Susan Hall
Bio:
Recent Articles:
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Conductor Dies During Performance in Munich Front Page
Stefan Soltesz Exits to the Music of Richard Strauss
By: - Jul 25th, 2022It has been a very warm week in Munich, yet a lovely one. Occasionally walking along Maximilian Street in the center of town, a breeze catches up and cools. The Munich State Opera, unquestionably the lead opera company in the world, is holding its annual July Festival, a chance to catch up with interesting productions from the last decade.Concerts too attract. Munich Regular Jonas Kaufman will return for his first post Covid appearance.
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Jonas Kaufman and Helmut Deutsch in Munich Front Page
Munich State Opera Presents in the National Theater
By: - Jul 24th, 2022Jonas Kaufman and Helmut Deutsch have long been partners in song. Kaufman recently withdrew from performances at the Royal Covent Garden opera house due to the impact of Covid 19 on his voice. His return was welcomed at the National Theater in Munich.
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Meet Phil Kline at Mass MOCA Front Page
Bang on a Can Composer
By: - Jul 23rd, 2022Phil Kline is at MASS MoCA next weekend. He says: I'm a bit of an outsider, not part of the "classical" world, or even the more sanctioned wings of the avant-garde. A composer without portfolio. Go hear his work in North Adams, Massachusetts!
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Julis Bullock Expands Harawi in Aix Front Page
Choreographed Drama by Zack Winokur
By: - Jul 22nd, 2022Julia Bullock has made a big opera career outside conventional wisdom. At the Aix Festival in Provence this year she sang Olivier Messiaen's Harawi, a challenging work to which she brings unusual insights.
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The Nose at the Munich Opera Front Page
Russian Dissident Kirill Serebrennikov
By: - Jul 21st, 2022Kirill Serebrennikov, the brilliant Russian director, brought The Nose to Munich via Zoom. He is detained by the Russian government in Moscow. The production is superb.
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Ian Bostridge Sings Schubert in Munich Front Page
Anthony Papano Accompnies at the Prinzregent Theater
By: - Jul 20th, 2022Ian Bostridge is the go-to performer for Franz Schubert's Winterreise. He notes that 'Even as a child I was unnaturally obsessed with love and death, so in that sense I really was born to sing lieder'. This concert is another testament to his natural affinity for the form and for the composer.
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Berkshire Opera Festival's Don Giovanni Front Page
First-rate Company Performs Mozart
By: - Jul 14th, 2022"What Loy and his co-founder Brian Garman have pulled off in the Berkshires is some true wizardry." — Parterre Box
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Inna Faliks Returns to The Barge Front Page
Splendid Music by Freidlin. Clara Schumann and Ravel
By: - Jul 14th, 2022Inna Faliks is not only a pianist of the highest order. She programs to reveal new insights into the music she performs. She is especially striking as a commissioner of new music. She also honors living composers, some too seldom performed.
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Phil Kline at Mass MOCA Front Page
Wide-Ranging Magical Music
By: - Jul 11th, 2022Three Phil Kline concerts at Bang on a Can's LOUD Weekend, from a duo with Jim Jarmusch to anti-war classic Zippo Songs (7/28-30, MASS MoCA)
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Jeremy Denk and Maria Wloszczowska Front Page
The 92nd Street Y Presents Bach
By: - Jul 09th, 2022Jeremy Denk is a world class pianist and writer. Recently he performed Bach violin sonatas with a magnificent young violinist, Maria Wloszczowska at the 92nd Street YMCA in New York.
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Peter Gelb Unfiltered Front Page
Jeff Brown of VAN Magazine Interviews the Met Opera's GM
By: - Jul 04th, 2022What a last seven years it’s been for Peter Gelb and the Metropolitan Opera: Conflicts among board members and between labor and management; allegations of sexual abuse against late music director James Levine; COVID furloughs that left orchestra members in serious financial trouble; the firing of Anna Netrebko over her refusal to denounce Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Jeffrey Arlo Brown sat down with Gelb to talk about those issues, plus Gelb's aesthetic priorities for the Met and whether he has a secret Twitter account.
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Eva Luna Dramatized at Repertorio Espanol Front Page
Storytelling Honored on Stage
By: - Jun 30th, 2022Repertorio Espanol presents big theater in a compact space. Productions are often not only intense but sprawling in their content. The trick of compacting large stories in a small space is one of the company’s specialties. Eva Luna, Caridad Svich’s apt dramatization of Isabel Allende's big third novel, gives ample opportunity to display these skills.
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A Strange Loop, the Musical Front Page
Edwin Bates Steps into the Lead Role
By: - Jun 26th, 2022A Strange Loop, the musical, is an exuberant yet sad story about a young, queer Black man who is struggling to write a musical. In fact, Michael R. Jackson, winner of Tonys for Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical, spent twenty years putting this show together.
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Orchestra of St. Luke's at Carnegie Front Page
Exploration of Strange Loops. Part I
By: - Jun 24th, 2022A Musical Offering is Bach’s final work. After his visit to Potsdam during which King Frederick offered him a phrase to elaborate on, he returned home where he died three years later, The work’s complexity is often noted. Running many musical lines simultaneously in canons and fugues yields rich linear results. Bach undoubtedly heard the vertical harmonies which the canonical runs create. They are as radical as any composer’s who followed him: dissonance, chromaticism, even odd and undefinable sounds abound. The performance makes the case for Bach, known as the pinnacle of baroque music, as the founder of all music that followed.
