Music
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Mefistofele at the Metropolitan Opera
Christian Hale is the Devil
By: - Nov 12th, 2018The Devil always gets a bad rap. That's the premise behind Mefistofele, Arrigo Boito's lone completed opera. An ambitious setting of Goethe's Faust that retells the story from the Devil's point of view, Mefistofele used to prance its sulfur strut across the world's opera stages. But Thursday night's revival at the Metropolitan Opera was the first time that the opera had been seen, fully staged, in New York in eighteen years.
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The Book of Merman at the St. Luke's Theatre
A Parody of a Parody is Brash and Fun
By: - Nov 12th, 2018The Book of Merman is an engaging musical playing at the St. Luke's Theatre in New York. A parody of a parody, it is fresh from the first moment the two Mormon Elders, who are very young indeed, start knocking on doors in the theater district.
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Joyce di Donato, Mason Bates and Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin Leads
By: - Nov 15th, 2018Before he took the job as the music director of the Metropolitan Opera, the conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin became leader of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Happily for both ensembles he appears willing and able to balance duties in both cities. On Tuesday night, the maestro and his band came to Carnegie Hall for the first of their scheduled subscription appearances this season. They brought with them an impressive centuries-spanning program that played to the many strengths of this remarkable ensemble.
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King Kong as Spectacle
But Is the Musical Spectacular Enough for Broadway
By: - Nov 15th, 2018Yes size is definitely on the theatrical table for purposes of this “review/essay” of King Kong along with other observations. Perhaps, I should label this review with a sub-headline called “In Defense of Spectacle”.
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The Gershwin's Crazy for You
At the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco
By: - Nov 15th, 2018In addition to great music and dance, Crazy for You is full of some of the corniest imaginable humor and inside jokes that are compatible with the tone of the work. And they are delivered well.
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Tanglewood Program 2019
Preseason Starts June 15
By: - Nov 15th, 2018The 2019 Tanglewood season will see Boston Symphony Music Director Andris Nelsons in residence throughout the month of July, leading 14 programs, including a first for Tanglewood—a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and a star-studded cast, presented in three [Andris Nelsons]concerts over a two-day period, July 27 & 28. Tanglewood will also be the setting for the BSO’s Nelsons-led world premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts’ The Brightness of Light, a work for voices and orchestra inspired by letters between Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz; it was written especially for Renée Fleming and Rod Gilfry, who will be the featured soloists.
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Severin von Eckardstein Performs at the Park Avenue Armory
Schumann Featured in The Officer's Room
By: - Nov 15th, 2018Severin von Eckardstein, the young German pianist, trailing multiple awards, arrived in New York for two concerts featuring Robert Schumann, for whom he has a clear affinity. If the composer was with us, he would have reciprocated.
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Schoenberg in Hollywood by Boston Lyric Opera
Emerson Paramount Center
By: - Nov 17th, 2018As the mostly sold-out shows for the Boston Lyric Opera’s premiere of Schoenberg in Hollywood attest, the internationally acclaimed composer Tod Machover’s brilliant operatic treatment and modernist-like musical score shines. A minimal cast is “small but big.”
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Kaija Saariaho Premiere at White Light Festival
Lincoln Center Produces Only the Sound Remains
By: - Nov 18th, 2018Kaija Saaariaho weaves live music, enhanced voices and electronically generated extensions of the orchestra through the Rose Theater in Only the Sound Remains. Her opera based on two Noh stories is having its US premiere at the White Light Festival of Lincoln Center. This is an intimate work which succeeds mysteriously in filling a large space.
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It’s a Wonderful Life
At San Francisco Opera
By: - Nov 22nd, 2018It’s a Wonderful Life is a quintessential American opera in its language, content, and social perspective. Composer Jake Heggie has never been intimidated by cutting-edge contemporary opera standards and has created work that unapologetically draws on past musical forms with warmth, emotion, and melody.
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Judith Lorick CD Release
The Regatta Bar, Cambridge
By: - Nov 22nd, 2018For her CD release party at the Regatta Bar in Cambridge, Judith Lorick shared her soul, thoughts and beautiful voice, as she chose top-drawer selections from her 2018 release, The Second Time Around (JLJ, 2018).
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Disney's Frozen
Magical Winter Wonderland
By: - Nov 24th, 2018Despite some critical pans, Frozen has a strong enough pre-sale to guarantee many weeks on Broadway’s turf. Thanks are due to all the little girls who can’t get enough of the tale of Elsa and Anna, two Scandinavian sisters who yearn to be close despite mysterious magic separating them.
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Il Trittico at the Metropolitan Opera
Placido Domingo Celebrates 50 years at the Met
By: - Nov 28th, 2018No work by Puccini has suffered more neglect and critical ignorance than Il Trittico, his "triptych" of three single act operas that premiered at the Metropolitan Opera one hundred years ago. Part of what has hurt the reputation of this work- comprised of three operas designed to be performed together and in a certain sequence- is the unfortunate habit producers have of playing these works individually, or pairing them "Cav-Pag" style with operas by other composers.
