Music
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Montserrat Caballé, La Superba
Star Soprano of the 20th Century
By: - Oct 07th, 2018One would argue that in opera singers of a vanished age, it was the voice and only the voice that mattered. These words would be fitting as a eulogy for Montserrat Caballé. The soprano, who passed away at the age of 85, possessed one of the largest and most flexible instruments of her age, succeeding in everything from Rossini to dramatic operas by Puccini and Strauss.
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Man of La Mancha
At Westport Country Playhouse
By: - Oct 09th, 2018A successful production requires an excellent Cervantes/Don Quixote and Phillip Hernandez meets the challenge. His voice is expressive and powerful, he bring a sense of age to the part, and his acting totally encompasses the character.
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Girl of the Golden West at Metropolitan Opera
Blazing Saddles
By: - Oct 10th, 2018The Girl of the Golden West returned to the Met this month with a good cast. On Monday night, a performance featuring tenor Yusif Eyvazov and soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek provided a much needed shot of red blood to an anemic fall season.
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Place Premieres at the Harvey Theater
BAM's Next Wave Festival Featured Ted Hearne
By: - Oct 13th, 2018Place by Ted Hearne has its world premier as part of BAM’s New Wave Festival. Like Giuseppe Verdi whose music became the anthem of Italian unification, Hearne is a voice for the big issues before our country. His new oratorio addresses ‘gentrification.’ It is deeply personal and deeply moving.
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Wilco Solid Sound Festival
Returns June 28-30, 2019
By: - Oct 16th, 2018Solid Sound, Wilco's Music and Arts Festival, returns to MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts June 28-30, 2019. Three-day tickets go on sale this Thursday at 11:00AM ET through solidsoundfestival.com, massmoca.org and the MASS MoCA Box Office (413.662.2111). For a limited time, tickets will be offered at a reduced early-bird rate of $149 (regular price $179). Children’s three-day tickets (ages 6-10) will be available for $55 and children under 6 are free. Thursday also marks the opening of campsite reservations for the official festival campground Solid Ground. Campsite reservations can be made only by calling the MASS MoCA Box Office.
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David Robertson Conducts New York Philharmonic
Morning Matinees at David Geffen Hall
By: - Oct 15th, 2018NY Phil morning matinees open with conductor David Robertson in a performance of another major work by contemporary composer Louis Andriessen, the Dutch composer whose receipt of the 2016 Kravis Prize for new music has led to an in-depth Philharmonic exploration of his catalogue. Andriessen, in a program note, commented that " I have made no attempt to relate to what is known as "music from the Far East" or, even worse, 'world music.'"
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The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Dickens at 3 Below Theaters,
By: - Oct 17th, 2018Charles Dickens would roll over in his grave. The master of the hard, the twisted, the bleak expectations, who chronicled grime, abuse, and despair. How could his material be used as the basis for a mash up between a raucous “who dunnit?” and a Gay ’90s vaudevillian music hall entertainment? The Mystery of Edwin Drood does just that, earning its spurs on Broadway in 1985 with a long run and a handful of Tonys.
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Aspect Foundation Presents Zemlinsky Quartet
Unrequited Love Explored
By: - Oct 17th, 2018The Aspect Foundation presented the Zemlinsky Quartet in New York. They performed works by their namesake, Dvo?ák, and Leos Janá?ek , in particular works inspired by their muses, women who left their love unrequited. The music's sadness and disappointment yielded was lovely. The group expressed comraderie and collaboration for a uniquely satisfying effect.
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Joshua Bell and the New York Philharmonic
John Corigliano's Red Violin Comes to Life
By: - Oct 18th, 2018Is it worth it to create the greatest instrument in the history of Western music, even if it costs you everything? That is the question asked by the 1998 François Girard film The Red Violin, which tracks the creation, birth and long life of its titular object from a workshop in Cremona in the 16th century to an auction house in modern day Montreal.
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The Musical Fun Home
At TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
By: - Oct 19th, 2018Fun Home looks at coming-of-age and coming-out through the eyes of Alison Bechdel, whose graphic novel memoir is the source material. TheatreWorks offers a delightful production of the Tony Award winning musical.
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The Barber of Seville
Launches Season of Boston Lyric Opera
By: - Oct 22nd, 2018Rossini’s classic story of the oppressed woman who upends the patriarchal dowry system to pursue true love, is wonderfully invigorated by BLO’s selection and cast of critically acclaimed singers. This production launches the fall season of Boston Lyric Opera with stunning panache.
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St. Thomas Church Presents a New Organ
Parry, Janacek, Poulenc, Bernstein and Barber Featured
By: - Oct 21st, 2018St. Thomas Church in New York is introducing its magnificent new organ with a series of concerts. A recent program of ferociously reverent music displayed the grand instrument in all its glory. The Choir of Men and Boys was joined by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Sara Cutler was featured on the harp, soprano soloist Hyesang Park, and Benjamin Sheen on the brand new organ.
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Arabella at San Francisco Opera
By Richard Strauss with Libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
By: - Oct 26th, 2018Arabella does not artistically match the model it targeted, Der Rosenkavalier, nor does it replicate the earlier work’s market success. Despite some issues with this opera, it certainly deserves its place in the repertoire.
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Marnie at the Metropolitan Opera
Nico Muhly's North American Premier
By: - Oct 26th, 2018Nico Muhly’s third opera, his second for the Metropolitan Opera, has its North American premiere this month and next. Muhly states clearly that when he was approached by director Michael Mayer about making the book Marnie into an opera, he was intrigued. At the end of opera, one wonders what happened to the screenplay of Alfred Hitchcock’s film based on the book.
