Susan Hall
Bio:
Recent Articles:
-
Jake Heggie's Moby Dick at LA Opera Front Page
Jay Hunter Morris a Magnificent Avenger
By: - Dec 01st, 2015Moby Dick, the opera by Jake Heggie is inspired by Melville, but not the tale as we know it. As the librettist points out, since most people who think they have read Moby Dick haven't, the audience is not left wondering, for instance, where is "Call me Ishmael." Instead the extraordinary music conducted by James Conlon and the video projections which are the heart of the set sweep you up and carry you off on the obsessive chase for revenge.
-
Dudamel Conducts LA Philharmonic Front Page
Roberto Bolle and ABT Dancers Add to Musical Thrills
By: - Nov 28th, 2015When Frank Gehry was asked to design Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, he made one condition: that Yasuhita Toyota be hired as the acoustician. He was not going to build a hall for musical performance that did not have fabulous acoustics. Disney Hall is an acoustical dream and its warm, intimate seating encircling the musicians and performers is mirrored perfectly by real surround sound. Under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, the LA Phil shines.
-
Dear Elizabeth at Women's Project Theatre Front Page
Cherry Jones and David Aaron Baker Share
By: - Nov 24th, 2015Dear Elizabeth, a dramatization of the letters of two pre-eminent American poets, Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, is being staged with different couples taking the lead roles as the run passes. Cherry Jones, one of our great American actors, was well-matched with David Aaron Baker.
-
White Light, Concentric Circles, Thomas Adès Front Page
Sadler's Wells Helps Us See Music
By: - Nov 22nd, 2015Four dance pieces set to the music of Thomas Adès were performed as the finale to a magnificent White Light Festival presented by Lincoln Center. Adès is a provocative yet pleasing composer whose seeming idiosyncracies suit choreography. The Sadler's Wells ballet company, clearly rooted in classical techniques, springs out organically to suggest additional layers of meaning.
-
Rattle's Berlin Philharmoniker at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Beethoven Sunny-side Up
By: - Nov 20th, 2015The Berlin Philharmoniker has a sound and texture of its own. Smooth, but richly-textured, their performance of Beethoven's 6th and 8th Symphonies was a revelation at Carnegie Hall.
-
The Tutu Trilogy by Richard Curtis Front Page
Civilian, Chemistry and Exposed Twirl on Stage
By: - Nov 08th, 2015What if you are obsessed with dance, entertain dancers, embrace them as friends? Yet you are not a dancer, just an observer who is steeped in the traditions and the pas de deuxs. So it was for balletomane Richard Curtis, who couldn't resist a charming tale about an audience member who finally makes it to a dressing room after weeks of watching performances and is able to fully embrace the lead dancer. Rollicking good fun and true to the spirit of dance.
-
Sarah Ruhl on Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell Front Page
J. Smith-Cameron and John Douglas Thompson Captivate
By: - Nov 06th, 2015The Women's Project Theatre is presenting "Dear Elizabeth", a delightful, insightful and warm correspondence between two of America's great poets, Eiizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. The leads revolve week to week. After seeing completing satisfying performances by J. Cameron-Smith and John Douglas Thompson we yearned to see the play over and over with alternate casts like Cherry Jones and Rinde Eckert.
-
Beckett's The End Staged by Gare St. Lazare Ireland Front Page
White Light Festival Presents the Lovetts
By: - Nov 04th, 2015The End is the beginning of Beckett's most productive and distinctive phase and in this wonderful production by Gare St. Lazare, the mysteries of his final period begin to be revealed. Since the state of unknowing and almost non-being is revealed best in monologue, this novella told in the first person lends itself to the stage. Conor Lovett captures every nuance and all the humor as well.
-
Christine Brewer and Paul Jacobs at Alice Tully Hall Front Page
Lusty Prayers Presented by the White Light Festival
By: - Nov 02nd, 2015Paul Jacobs, head of the organ department at the Juilliard School, and a magnificent performer invited Christine Brewer, the huge-voiced soprano of great delicacy, to join him in concert. Their alliance is for the ages.
-
William Christie Conducts at Lincoln Center Front Page
Handel's Theodora is Heavenly in White Light Festival
By: - Nov 01st, 2015William Christie's Les Arts Forissants performances in New York are eagerly anticipated. Theodora, a late oratorio of Handel, delivered in spades. Listeners got the music, the story, the orchestra and chorus and magnificent individual singers.
-
Duberman's In White America the New Federal Theatre Front Page
Woodie King Stages for the New Federal Theatre
By: - Oct 31st, 2015In White America was first produced fifty years ago. Sadly, its insights have yet to be fully absorbed in America. This production, as much as it satisfies dramatically, also stimulates action.
-
Van Zweden at New York Philharmonic Front Page
Inon Barnatan Joins the Magic-Making
By: - Oct 30th, 2015While listeners do not always agree with Jaap van Zewden's take on the classics, everyone is thrilled to listen. Taking the music in long arcs, permitting interpretation by individual artists in the orchestra and accompanying soloists, van Zweden is a passionate and generous music-maker. The New York Philharmonic was alive with the sound of music.
