Susan Hall
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Opera Philadelphia Mounts Written on the Skin Front Page
A Stunning Production at the Academy of Music
By: - Feb 12th, 2018The tall grey walls which harbor the rotating rooms of a medieval manor are striking. They contain the action in the manor and offer opportunities for hide and seek. The Lord is known here as The Protector. Oddly in the medieval time, one of the King's services to the Lord was protection. The use of this word is one of the deliciously ambiguous elements of George Benjamin's opera, Written on the Skin, which has arrived in the US in Opera Philadelphia.
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Muti and Chicago Symphony at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Samuel Adams New York Premier
By: - Feb 11th, 2018New York eagerly awaits the annual visits of the superb Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its iconic conductor, Riccardo Muti. At Carnegie Hall they did not disappoint. The second program began with the Overture to I vespri sicilliani. Verdi is a specialty of the Maestro's and he brought forward drama from hidden places.
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Aspect Re-Introduces Arensky and Taneyev Front Page
Superb Chamber Music in Tchaikovsky's Shadow
By: - Feb 08th, 2018The Bohemian National Hall was the setting for a glorious chamber music program which gathered together six superb artists to play, what first violin Philippe Quint declared might be the future of 21st century performance programs. We would do well to look and listen carefully to the under-exposed Russian composers Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev.
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Parsifal Returns to the Metropolitan Opera Front Page
Klaus Florian Vogt a Lyric Hero
By: - Feb 06th, 2018The Metropolitan Opera opened its lone Wagner offering of the 2017-18 season on Monday night: a revival of the extraordinary 2013 François Girard staging of Wagner's Parsifal. This production was acclaimed when it opened, for its stunning visuals (including a lake of stage blood in Act II) and its potent, spare message. It was also the second opportunity for the Met's new maestro-designate, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, to prove his mettle with Wagner's music, this time conducting the composer's final opera.
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Tine Thing Helseth Trumpets Front Page
Carnegie Hall Rocks with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
By: - Feb 04th, 2018Orpheus Chamber Orchestra invited Tine Thing Helseth, a star trumpeter, to join them at Carnegie Hall. Clarion tones rang out at Helseth displayed her consistently singing instrument with a special touch.
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The Attacca Quartet Celebrates Life at Crypt Front Page
With Beethoven's Hymn of Thanksgiving, Time Stands Still
By: - Feb 01st, 2018In the spring of 1825 Ludwig von Beethoven was very sick with liver disease and stomach inflammation. He wrote to his doctor asking for help. The doctor wrote back: "No wine, no coffee, no spices. And I wager if you drink any spirits you will be on your back in pain." He recommended recuperating in the country for fresh air and natural milk. Beethoven went to the country and cured himself with musical notes. These notes are the music of Opus 132.
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Adrienne Kennedy at Theatre for a New Audience Front Page
Compressed Memory Beautifully Staged
By: - Jan 31st, 2018Over the years, we have come to count on Theatre for a New Audience for superb productions of interesting work. They do not disappoint in their mounting of Adrienne's Kennedy's first play in a decade. At the Polonsky Center, the stage is configured with the audience on three sides. A very tall staircase looms in the center, bridging time and place.
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Marilyn Horne at Carnegie Hall Front Page
The Song Continues with Graham Johnson and Renee Fleming
By: - Jan 27th, 2018Marilyn Horne created The Song Continues for emerging vocal artists. She retires this season to be succeeded by an artist for whom she has enormous respect, Renee Fleming. Another icon, Graham Johnson, led a master class the night before Fleming's.
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David Lang's The Whisper Opera Front Page
Delicate Sounds at the Skirball Center
By: - Jan 25th, 2018david lang prefers lower case and the whisper opera is as lower case as a sound can be. it can almost be inaudible and invites you to lean your ear in as you sit like Winnie, in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, with most of your body below the level of the performance platform.
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Trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera Front Page
Jennifer Rowley and Quinn Kelsey Shine
By: - Jan 24th, 2018What makes this Trovatore interesting for the regular Met-goer is that it imarks a sort of passing of the torch: from the Netrebko-Hvorostovsky school to a brave new world of lesser known singers taking on the opera's four difficult central roles.
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Jonas Kaufman at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Schubert's Die Schone Müllerin
By: - Jan 21st, 2018Jonas Kaufman cancelled his appearance as Cavaradossi in the new Metropolitan Opera production of Tosca. He is scheduled for La Fanciulla del West next season. We shall see. He kept his appointment at Carnegie Hall and has an active opera schedule in Europe, including Parsifal an Andre Chenier.
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Prototype Festival New York Film
Diving into Black Inscriptions
By: - Jan 19th, 2018Black Inscription, from Carla Kihlstedt, Matthias Bossi and Jeremy Flower, is a multimedia song cycle that follows a free deep sea diver on her journey to the ocean's embrace. This tone poem fills an open slot in the Prototype Festival for works that don't quite fit the opera category.
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American Lyric Theater Alumni in Concert Front Page
Incubating Opera Through Mentorship
By: - Jan 15th, 2018The American Lyric Theater has an annual concert in which the work of their alumni is featured. This year's program included an opera by Patrick Soluri with libretto by Deborah Brevoort; a Christmas opera by Ricky Ian Gordon, libretto by Royce Vavrek; and a one act children's opera.