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Charles Wuorinen's 80th at the Guggenheim
Goeyvaerts String Quartet Performs at Works & Process
By: - Oct 30th, 2018In celebration of his 80th birthday, Works & Process at the Guggenheim presented Charles Wuorinen's two String Trios, composed fifty years apart. In conversation before and between the superb performances of the Goeyvaerts String Trio, whose take on his work was praised by the composer, Wuorinen commented on his state of mind and ear at the time of the first composition. The Second String Trio is a world premiere commissioned by Works & Process.
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Tughan Sokhiev at the New York Philharmonic
Formerly Relatively Unknown
By: - Oct 30th, 2018Prior to this week, the Russian conductor Tughan Sokhiev was an unknown quantity at the New York Philharmonic. Currently music director of the Bolshoi Theater and the Orchestre Nationale du Capitole de Toulouse, he made his debut on the podium at David Geffen Hall, armed with a triptych of works from his native land by Borodin, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky.
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Satyagarha by Philip Glass at BAM
Folkoperan / Cirkus Cirkör Add to the Meditation
By: - Nov 01st, 2018The Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music is presenting Philip Glass' Satyagraha at the Harvey Theater in Brooklyn. Not every opera can be mounted by a circus troop, but the forms are complimentary. When they meld, as they do here, it is a thrilling evening of theater. Folkoperan / Cirkus Cirkör from Sweden brings a matching visual rhythm and pace to the classical forms of Glass and extend our sense of this meditation on pacifism
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St. Thomas Church Presents a New Organ
Parry, Janacek, Poulenc, Bernstein and Barber Featured
By: - Nov 05th, 2018St. Thomas Church in New York is introducing its magnificent new organ with a series of concerts. A recent program of ferociously reverent music displayed the grand instrument in all its glory. The Choir of Men and Boys was joined by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Sara Cutler was featured on the harp, soprano soloist Hyesang Park, and Benjamin Sheen on the brand new organ.
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Hungarian State Opera Arrives in New York
Superb Company Offers Seldom Heard Masterpieces
By: - Nov 06th, 2018The Hungarian State Opera is a company full of talented artists whose work has not been presented to American audiences, unless they are fortunate enough to have visited Buda and Pest, and cities throughout the country that presents opera all the time, everywhere. The troop is in New York for two weeks, presenting opera, their orchestra and also dance, for which the Hungarians are famous.
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Hungarian State Opera Orchestra
Terrific Performances of UnusualFfare
By: - Nov 07th, 2018The Hungarian National Opera's arrival in New York for a two week stay has been among the more interesting events of this fall season. Unfamiliar operas, unique productions and some vocal discoveries have been made at Lincoln Center. On Monday night, the Opera's orchestra, under the leadership of music director Balász Kocsár came to Carnegie Hall for a marathon concert: its one chance to display a wide variety of orchestral wares.
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Broadway Goes Ape For King Kong
Remake of Classic 1933 Rumble in the Jungle
By: - Nov 08th, 2018During the exposition of this retelling of the classic 1933 film there is an enervating response to a generic musical. It conveys the familiar tale of a pretty farm girl falling on hard luck trying to make it big in show business. Lured into a film shoot on remote and unihabited Skull Island things change big time. From the first thrilling appearance of Kong there is little doubt that he is the new King of Broadway.
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The Doctor in Spite of Himself at Odyssey Opera
Gounod's 200th Birthday Celebrated in Style
By: - Nov 10th, 2018Odyssey Opera mounted a terrific production of Charles' Gounod's A Doctor in Spite of Himself at the Huntington Theater in Boston. Gil Rose, the inspired founder of this company, points out that critics often blame institutions for riding the coattails of a big birthday of an musical original. If this is so, why is Gounod's 200th not being celebrated. It turns out that it is, in Boston.
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Ivan Fischer at the New York Philharmonic
The Hall Configured for Mozart
By: - Nov 10th, 2018Wednesday night's concert at the New York Philharmonic felt more like Mostly Mozart. It wasn't just the program: a brief but satisfying blend of Beethoven and Schubert. It was the presence of frequent MM guest Iván Fischer, who, for a number of seasons has enlivened that summer festival by bringing his orchestra charges: the Budapest Festival Orchestra (an ensemble he founded and still currently leads) to play symphonies and operas at Lincoln Center. Here, Fischer found himself at the helm of the New York Philharmonic, but wasted no time in ensuring that this was a very different kind of concert.
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Phantom Limb Company at BAM
Next Wave Festival Presents A Different Wave
By: - Nov 10th, 2018The Phantom Limb Company presents Falling Out at BAM's Next Wave Festival. A decade after 9/11 in the US, an earthquake in Japan created a tsunami which swept over swept over Otsuchi, Japan. A terrorist attack and nature's own are comparable in the name dates by which they are remembered. The tsunami caused meltdowns at three nuclear reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant. Hundreds of thousand of residents were affected in what came to be called 3/11.
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Ayn Inserto Jazz Orchestra’s CD Release
At The Lilypad, Cambridge
By: - Nov 14th, 2018Ayn Inserto delivered a tour-de-force performance with her personal journey Down the Rabbit Hole accompanied by an orchestra that was sharp and flexible. She is clearly at home in any environment, executing complicated orchestration of original jazz pieces in a small, tight venue for 17 plus musicians.
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