schools. Each conductor introduced the chorus s/he led, many directing us to pay particular attention at the conclusion.
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Mark Rylance in Farinelli and the King
London Production Opens on Broadway
By: - Dec 17th, 2017Much excitement attends the opening of Farinelli and The King which has come across the pond to the Belasco Theater in New York. Mark Rylance, winner of multiple Tony and Academy Awards, leads the cast. Consummate counter tenor Iestyn Davies, whose mother derailed him from a pop music career, wows audiences who have never heard a voice of such beauty. In the end, music triumphs.
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Celebration at the Guggenheim Museum
Music From All Ages Conducted by George Steel
By: - Dec 18th, 2017As the audience comes into the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum, now filled with chairs, the overflow extends upwards around the spiral, leaning out and up to see the singers. We are confronted immediately by the tops of this particular Christmas tree formation, as a new kind of star is the central piece of the Art in China After 1989 exhibit. A dragon’s tail topped by a bicycle is Chen Zhen’s Precipitous Parturition.
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Cinderella by Alma Deutscher
An Opera by a Prodigy
By: - Dec 25th, 2017The production of Cinderella by twelve-year-old Alma Deutscher is delightful. The overall ambiance starts with well delineated characters, portrayed by excellent singer/actors. In addition to the leads, comic highlights are offered by the frivolous stepsisters, the supercilious king, and the fopish minister, while magic is provided by the mysterious woman in the forest who will reappear in a different form.
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Pinafore with New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players
Enduring Humor and Truths
By: - Dec 29th, 2017High spirits prevail aboard HMS Pinafore as Little Buttercup distributes sweets and tobacco to the crew. Common sailor Ralph Rackstraw's mind, however, is on Josephine. He is in love with her even though she is pf another class. The prospective couple have sumptuous voices. Soprano Kate Bass has a wide ranging lyricism, with a bright top and an intelligent reading of song and phrase. Daniel Greenwood, an enticing edge to his big tenor.
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Metropolitan Opera's New Tosca
Sir David McVicar Gives us Rome
By: - Jan 01st, 2018A lot has been written about the problems with this Tosca. It underwent casting changes in all three principal roles, with Sonya Yoncheva, Vittorio Grigolo and Željko Lucic replacing (respectfully) Kristine Opalais, Jonas Kaufmann and Sir Bryn Terfel. The conductor was also replaced twice: Andris Nelsons pulled out when his wife (Ms. Opalais) did and currently disgraced music director emeritus James Levine was removed in November. In the pit for opening night: the stylish French conductor Emmanuel Villaume, a lucky and late replacement for this all-important show.
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The Merry Widow at the Metropolitan Opera
Susan Graham is Wonderful
By: - Jan 04th, 2018When the Peter Gelb era at the Metropolitan Opera is examined in posterity, the recent renaissance of operetta on the stage of that institution may rank among the general manager's more questionable endeavors. This season, the company is reviving its 2014 staging of Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow in its awkward English translation by house scribe Jeremy Sams. The saving grace of this revival is that it is a vehicle for Susan Graham, in her only role at the Met this season.
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Bernstein at the Park Avenue Armory
Isabel Leonard and Ted Sperling Sing Bernstein's Songs
By: - Jan 06th, 2018If the Metropolitan Opera’s Isabel Leonard and her partner-in-Bernstein, Ted Sperling, are to be believed, for a long time they’ve been attending the superb and surprising events the Park Avenue Armory puts on, as they waited for an invitation to perform. Now the Armory presents one of the first 2018 events celebrating the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth. This unusual recital of his songs was perfectly produced in the Officer’s Room. Leonard and Sperling are featured.
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Prototype Festival New York
Acquanetta by Michael Gordon and Deborah Artman
By: - Jan 10th, 2018The world premier of the chamber version of the opera Acquanetta opened the Prototype Festival. The work, composed by Michael Gordon with libretto by Deborah Artman, is smashing.
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Prototype Festival Two
The Echo Drift by Mikael Karlsson
By: - Jan 11th, 2018The Echo Drift is the second opera staged by the Prototype Festival, a group of creative producers who are working to develop new opera using all the media available, as opera has done from its earliest beginnings.
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Woody Sez- the Life & Music of Woody Guthrie
At Westport Country Playhouse
By: - Jan 12th, 2018Woody Sez- the life & music of Woody Guthrie — now at Westport Country Playhouse intersperses his life story, mostly told by David M. Lutkin as Woody, with renditions of the music he made so famous.
