Susan Hall
Bio:
Recent Articles:
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Bridget Kibbey at The Angel's Share Front Page
A Unison Green-Wood Concert in Brooklyn
By: - Aug 09th, 2018Andrew Ousley continues to present top musical talent in unusual but intriguing settings in Manhattan and Brooklyn. On a dark and stormy night, an audience of new music appreciators were captivated by the prospect of whiskey in a cemetery followed by a walk through beautiful grounds and an ineffably beautiful concert in the Catacombs of the land marked Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
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Teatro Nuovo's Bel Canto at SUNY Purchase Front Page
Thunderbolts Out of the Blue
By: - Aug 07th, 2018Will Crutchfield’s Bel Canto operas were always a highlight of the Caramoor season. He has now moved to the Performing Arts Center at Purchase, which offers more space, closer to New York. His inaugural program unfolding over 10 days, offered a master class and smaller concerts interspersed with the semi-staged productions of three operas.
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The Demon at Bard's Summerscape Front Page
Anton Rubenstein Re-Introduced in America
By: - Jul 31st, 2018Leon Botstein is presenting Anton Rubenstein’s The Demon at Bard’s Summerscape. Annually, he offers meritorious works, long buried or ignored by opera companies. He makes the case now for Rubenstein.
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Marcus Gardley's The House That Will Not Stand Front Page
New York Theatre Workshop Thrills
By: - Jul 30th, 2018The House That Will Not Stand, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz at the New York Theater Workshop, is a lyrical journey through the last days of French Louisiana. Playwright, Marcus Gardley, gives us a lush and evocative script filled with humor, bite and innuendo. New Orleans Creole society developed the custom of Placage, which under French [and Spanish] law allowed a quasi- legal position for inter-racial unions and a legal status for the children. Families of mixed racial heritage held important social and financial positions. It is within this context that Gardley's drama unfolds.
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El Coronel No at Repertorio Español Front Page
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Adaptation Delightful
By: - Jul 29th, 2018Repertorio Español, the superb repertory company in Manhattan, is presenting El Coronel No based on a story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez adapted by Jorge Ali Triana and Veronica Triana. It is a Spanish version of Waiting for Godot. It is also a delicious take on insanity – for forty years, the Colonel has expected a letter each Friday acknowledging his pension. For forty years it has not come.
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Lawrence Brownlee Rocks The Crypt Front Page
Myra Huang and Damien Sneed Collaborate
By: - Jul 25th, 2018Lawrence Brownlee names his performance in July "Up Close and Personal". Brownlee is a singer who feels up close and personal on the stage of the great opera houses of the world, because his voice is warm and inviting. As we listen to a program which begins the iconic ‘single tear’ from L’Elisir d’Amour of Gaetano Donizetti, we too have "our hot pulses beating", like Adina, whose tear is addressed. Andrew Ousley of Unison again produces a gem.
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Handel's Atalanta at Caramoor Front Page
A New Opera Initiative
By: - Jul 24th, 2018Nicholas McGegan and his San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra performed Handel's Atalanta at Caramoor. The pastoral opera was written to commemorate the marriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales and son of King George II to a German princess. This is Handel the craftsman at his best, with enchanting melodies, cascades of inventive orchestration and vocal fireworks.
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Ninagawa's Macbeth at Mostly Mozart Front Page
Lincoln Center Farewell to Japanese Classic
By: - Jul 22nd, 2018Ninagawa’s Macbeth packs a wallop at the Koch Theater. Presented as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival, Shakespeare in Japanese sits well in the highly dramatic Gabriel Fauré Requiem, and other music of the classical West.
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Ivo van Hove's The Damned Front Page
Hatred as Source of All Evil at Park Avenue Armory
By: - Jul 21st, 2018The Damned by Ivo van Hove, based on the screenplay of Luchino Visconti, tears through the Park Avenue Armory. The stage is in four parts, if you don’t include a scene which goes out onto the Park Avenue where a shocked dog walker sees the mad Sophie von Essenbeck running wildly in search of her son.
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On A Clear Day at Irish Repertory Theatre Front Page
Charlotte Moore Keeps Lerner Alive!
By: - Jul 19th, 2018On a Clear Day You Can See is running at the Irish Repertory Theater. Charlotte Moore adapts and directs this musical in an intimate production. The story has been pared down and shaped to display the lush score of Burton Lane. The cast has been reduced to 11 and the chamber orchestra four instrumentalists multi-tasking on cello, harp, flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, violin and viola. The result is delightful theater.
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Kevin Puts' Silent Night at Glimmerglass Front Page
Pulitzer-Winning Opera Wrenching and Gorgeous
By: - Jul 16th, 2018Silent Night by Kevin Puts with libretto by Mark Campbell is being presented at the Glimmerglass Festival. Tomer Zvulen directs this complex tale revealing each subtle turn in the story of a 24 hour truce during the First World War. Nicole Paiement conducts to bring forth all the subtlety and beauty of Puts’ score. Puts is both a fabulously gifted entertainer and a deep musical thinker. The music paints the scenes. The singers capture the tone in gorgeous melodies and often appropriately harsh recitative.
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Four Quartets Danced at Bard Front Page
Tamowitz, Saariaho and Marden Capture the Still Point
By: - Jul 09th, 2018Bard's Summerscape, ever brave, captures extraordinary moments in poet T.S. Eliot's masterwork, Four Quartets. The words the poet so clearly relishes in his own reading now dance before our eyes like searing moments at the still point. Choreographer Pam Tanowitz, composer Kaija Saariaho and painter Brice Marden join forces at the Fisher Center in Annandale.