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Chelsea Opera's Josephine Baker, Gertrude Stein and Picasso
Tom Cipullo's Opera Featured
By: - Nov 27th, 2018Chelsea Opera is a vibrant company committed to presenting new opera as well as the classics. On 1 December they will mount two one act New York premiers by the gifted composer, Tom Cipullo. Cipullo is rightly known as a composer for the voice, as well as a dramatist who creates a sound world of apt harmonies and melodies which reveal deep character and emotion. Opportunities to hear his work in New York are eagerly anticipated.
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MasterVoices Handel's Israel in Egypt
Carnegie Hall Stage Bursting with Artists
By: - Nov 30th, 2018Handel’s Israel in Egypt was performed at Carnegie Hall by MasterVoices under Ted Sperling’s baton. The Oratorio planned for Easter and Passover is often presented at Christmas and Hanukkah.
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Chelsea Opera: Tom Cipullo One Acts
Melissa Wimbish, Jennifer Beattie, Steven Eddy and Sara Paar
By: - Dec 02nd, 2018Chelsea Opera is an enterprising company, now over fifteen years old. They presented two one-act operas by composer Tom Cipullo, a master of drama and the placement of notes in the voice. The setting in Christ and St. Stephen’s Church worked perfectly as staged by Dean Anthony, a singer who has spent the last decade successfully directing. A golden glow surrounds the now 68-year-old Josephine Baker who is being interviewed in her dressing room.
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War at the New York Philharmonic
Jaap van Zweden Conducts
By: - Dec 02nd, 2018The extraordinary history of the Second World War casts a long shadow on any art music written in Europe in the 1930s and '40s. This week, the New York Philharmonic paired two of these works in a program of extraordinary intensity under music director Jaap van Zweden: a program that seemed to ask the following. Can art music, created under the shadow of extraordinary political and human event, somehow manage to transcend its origins and remain relevant to the audiences of today?
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Boston Boy by Nat Hentoff
A Memoir by a Radical Journalist and Jazz Critic
By: - Dec 04th, 2018Nathan Irving “Nat’ Hentoff (June 10, 1925 – January 7, 2017) passed at 91 some time ago. Why then, in the waning moments of 2018, write a review of a book written some 32 years ago? Reading a memoir by a legendary radical journalist and jazz critic resonated with my own memories of growing up as a Boston Boy.
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The Apple Boys by Jonothon Lyons and Ben Bonnema
A Barbershop Quartet Offers Joy at HERE
By: - Dec 07th, 2018Apple Boys bring the Barbershop Quartet into the 21st century. This musical form my have started as early as Beaumarchais in Barber of Seville in the 18th century. Both black and white musicians claim ownership. Every culture which discovered “harmony” in combined voices has used the four singer form.
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Scat Singers Sheila Jordan and Jay Clayton
Keeping Jazz Alive at 90
By: - Dec 10th, 2018Now 90, in 2012 Sheila Jordan was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. With fellow singer and educator, Jay Clayton, they conducted a workshop. Last night they, and nine singers, performed during a pot luck gig at The Firehouse in swinging downtown Adams, Mass.
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Onsite Opera Follows Menotti's Star
Amahl and the Night Visitors Reimagined
By: - Dec 08th, 2018Amahl and the Night Visitors was commissioned as a Christmas television special a half century ago. The composer, Gian Carlo Menotti, would appear often at its live presentations. He often pointed out that this is a story of a boy who has problems with his mother. He would ask members of the audience to raise their hands if they did. Most of the audience held their hands up high. That is not the only reason to enjoy this Christmas classic to which OnSite Opera has brought a new vision for today.
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Honoring Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues
All Stars at The Cabot in Beverly, MA.
By: - Dec 11th, 2018The Cabot in Beverly, Mass. is gearing up for its Centennial in 2020. It escaped the wrecker's ball a few years ago and is now in the midst of renovation, Toward that end there was a gala, all star benefit tribute to a 1920s icon Bessie Smith The Empress of the Blues. It was a night to remember and indicator of the next chapter of a venerable venue.
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Matthias Goerne at the New York Philhamonic
A Journey into Mystery
By: - Dec 11th, 2018For their last program before the annual dive into holiday season concerts, Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic gave their audience something unique: a song cycle created from the work of two composers and featuring the voice of Matthais Goerne, the German lieder specialist who sings Wotan on van Zweden's new recording of Wagner's Ring.
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J'nai Bridges and Mark Markham at Carnegie
Songs and Spirituals Tell a Story
By: - Dec 14th, 2018J’nai Bridges told us stories at her concert in the Weill Hall of Carnegie. The program began with a spiritual arranged by Bridges and her stunning partner on piano, Mark Markham. Spirituals and lullabies bracketed the program.
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Thomas Oliemans at Park Avenue Armory
Malcolm Martineau Joins Baritone
By: - Dec 18th, 2018Thomas Oliemans, a Dutch baritone, sang in the Officer's Room at the Park Avenue Armory. His first line evokes love's bite, suggesting a mix of pleasure and pain that would inform his program. The tall-full-voiced baritone was accompanied by Malcolm Martineau whose delight in the songs of Charles DuParc and Gustav Mahler was apparent.
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