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Aimard, Roth and Boston Symphony Orchestra Front Page
Webern, Bartok and Stravinsky Featured
By: - Jan 14th, 2018The extraordinary French conductor, now principal guest conduct at the London Symphony Orchestra and founder of his own orchestra, Les Siecles, which performs works from all ages on the instruments of the period, was in Boston this week for a program of music, each work composed within three years of the other.
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Prototype Festival New York Three Front Page
Fellow Travelers by Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce
By: - Jan 13th, 2018The pressures of being of left political persuasion compounded by an illegal sexual preference were magnified in the Red Scare following the Second World War in the United States. Television brought McCarthy hearings into American homes. Terror was struck in the hearts of citizens. The story of two men who got snared by the scare tactics is touchingly told in Fellow Travelers, an opera which had its New York premier at the Prototype Festival.
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Prototype Festival Two Front Page
The Echo Drift by Mikael Karlsson
By: - Jan 11th, 2018The Echo Drift is the second opera staged by the Prototype Festival, a group of creative producers who are working to develop new opera using all the media available, as opera has done from its earliest beginnings.
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Prototype Festival New York Music
Acquanetta by Michael Gordon and Deborah Artman
By: - Jan 10th, 2018The world premier of the chamber version of the opera Acquanetta opened the Prototype Festival. The work, composed by Michael Gordon with libretto by Deborah Artman, is smashing.
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Bernstein at the Park Avenue Armory Front Page
Isabel Leonard and Ted Sperling Sing Bernstein's Songs
By: - Jan 06th, 2018If the Metropolitan Opera’s Isabel Leonard and her partner-in-Bernstein, Ted Sperling, are to be believed, for a long time they’ve been attending the superb and surprising events the Park Avenue Armory puts on, as they waited for an invitation to perform. Now the Armory presents one of the first 2018 events celebrating the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth. This unusual recital of his songs was perfectly produced in the Officer’s Room. Leonard and Sperling are featured.
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The Merry Widow at the Metropolitan Opera Front Page
Susan Graham is Wonderful
By: - Jan 04th, 2018When the Peter Gelb era at the Metropolitan Opera is examined in posterity, the recent renaissance of operetta on the stage of that institution may rank among the general manager's more questionable endeavors. This season, the company is reviving its 2014 staging of Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow in its awkward English translation by house scribe Jeremy Sams. The saving grace of this revival is that it is a vehicle for Susan Graham, in her only role at the Met this season.
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Metropolitan Opera's New Tosca Front Page
Sir David McVicar Gives us Rome
By: - Jan 01st, 2018A lot has been written about the problems with this Tosca. It underwent casting changes in all three principal roles, with Sonya Yoncheva, Vittorio Grigolo and Željko Lucic replacing (respectfully) Kristine Opalais, Jonas Kaufmann and Sir Bryn Terfel. The conductor was also replaced twice: Andris Nelsons pulled out when his wife (Ms. Opalais) did and currently disgraced music director emeritus James Levine was removed in November. In the pit for opening night: the stylish French conductor Emmanuel Villaume, a lucky and late replacement for this all-important show.
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Pinafore with New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players Front Page
Enduring Humor and Truths
By: - Dec 29th, 2017High spirits prevail aboard HMS Pinafore as Little Buttercup distributes sweets and tobacco to the crew. Common sailor Ralph Rackstraw's mind, however, is on Josephine. He is in love with her even though she is pf another class. The prospective couple have sumptuous voices. Soprano Kate Bass has a wide ranging lyricism, with a bright top and an intelligent reading of song and phrase. Daniel Greenwood, an enticing edge to his big tenor.
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Houdini Comes to Wales Front Page
59E59 Theaters Unlock Him Through Daniel Llewelyn-Williams
By: - Dec 20th, 2017Can anyone outdo Harry Houdini? "A Regular Little Houdini" suggests yes. A young boy's fascination with magic and then escaptistry helps him save his family's honor. This charming and moving one-man show touches in ways that escape artists usually don't through a spellbinding performance by Daniel Llewelyn-Williams.
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Orchestra Now at Alice Tully Hall Front Page
In Search of Space
By: - Dec 19th, 2017The Orchestra Now is still a new presence on the classical music scene in New York but it is, on the surface, a pretty good idea. Conceived by Bard College president Leon Botstein, T?N (as they style themselves) is the renamed, re-packaged, re-marketed top-level student orchestra of that august educational institution. On Thursday night, the Bard students visited Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall to play an ambitious program under the baton of JoAnn Falletta.
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Celebration at the Guggenheim Museum Front Page
Music From All Ages Conducted by George Steel
By: - Dec 18th, 2017As the audience comes into the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum, now filled with chairs, the overflow extends upwards around the spiral, leaning out and up to see the singers. We are confronted immediately by the tops of this particular Christmas tree formation, as a new kind of star is the central piece of the Art in China After 1989 exhibit. A dragon’s tail topped by a bicycle is Chen Zhen’s Precipitous Parturition.
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Mark Rylance in Farinelli and the King Front Page
London Production Opens on Broadway
By: - Dec 17th, 2017Much excitement attends the opening of Farinelli and The King which has come across the pond to the Belasco Theater in New York. Mark Rylance, winner of multiple Tony and Academy Awards, leads the cast. Consummate counter tenor Iestyn Davies, whose mother derailed him from a pop music career, wows audiences who have never heard a voice of such beauty. In the end, music triumphs.
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