Music
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Berkshire Opera Festival Brings in Boheme
Epic Love and Loss of Innocence Central to the Drama
By: - Jul 28th, 2023Berkshire Opera Festival continues its 2023 summer season with a mainstage production of La Bohème on August 26, August 29, and September 1 at The Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, MA. One of the most beloved operatic love stories of all time, La Bohème is based on Henri Murger's 1851 novel, Scènes de la vie de Bohème, which follows the lives of young people living in the Latin Quarter of Paris
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Katrin Hilbe at Berlin Opera Academy
Acting Skills Now Fundamental
By: - Jul 28th, 2023he advent of Freudianism somehow severed the mind from the body, but over the past decades, there has been a return to the wisdom of late 19th century philosopher William James who saw the body and mind as deeply interrelated.
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Bach by Bike in Leipzig
A Trio Stops in the Summersaal
By: - Jul 31st, 2023An enthusiastic cyclist, violinist Marieke Neumann was the developer of the “Bach Bicycle Route” in central Germany, featuring guided tours to important locations from the composer’s life. Mezzo-soprano Anna-Luise Oppelt joins her for Bach by Bike to visit towns and cities where Johann Sebastian Bach lived and worked.
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Jazz in the Berkshires
Bousquet Jazz Festival
By: - Aug 01st, 2023A series of august jazz programming, is the upcoming month. With our friends at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute paying increased attention to jazz, two local dates by itinerant pianist Peggy Stern, and the second annual Bousquet Jazz Festival, there’s plenty to choose from.
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Orfeo
A Scintillating World Premiere Orchestration of This Oldest Opera
By: - Aug 03rd, 2023The uniqueness of Santa Fe Opera's facility and setting make for a stunning visualization of Monteverdi's early masterpiece. With the back stagewall initially open to nature, the scenario begins in literal and figurative brightness; followed by a threatening storm in the mesas behind; leading to brutal darkness on stage with deliciously harsh lighting effects. Modern orchestration smooths the Baroque edges of the music.
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Pelléas et Mélisande
Santa Fe Opera's Take on a Brooding Tale from Debussy and Maeterlinck
By: - Aug 05th, 2023Claude Debussy sought a prospective opera libretto in which characters seemed out of place, out of time, and only half disclosed. For “Pelléas et Mélisande,” he found his soulmate in future Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck, whose opaqueness suited Debussy so well that he adapted the playwright’s work almost verbatim. The result was a turn-of-the-century landmark - Debussy’s only completed opera.
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Rusalka
Fine Performances Benefit This Appealing Opera
By: - Aug 06th, 2023“Rusalka” ranks as Dvorák’s most popular opera and with good reason. Applying Wagnerian principles with leitmotifs and in sung-through fashion, it also draws from Czech folk music. The thoroughly romantic, luxuriant music possesses extractable set pieces of compelling melody and emotion. The fairy tale story draws on several sources, mixing light and dark, with a resulting dramatic outcome.
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The Nightingale & Erwartung - A Double Bill
West Edge Opera Offers a Dynamic Duo of Short, Atonal Operas
By: - Aug 08th, 2023Stravinsky's "The NIghtingale" sets a simple but thoughtful Hans Christian Anderson tale to music. Production values sizzle. With Schoenberg's "Erwartung," the setting of the psychologically-driven soliloquy is switched from forest to hospital. The use of dancers as mute characters adds depth and diversity to the narrative.
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Tippet Rise Makes Music in Place
The Montana Ranch Home to Concerts and Sculpture
By: - Aug 09th, 2023Tippet Rise Art Center welcomes musicians and concertgoers for its eighth concert season, beginning August 18 and running through September 17. With more than 15 indoor and outdoor performances planned over five weekends, the season features a wide range of repertoire performed by artists who can be young trailblazers or legendary musicians. A highlight of this summer’s season is the debut of the new Wander series, which moves musicians and audiences between different works of art installed at the art center
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On Cedar Street at Berkshire Theatre Group
World Premiere Musical
By: - Aug 20th, 2023On Cedar Street is an intimate, compact musical compressed into one long act on a busy, cluttered set. On Cedar Street which entails the late life romance of widow and widower in rural Colorado is having its world premiere at the Unicorn Theatre of Berkshire Theatre Group.
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Here Lies Love on Broadway
Concept, Music, and Lyrics by David Byrne
By: - Aug 22nd, 2023Once the show actually began, I was engaged. While it is just making its Broadway debut, Here Lies Love, with concept, music, and lyrics by David Byrne, music by Fatboy Slim, and additional music by Tom Gandey and Jose Luis Pardo, began as a concept album in 2010. From there, it ran at off-Broadway’s Public Theater (2013, 2014-15) and London (2014-15), both times garnering multiple awards.
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A Visit to Tippet Rise, Part I
Local is the Future of Music and Art
By: - Aug 22nd, 2023Tippet Rise is the passionate expression of Cathy Halstead, a painter, and Peter Halstead, a polymath (poet, pianist, photographer, and novelist) who met when they were very young and have lived like two peas in a pod ever since. Having assembled about 12,500 acres in southern Montana not far from Yellowstone National Park, they have taken cues from the natural surroundings to build concert halls, place site-specific architecture and sculptures and produce an annual summer music festival which is a model for the future.
