Music
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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My Parsifal Conductor by Allan Leicht
Cosima Wagner Redeemed, A Comedy
By: - Oct 11th, 2018My Parsifal Conductor, Allan Leicht's hilarious and touching comedy on the late domestic life of Richard Wagner, which extends into immortality, is playing at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater through November 3. At the center of the curtainless stage is a big double bed over which a heavenly canopy hangs. We are somewhere between heaven and earth where Cosima Liszt Bulow Wagner is taking her last gasps. She is ninety and married Richard Wagner 60 years ago, after the birth of their three children, Isolde, Eva and Siegfried. Wagner died after 13 years of marriage.
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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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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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Tom Stoppard's Rock and Roll
At Chicago's Artistic Home Theatre
By: - Oct 09th, 2018Kathy Scambiatterra directs this complex political/musical story, based on the Czech music fans and political dissidents in the years between the Prague Spring in 1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
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Hancock Shaker Village Newest Shaker, Paul Muldoon
The Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet Wrote And Performed A Shaker Poem
By: - Oct 08th, 2018Paul Muldoon, a 67 year old New Yorker, originally from Northern Ireland, recited his poetry while the band, Rogue Olifant, played accompanying music. The evening at Hancock Shaker Village emulated a 1960s scene from my past.
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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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Mile Long Opera at The High Line
Co-Created by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro and David Lang
By: - Oct 06th, 2018The High Line is a big idea writ large, just like operas. It forms a perfect set for Mile Long Opera. Elizabeth Diller gets a director’s credit for an opera written specially for this location by David Lang. Anne Carson is librettist and Claudia Rankine, essayist. Mile Long Opera is subtitled, a biography of 7 pm, a time of transition from work to home.
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Tosca at San Francisco Opera
Carmen Giannattasio Debut in Title Role
By: - Oct 06th, 2018A star attraction on the European circuit, Italian Carmen Giannattasio makes her San Francisco Opera debut and role debut as the title character. The soprano was offered the part earlier in her career, but she declined.
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Pat Metheny at Beverly’s Cabot Theatre
Touring with a New Group of Emerging Musicians
By: - Oct 06th, 2018Now at mid career, with 20 Grammy Awards, Pat Metheny launched a tour at the Cabot Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts. While performing material from those now classic albums he did so with emerging musicians. He derived fresh energy and inspiration from Gwilym Simcock on piano/keyboards, Linda Oh on bass, and Antonio Sanchez on drums. Yet again his guitar virtuosity sparked a phenomenal performance.
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Jean-Luc Ponty at The Cabot Theatre
Jazz Violin in Beverly, Mass.
By: - Oct 01st, 2018The 850 seat, Art Deco, Cabot Theatre in Beverly, Mass. has been beautifully renovated. It is proving to be a perfect setting for jazz concerts. Recently we enjoyed an evening with jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. It was a compelling retrospetive of The Atlantic Years.
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Conrad Tao and Bruckner at NY Philharmonic
Shock and Awe Under Jaap Van Zweden
By: - Sep 30th, 2018Conrad Tao’s world premier composition Everything Must Go was performed by the New York Philharmonic and followed without a breath by Anton Bruckner’s powerful Eighth Symphony.
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JACK Quartet at the Catacombs
The Angel's Share Explores Modern Medieval
By: - Sep 28th, 2018We can count the ways the JACK delights in The Catacombs of the Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Depth, breath and height, as far as the strings can reach, up and down. The Catacombs, wrapped in a mysterious yellow light ebbing to darkness added to this moving presentation.
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Miller Theater Premiers Missy Mazzoli
Proving Up Arrives in New York
By: - Sep 27th, 2018Aware that all art forms now compete with Netflix, composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek seek out stories for their musical theater that will attract audiences. Mazzoli, a masterful young composer, can go very dark in tales because her music, in its blocks of beauty no matter what the subject, is compelling and evocative.
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Ne Quittez Pas at Opera Philadelphia
Patricia Racette Compels as Elle
By: - Sep 26th, 2018Ne Quittez Pas is writ large on a marquee in a hot neighborhood of Philadelphia. Hold on, it says. Don’t leave. Stay on the line. This is a phrase used repeatedly in the old French telephone service, a main character in the opera to unfold inside the club, Theater of the Living Arts, a disco/nightclub near the harbor.
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Komische Oper, Berlin, Germany
Opening of the Season 2018/19
By: - Sep 25th, 2018Berlin's Komische Oper (Comic Opera) opened its 2018/19 season with some of the most successful productions of the previous season. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 'Zauberflöte' (Magic Flute) and Jerry Bock's 'Anatevka' which is better known as Fiddler On The Roof.
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