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Van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic Front Page
A Beethoven Prelude to Action
By: - Jul 05th, 2018With all the secrecy that surrounds the arrival of a new music director for America's oldest orchestra, one must rely on live performances and recorded documentation to assess such a relationship. Happily, such documentation arrived earlier this year in the form of a DeccaGold recording of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, made by the New York Philharmonic under the aegis of its new boss, Jaap van Zweden.
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Knot an Opera by Constantin Basica Front Page
Freshly Squeezed Opera Provokes
By: - Jul 03rd, 2018Knot an Opera is an amusing and provocative presentation by Freshly Squeezed Opera. The company is committed to genre pushing new works of the highest caliber that explore the depths of the opera form.
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Everyone's Fine with Viriginia Woolf Front Page
Kate Scelsa Re-constructs Martha at Elevator Repair Service
By: - Jun 30th, 2018Elevator Repair Service is presenting Kate Scelsa's Everyone's Fine with Virginia Woolf. This production at the Abrons Art Center is a re-construction of Martha in Edward Albee's play. Director and company founder John Collins takes us seamlessly back into the world of Albee, Tennessee Williams and Samuel Beckett to deliver an hilarious and scathing 21st century production.
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American Weather at HERE Front Page
Chris Green Makes His Way through Climate Change
By: - Jun 24th, 2018American Weather takes the emotional temperature of Americans today. Chris Green, who created this moving and multi-dimensional theatrical piece, speaks of our country losing its narrative. Rather than proposing a new narrative, he suggests a new posture, one of gropipng acceptance, where we come to terms with the shape of our present in order to better prepare for the future.
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Jeff Becker's Sea of Common Catastrophe Front Page
Irondale in Brooklyn Presents
By: - Jun 21st, 2018The Sea of Common Catastrophe by Jeff Becker is playing at Irondale, a dramatic and inviting space on South Oxford Street in Brooklyn. Becker was inspired by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ short story and invites the audience to suspend disbelief and immerse themselves in the beautiful images and dance of the performers. The words of Marquez and poet Jessica Henricksen are spoken in snippets as lights dance and the waters of the ocean swirl around. This is immersion theater at its best.
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Woman and Scarecrow at the Irish Repertory Theater Front Page
Marina Carr, an Important Irish Playwright
By: - Jun 14th, 2018It is now in the Midlands of Ireland. A bitter middle aged woman drifts in and out of the multi-layered consciousnesses. She is dying. Ireland's emerging premier female playwright Marina Carr invites us into attend her last moments.
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Secret Life of Humans at 59E59 Theaters Front Page
David Byrne is Entertaining and Provocative
By: - Jun 13th, 2018Secret Life of Humans at 59E59 Theaters is a thoroughly engaging, funny and thoughtful evening of theater. David Byrne and Kate Stanley have asked in a fresh style: Can we humans survive?
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Peace for Mary Frances by Lily Thorne Front Page
The New Group Tackles Hospice
By: - Jun 11th, 2018Peace for Mary Frances by Lily Thorne is produced by The New Group. It is in many ways a tough play, a domestic drama set during the final weeks of hospice at home. The cast featuring Lois Smith and J. Smith-Cameron is terrific.
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El Credito at Repertorio Espanol Front Page
Both a Borrower and a Lender Be
By: - Jun 09th, 2018In their current repertory season, Repertorio Espagnol is presenting the two hander, El Credito by Jordi Galeran. We meet a loan officer who can’t say yes and a clever borrower with no assets. No one has heard Polonius’ advice: neither a borrower or a lender be. The setup is classic.
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The Rose Elf by David Hertzberg Front Page
Unison Media and Greenwood Cemetery Present Opera
By: - Jun 07th, 2018David Hertzberg's opera, The Rose Elf, opened The Angel Space series, a collaboration between Unison Media and Green-Wood Cemetery. After whiskey amidst gravestones, the audience took a walk through the glorious grounds, where ancient trees are thick, tall and promising. The production in the Catacombs was thrilling.
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Tilson Thomas Conducts the MET Orchestra Front Page
Ruggles, Mozart and Mahler
By: - Jun 07th, 2018Carnegie Hall ended its 2017-18 season Tuesday night with the last of three concerts featuring the MET Orchestra. This year, the pit band at the Metropolitan Opera has been playing under a succession of different conductors. This one was conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.
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An American Soldier at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis Front Page
Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang are Dynamite
By: - Jun 04th, 2018Huang Ruo in music and David Henry Hwang in words ask: What will you do to become American? What will you endure? In a seamless wrought tale of a first generation Chinese American from Chinatown, we watch the world rect to a young man's wish. It is a horrifying story whose conseuqences we have only begun to grapple with. Huang Ruo and Hwang make great opera out of the story.
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Kansas Symphony at Helzberg Hall Front Page
Everything's Up to Date
By: - Jun 04th, 2018The Kansas City Symphony is a superb group pf superb artists, who make their home in one the of the performance treasures of America Like Dallas and other smaller cities across the country, Kansas City community leaders decided to spiff up its arts’ presence, A decade ago they dtermined to build a new home for its Symphony Orchestra and somewhat larger hall for events on tour.
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