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Prototype Festival New York Three
Fellow Travelers by Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce
By: - Jan 13th, 2018The pressures of being of left political persuasion compounded by an illegal sexual preference were magnified in the Red Scare following the Second World War in the United States. Television brought McCarthy hearings into American homes. Terror was struck in the hearts of citizens. The story of two men who got snared by the scare tactics is touchingly told in Fellow Travelers, an opera which had its New York premier at the Prototype Festival.
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Aimard, Roth and Boston Symphony Orchestra
Webern, Bartok and Stravinsky Featured
By: - Jan 14th, 2018The extraordinary French conductor, now principal guest conduct at the London Symphony Orchestra and founder of his own orchestra, Les Siecles, which performs works from all ages on the instruments of the period, was in Boston this week for a program of music, each work composed within three years of the other.
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Prototype Festival New York
Diving into Black Inscriptions
By: - Jan 19th, 2018Black Inscription, from Carla Kihlstedt, Matthias Bossi and Jeremy Flower, is a multimedia song cycle that follows a free deep sea diver on her journey to the ocean's embrace. This tone poem fills an open slot in the Prototype Festival for works that don't quite fit the opera category.
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Jonas Kaufman at Carnegie Hall
Schubert's Die Schone Müllerin
By: - Jan 21st, 2018Jonas Kaufman cancelled his appearance as Cavaradossi in the new Metropolitan Opera production of Tosca. He is scheduled for La Fanciulla del West next season. We shall see. He kept his appointment at Carnegie Hall and has an active opera schedule in Europe, including Parsifal an Andre Chenier.
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Tanglewood 2018
Dinorockers Added to Program
By: - Jan 24th, 2018Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Leonard Bernstein there will be extensive programming of his music during the 2018 Tanglewood season. As has been the case in recent years James Taylor returns. There is extensive programming of popular artists in the shoulder seasons before and after the residence of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Highlights include Roger Daltry and Tommy, Steve Miller, Peter Frampton, Judy Collins, Steve Stills, Bela Fleck, Andy Grammer, Steve Martin and Martin Short among others.
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Trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera
Jennifer Rowley and Quinn Kelsey Shine
By: - Jan 24th, 2018What makes this Trovatore interesting for the regular Met-goer is that it imarks a sort of passing of the torch: from the Netrebko-Hvorostovsky school to a brave new world of lesser known singers taking on the opera's four difficult central roles.
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David Lang's The Whisper Opera
Delicate Sounds at the Skirball Center
By: - Jan 25th, 2018david lang prefers lower case and the whisper opera is as lower case as a sound can be. it can almost be inaudible and invites you to lean your ear in as you sit like Winnie, in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, with most of your body below the level of the performance platform.
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Marilyn Horne at Carnegie Hall
The Song Continues with Graham Johnson and Renee Fleming
By: - Jan 27th, 2018Marilyn Horne created The Song Continues for emerging vocal artists. She retires this season to be succeeded by an artist for whom she has enormous respect, Renee Fleming. Another icon, Graham Johnson, led a master class the night before Fleming's.
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Megabytes! The Musical
At Shelton Theatre in San Francisco.
By: - Jan 28th, 2018Playwright and composer Morris Bobrow is the master of what San Franciscans might consider the Pier 39 musical, a light but entertaining diversion. His previous compositions include “Shopping! The Musical” and “Foodies! The Musical.” Can anyone detect a common theme here?
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The Attacca Quartet Celebrates Life at Crypt
With Beethoven's Hymn of Thanksgiving, Time Stands Still
By: - Feb 01st, 2018In the spring of 1825 Ludwig von Beethoven was very sick with liver disease and stomach inflammation. He wrote to his doctor asking for help. The doctor wrote back: "No wine, no coffee, no spices. And I wager if you drink any spirits you will be on your back in pain." He recommended recuperating in the country for fresh air and natural milk. Beethoven went to the country and cured himself with musical notes. These notes are the music of Opus 132.
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Tine Thing Helseth Trumpets
Carnegie Hall Rocks with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
By: - Feb 04th, 2018Orpheus Chamber Orchestra invited Tine Thing Helseth, a star trumpeter, to join them at Carnegie Hall. Clarion tones rang out at Helseth displayed her consistently singing instrument with a special touch.
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Parsifal Returns to the Metropolitan Opera
Klaus Florian Vogt a Lyric Hero
By: - Feb 06th, 2018The Metropolitan Opera opened its lone Wagner offering of the 2017-18 season on Monday night: a revival of the extraordinary 2013 François Girard staging of Wagner's Parsifal. This production was acclaimed when it opened, for its stunning visuals (including a lake of stage blood in Act II) and its potent, spare message. It was also the second opportunity for the Met's new maestro-designate, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, to prove his mettle with Wagner's music, this time conducting the composer's final opera.
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