Music
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White Snake Projects
Activist Opera Announces 2023-34 Season
By: - Jun 07th, 2023Celebrated for creating diverse, timely and relevant opera, activist opera company White Snake Projects (WSP) and its founder Cerise Lim Jacobs today announced its 2023-24 season comprising all original operatic works including two fully-staged operas, a quartet of holiday operas as part of its annual Let’s Celebrate! series, and two WSP’s community engagement showcases: Sing Out Strong and Show Out Boston!
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Madame Butterfly
At War Memorial Opera House San Francisco
By: - Jun 08th, 2023“Madame Butterfly” integrates the best of the earlier "La Boheme" and "Tosca" and overlays pentatonic scale Japanese folk melodies to add a whole new dimension to the score. The popularity of this beautiful and exotic wonder should be no surprise. San Francisco Opera’s wonderous creative and visually striking production is led by four powerful singers - Karah Son, Michael Fabiano, Hyona Kim, and Lucas Meachem.
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Lucia di Lammermoor at Deutsch Opera
One of Three Choices
By: - Jun 08th, 2023A charming throwback, or, The High School Musical version, of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at Deutsch Oper, Berlin
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Clark Art Institute Concerts
Five Free Performances
By: - Jun 08th, 2023The Clark Art Institute debuts a five-part outdoor concert series this summer. The Clark presents Hermanos Gutiérrez on June 28, Joe Henry on July 5, Makaya McCraven on July 12, Darlingside on July 19, and Kathleen Edwards on August 8. All performances are free and take place at 6 pm near the Reflecting Pool.
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The Wizard of Oz
A Fanciful Stage Adaptation of an American Movie Classic
By: - Jun 09th, 2023L. Frank Baum’s beloved “The Wizard of Oz” has become an American touchstone and introduced a bevy of memes and tropes that define our narrative. While it is easy to sit back and enjoy it as an entertaining pastime, in its richness, it is also a fable of the American spirit. Dorothy, despite being young and female, represents the prototypical hero on an odyssey, a quest to find her way home after defeating the odds, aided by trusty sidekicks she has met along the way. Together, using brains and hearts and courage, they conquer fears and earn their way to becoming what they had aspired to be.
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Die Frau ohne Schatten
Richard Strauss's Lush Music, Captivating Fairy Tale Story, and Pop Art Scenery.
By: - Jun 12th, 2023The Empress faces Sophie’s choice. Either decision - to accept or reject the shadow - could leave blood on her hands. High drama occurs with real or perceived betrayals and threats of killing, but since nobody dies, some would characterize “Die Frau” as a comedy!
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Rhiannon Giddens Curates Ojai. Part I
Spiritual and Historic Journey
By: - Jun 13th, 2023Rhiannon Giddens curated the Ojai Music Festival this year. She often sings “I shall not be moved.” And yet, in the strong force you feel in her wake, you know and feel she is moving and you are moved. Giddens is fond of the double and triple entendre. For four days we are sailing with her and we are also in her wake.
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El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego
Two Modern Artists Fictionalized in an Opera with an Orpheus-like Story.
By: - Jun 15th, 2023Composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s special compassion for Frida Kahlo may derive from their shared experience. Cuban-born, Pulitzer Prize winning (“Anna in the Tropics”) playwright Nilo Cruz provides the literate libretto. Wishing to integrate aspects of Mexican culture into the story in a magical realism fashion, he builds the narrative around the culturally significant Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and Aztec mythology.
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San Francisco Opera 100th Anniversary Concert
America's Third Oldest Opera Company Celebrates Its First Century
By: - Jun 18th, 2023San Francisco Opera celebrated its centenary at War Memorial Opera House with a grand concert of 21 operatic pieces, performed by 15 principals and the company’s orchestra and chorus. Artistic Director Eun Sun Kim, past Artistic Director Donald Runnicles, and past Principal Guest Conductor Patrick Summers shared the baton. Matthew Shilvock, only the seventh General Director of the company, hosted the glorious event.
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Experiments in Opera Presents Anthony Braxton
Feisty Opera Company Improvises at The Brick
By: - Jun 18th, 2023In 1999, Anthony Braxton caught the performance of an Improv group at Wesleyan College where he has taught for twenty-three years. Among its members was Lin Manuel Miranda. He picked a trooper and asked him to do an improvisation with him. The duo, collaborating on compositions 279 to 283, was the inspiration for this funny, hip and moving improv designed by Experiments in Opera (EiO).
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A Sex-Positive Xerxes
Komische Oper's Ecstatic Production
By: - Jun 19th, 2023Handel’s Xerxes is a sex-positive party in this ecstatic production presented by Komische Oper. The theater itself is a beautiful little jewel box seating about 1200 people, an intimate setting appropriate to a production that would highlight intimacy.