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X in Dorchester: Malcolm Comes Home Front Page
Anthony Davis Opera Conducted by Gil Rose
By: - Jun 19th, 2022Today, decades after it was written and first premiered at New York City Opera, X, the Life and Times of Malcolm X, feels both deeply rooted in classic opera traditions of Wagner, Strauss and Berg and deeply connected to our jazz heritage. The work is as much Charlie Mingus as it is say Parsifal, which composer Anthony Davis often references. A semi-staged concert version was performed at the Strand Theatre in Dorchester, Massachusetts, near Malcom's childhood home.
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Berkshire Opera Festival Front Page
Three Decembers by Jake Heggie
By: - Jun 16th, 2022The spirited and ambitious Berkshire Opera Festival opens its 2022 summer season with a compelling new production of Jake Heggie's intimate THREE DECEMBERS on July 21 and 23 at PS21 in Chatham, NY, conducted by Christopher James Ray and directed by Beth Greenberg. This contemporary American opera is based on Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally's original script for Some Christmas Letters. It marks BOF's 2nd Second Stage event, following Tom Cipullo's highly praised Glory Denied last summer.
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Awakenings by Tobias Picker Front Page
Opera Theatre of St. Louis Presents Premiere
By: - Jun 15th, 2022Awakenings is a new opera by the very American opera composer Tobias PIcker. In the past, he has musicalized the stories of Judith Rossner, Theodore Dreiser, and Stephen King. His new opera premieres at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis.
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Harvey Milk, the Opera, in St. Louis Front Page
Composer Stewart Wallace Creates a Smashing Success
By: - Jun 13th, 2022Harvey Milk, the re-tooled opera, premieres at Opera Theatre of St. Lotus. It is a smashing hit. Composer Stewart Wallace talks about again looking at the work, first draft created in 1994-5. He now lives in Rome and is in St. Louis for event. He presents the title character and his friends as human. Michael Korie is librettist and contributes a journalist's eye for detail in moving scenes.
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American Symphony Orchestra at Rose Hall Music
Leon Botstein Conducts Overlooked Masters
By: - Jun 10th, 2022American Symphony Orchestra hosted American Masters, a symphonic concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center featuring the world premiere of Roberto Sierra’s newly commissioned Concerto for Electric Violin, performed by acclaimed electric violinist Tracy Silverman. The program also offered works by three Pulitzer Prize-winning composers: Melinda Wagner, Richard Wernick, and Shulamit Ran. Tickets were free, a gift to New York music lovers,
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Basil Twist Alights in Versailles Front Page
Les Arts Florissants Returns An Opera to its Origins
By: - Jun 07th, 2022Jean-Joseph de Mondonville’s Titon et l'Aurore returns to Versaille. It is a pastorale heroique opera in three acts with a prologue. Inspired by Madame De Pompadour, it was first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris in January 1753.
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Paradise Square, the Musical Front Page
Up for ten Tony Awards
By: - Jun 03rd, 2022Paradise Square directed by Moises Kaufman with choreography by Bill T. Jones, is an exuberant, refreshing and intelligent presentation of a significant moment in our history. It has been nominated for ten Tony awards, among them best musical, best choreography by Bill T. Jones and best actress in a musical, Joaqulna Kalukango.
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Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls on Broadway Front Page
Poet's Language Dances
By: - Jun 02nd, 2022Ntozake Shange began developing poems on the West Coast as a spoken word artist. She speaks to girls who are maturing into women. Black girls, yes. Yet white girls understand her too. What did words mean to Shange? Her sister Ifa Bayeza describes it best. They dance off the page with flourish and drama and beauty.
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VOLT Festival in New York Front Page
Plays by Karen Hartman at 59E59 Theaters
By: - May 23rd, 2022Karen Hartman’s work launches VOLT at 59E59 Theaters, an unprecedented festival of three simultaneous off-Broadway premieres by a single author. Denver Theater Center presented the world premiere musical Rattlesnake Kate, book by Hartman with a score by Neyla Pekarek earlier this year.
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Variant 6 at National Sawdust Front Page
Celebrating the Release of New Suns
By: - May 22nd, 2022To celebrate the release of their first solo album, Variant 6, a noted a cappella ensemble, performed at National Sawdust on May 20th. This extraordinary group has been heard often embedded in larger groups-The Crossing, Room Full of Teeth, Ekmeles and Seraphic Fire among them. All the members of the group are part of The Crossing. Now we get to hear these virtuoso artists up close and singular.
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Puppetopia Festival at HERE Front Page
Master Puppeteer and Artist Basil Twist Presents
By: - May 21st, 2022The Dream music puppet program was inaugurated at HERE in 1998. The iconic puppet drama Symphonie Fantastique premiered that year. its creator, Basil Twist now leads the program. Puppetopia, presenting new work, returned to the stage in the spring 2022. Each of the shows represented a twist on conventional puppetry.
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