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A New Brain a Smash at Barrington Stage
Revival of Bill Finn and James Lapine Musical
By: - Aug 25th, 2023Absorbing, insightful, fun and hilarious are dumbfounding but accurate terms to describe the William Finn and James Lapine musical A New Brain being revised at Barrington Stage Company. It's a musical about neurosurgery.
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Beauty and the Beast
A Big Show Presented Small
By: - Aug 26th, 2023The desire to produce shows that are well-known is understandable, but it is also important for theaters to focus on what they do best.
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A Visit to Tippet Rise. Part II
A Special Staff for a Special Place
By: - Aug 27th, 2023Pete Hinmon and Lindsey Hinmon are Co-Directors of Tippet Rise Art Center. They are warm and deeply thoughtful, qualities you find in everyone at this working ranch. Qualities clearly treasured by the Halsteads, the couple creating this special art venue. The Halsteads have a knack for picking people.
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Lenox Jazz Stroll
Schedule Updates
By: - Sep 05th, 2023The Mill Town Foundation has announced an updated schedule for the Lenox Jazz Stroll. The timeframe will be the same as always, on the third weekend in September, but the times and some of the details have changed.
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WBCN Legend Charles Laquidara
Pairs With Matt Siegel for Benefit Event
By: - Sep 07th, 2023“An Afternoon with Charles Laquidara & Matt Siegel,” moderated by Joyce Kulhawik, is a fundraiser for the Paul “Tank” Sferruzza Scholarship Fund. The late Sferruzza was a sports director at WBCN and WZLX. The event is at City Winery Saturday, September 9.
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Adam Tendler and Cage at the Crypt
Andrew Ousley's Death Defying Death of Classical
By: - Sep 08th, 2023Leave it to the brilliant impresario Andrew Ousley and his music series, Death of Classical, to bring us an incredible and surprising evening of John Cage music. Before Cage moved on to the concepts of indeterminacy and chance, he composed more conventionally arced works for the prepared piano, in which screws were systematically and specifically applied to some strings in a grand piano, Cage clearly began in one place and ended up in another. Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano is a deliberate whole.
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Hippest Trip: The Soul Train Musical
Dominique Morisseau's Second Musical About Black Song In The Late 20th Century at San Francisco's ACT
By: - Sep 08th, 2023After her Broadway success with "Ain't Too Proud," which also premiered in the Bay Area, Morisseau pays homage to "Soul Train," the syndicated TV show that became the Black community's "American Bandstand." The playwright also successfully integrates a warts-and-all biography of creator and longtime host, Don Cornelius.
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Romeo and Juliet - Gounod's Opera
Fine Voices and Acting of Young Opera San Jose Cast Carry Opera
By: - Sep 11th, 2023"Romeo and Juliet" reigns as the touchstone of love stories centuries after its creation. But the play offers depth of meaning and cautions in many other social realms which contribute to its greatness. Adapted in many genres, Gounod's opera remains perhaps the most compelling and enduring realization. Its lush music and tight adherence to the Bard's work yield a timeless masterpiece.
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Crowns
An Uplifting Celebration of African-American Women and Hats They Wear To Church
By: - Sep 14th, 2023Hats are an integral part of the African-American woman's church attendance. Playwright Regina Taylor celebrates not only hats but the women that wear them - their fortitude, their triumphs, and their tragedies. Animated vignettes and a gospel dominated song book provide for a rousing entertainment.
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The Addams Family
A Fun Look At The Ghoulish Family
By: - Sep 16th, 2023Horrors! Guess who's coming to dinner. Gomez and Morticia's daughter Wednesday has fallen in love and wants to marry a "normal" young man. She has even invited him and his family over for a meal. What can be done to stop such a fearsome turn of events?
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Il Trovatore
One of Verdi's Most Challenging and Emotional Operas
By: - Sep 19th, 2023The title character is Manrico, a troubadour and leader of a Roma troupe. Unbeknownst to anyone but his adoptive mother, he is of noble blood and the brother of his arch enemy, Count di Luna. They contest not only in the communal and political world but for the love of a woman, Leonora.
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American Tenor Stephen Gould Dies at 61
His Performances Were Always A Treat
By: - Sep 20th, 2023Berkshire Fine Arts was fortunate to hear Stephen Gould sing Parsifal in Bayreuth two years ago. He retired from Bayreuth this summer when he was diagnosed with incurable cancer.
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John Zorn Celebrates 70
Who Knew Classical Music Could be So Much Fun
By: - Sep 22nd, 2023One of the reasons John Zorn’s music attracts is that it’s so damn much fun. Leaping on and off the stage to introduce the numbers in his first of many 70th birthday celebrations at the Miller Theatre at Columbia, Zorn looked like he was going to last forever. And let’s hope he does.
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