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Cabaret Soars at Barrington Stage Company
Awesome Debut for Artistic Director Alan Paul
By: - Jun 20th, 2023With his first production, Cabaret, Alan Paul, the artistic director of Barrington Stage Company, has set a new benchmark for musical theatre in the Berkshires. Given the unchecked rise of fascism in America the musical which focuses on the beginnings of Nazi Germany could not be more powerful and relevant. This is a scorching production which will blow you away. Barrington's version of the iconic musical clicks on all cylinders,
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Fifth annual Berkshire Jazz Showcase
Free Event on Pittsfield’s First Street Common
By: - Jun 23rd, 2023We announce the lineup for our popular Berkshire Jazz Showcase, a free event on Pittsfield’s First Street Common Saturday, July 8, 1-5pm.
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Ojai Festival on Historic Journey
Rhiannon Giddens Programs All Music
By: - Jun 22nd, 2023At the 2023 Ojai music festival, Rhiannon Giddens, musical director, and a supremely talented group of musicians, presented a program that challenged the audience to take a musical journey with them around the world.
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Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Adams Theatre Benefit's Razom for Ukraine
By: - Jun 26th, 2023Locally rooted musical collective Floating Tower, working with Berkshire artist Joe Wheaton, will fill The Adams Theater July 1-2 with a unique, poignant musical tribute to the people of Ukraine.
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Rhiannon Giddens Adds New Dimensions to Ojai
A New Silkroad Winds Across a Boundary-less World
By: - Jun 27th, 2023Rhiannon Giddens is leading new music which is both classical and popular. Her commitment to telling stories that have been buried and to showing us the world as it really is in music heralds anew age.
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Million Dollar Quartet in Pittsfield
Blows Roof off of Colonial Theatre
By: - Jun 30th, 2023During raucous encores Million Dollar Quartet blasted the audience up out of their seats at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. By popular demand Berkshire Theater Group revises its prior production at the smaller Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge.
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A Chorus Line
Character Laid Bare in the Pursuit of Dreams.
By: - Jul 06th, 2023On Broadway and in Hollywood, the backstage genre endures and endears like few others. In the history of American entertainment, no backstage montage has proven more heart wrenching and more diverse in its themes explored and its characters examined than “A Chorus Line.”
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Les Misérables
A Powerful Indictment of Justice in an Unjust Society
By: - Jul 08th, 2023Jean Valjean spends his adult life paying for having stolen a morsel of bread for his sister. Even after a long prison sentence, he finds himself needing to hide and lie to avoid the relentless Inspector Javert, who obsesses over making Valjean pay endlessly for his petty crime.
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The Rape of Lucretia
The Act That Gave Rise to the Republic of Rome
By: - Jul 14th, 2023Roman officers, including Prince Tarquinius, who are in a military camp wager whether their wives have remained constant. Investigations prove that the wives of all of the men in the discussion have had indiscretions, with one exception. Lucretia has remained faithful. Tarquinius is determined to corrupt her morals. Returning to Rome, his amorous advances toward Lucretia are repelled, and he forces himself on her. Although not dealt with in the opera, this incident was the crowning blow to the king’s reign, and his overthrow led to the period of the Republic of Rome.
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Sound of Music
At Ivoryton Playhouse
By: - Jul 15th, 2023The production uses elements from the original script as well as elements from the movie and subsequent Broadway revivals. This means that the two songs Richard Rodgers wrote for the film – “I Have Confidence in Me” and “Something Good” are included and the original “An Ordinary Couple” is omitted.
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Music at Williams College
Schedule for 2003 to 2004
By: - Jul 17th, 2023Williams College presents many free concerts during the academic year. This is the schedule of upcoming events.
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Tony Bennett at 96
Performed at Tanglewood with Lady Gaga
By: - Jul 21st, 2023Tony Bennett who won 20 Grammys has died at 96. With a raspy voice that defied description he was a master of phrasing, swing, and insightful interpretation. I saw him upclose in a 1980s pairing with pianist Dave McKenna for PBS. Then more recently at Tanglewood.
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The Coronation of Poppea
West Edge Opera Right Sizes a Classic
By: - Jul 24th, 2023The narrative is historical only in the broadest sense. While the plot points actually occurred from AD 58 to AD 65, not only are they condensed into one day, but their order is shifted! Further, the librettist fancifully changes the character of characters, making some good who were actually bad and vice versa. Who would have thought of the barbaric and narcissistic Nero as also having room for love and magnanimity? So, for those who lambaste Hollywood for being fast and loose with the facts, let it be known that it had models to draw on
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Cruzar la Cara de la Luna: A Mariachi Opera
Mariachi Music Makes it to the Opera House
By: - Jul 25th, 2023The story is about Laurentino, a man in New York who immigrated from Mexico half a century before. On his deathbed, he reveals an undisclosed past to his family. He had a first wife in Mexico who died in the crossing and a son who returned to his native land. A poignant metaphor of the butterfly recurs in the music and conversation. When the butterfly emerges from its chrysalis and moves on from its life as a caterpillar, it never returns to the same location, reenacting life’s transformation in a new land. It is only the descendants that circle back to the homeland of earlier generations.
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