-
Gil Shaham and David Michalek Translate Bach Front Page
Extraordinary Music and Visuals at Zankel Hall
By: - Oct 26th, 2015Having attended William Kentridge’s illustration of Schubert’s Winterriese cycle sung by Mathias Goerne, the first image projected for the video accompaniment of Solos for Violin by Bach came as a shock. A small baby, lying on his back, seems to be listening to the Bach, as Gil Shaham begins to play the first Sonata. A revelation followed.
-
The BSO Plays Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff Front Page
Ice Cracks and Violins Dance at Carnegie Hall
By: - Oct 24th, 2015For the third evening of their triptych at Carnegie Hall, conductor Andris Nelsons presented the Russians at their bipolar best: dark battles and wild dances. Nelsons introduced himself at Tanglewood two years ago with a performance of the Symphonic Dances. He and the Boston Symphony exceeded themselves at Carnegie.
-
Goerke as Elektra at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Nelsons Conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
By: - Oct 21st, 2015In 2014 Nelsons conducted Strauss' Salome at Carnegie. What a reprise Elektra is. Experience at Bayreuth may give the Maestro the ability to bring out the Wagner in Strauss, and then go far beyond to the condensed emotional pitch of Strauss and to his sheer beauty. Christine Goerke, fresh from her triumph in Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera, gave a performance for the ages.
-
Mark Padmore, Tenor and Kristian Bezuidenhout Front Page
White Light Festival Presents An Evanescent, Everlasting Schubert
By: - Oct 18th, 2015Lincoln Center's innovative White Light Festival offered a delicious treat in their presentation of the Winterreise Song Cycle. Tenor Mark Padmore and Kristian Bezuidenhout on a fortepiano led us through a journey as the protagonist of the Muller poems trudges through his own. The fortepiano was used by Schubert and has a light touch, and a softer sound, with fewer overtones than a piano forte. For this performance, the singer and pianist were very much a partnership of equals.
-
The Passion of Joan of Arc with Live Music Front Page
Donald Greig Devises a Score Presented at the Miller Theatre
By: - Oct 17th, 2015Silent films of the 1920s began when the theatre lights dimmed and a conductor marched down the aisle He raised his baton, the curtains opened. On flashed the film accompanied by the orchestra. At the Miller Theatre, five singers entered the stage and as the film started, they sang.
-
Nezet Seguin, Musician of the Year, Conducts The Philadelphia Orchestra Front Page
Lofting a Trifecta at Carnegie Hall
By: - Oct 14th, 2015The Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin is well served by Carnegie Hall. Carnegie announced that this concert would be recorded and later available worldwide. Watch for it. An extraordinary evening of music-making was offered. It would be disingenuous not to mention succession at the Metropolitan Opera. When James Levine cancelled conducting an important production of one of 'his' operas, Nézet-Séguin's name was the first to emerge as the new music director.
-
Hibla Gerzmava Seduces at Carnegie Hall Front Page
The Soprano from Abkhazia
By: - Oct 09th, 2015Hibla Gerzmava floats notes as though they made an effortless journey from her heart into the surrounding Hall in which she performs. Glamorous and a consummate actress, all the focus is on the gorgeous music that she lofts. It was a special evening at Carnegie Hall in which we got a taste of her perfection as Desdemona in Otello.
-
Steve Jobs The Movie Front Page
Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin Sort of Attached
By: - Oct 08th, 2015We've had book and film commentary on the legendary Steve Jobs. With the director of Slum Dog Millionaire directing and West Wing's Aaron Sorkin writing, one would have hoped for more insight. Great performances by Michael Fassbinder, Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels and Seth Rogen make the film worth seeing.
-
Laurie Anderson's Habeas Corpus Front Page
Project with Mohammed El Gharani in New York
By: - Oct 05th, 2015As globalization brings us closer together, frequent reminders of the horrors we perpetrate on each other are invaluable. A young man who was 14 when he was arrested, tortured and locked up in Guantanamo Bay reminds us that no one is exempt. Laurie Anderson offers an ineffably moving picture in collaboration with Saudi-born Mohammed El Gharani. The installation was recently on view at the Park Avenue Armory in New York.
-
The Quare Land at Irish Repertory Theatre Front Page
An Evening in a Bathtub Bubbles Up
By: - Oct 03rd, 2015Playwright John McManus restrains his leading man in a tub of bubbles throughout the play, but this in no way limits the performance of Peter Maloney or his nemesis, Rufus Collins. We are trapped in an intense negotiation of life and death matters.
-
Ronnie Burkett and His Marionettes Front Page
Baryshnikov Arts Center Presents The Daisy Theatre
By: - Oct 01st, 2015The Daisy Theatre is a magical, human evening of theatre lore with incredible marionettes in the lead roles. At the Jerome Robbins Theater, the steeply raked seating enables you to watch the master marionetteer at work, sometimes lit and sometimes in juicy darkness. Yet Ronnie Burkett so enlivens these hardy, delicate creatures he has imagined into life, that everything we watch seems immediate. In fact, urgent.
-
Metropolitan Opera Season Opens Front Page
Aleksandrs Antonenko a Brilliant Otello
By: - Sep 21st, 2015Otello is one of the greatest operas of Giuseppe Verdi. In the 2011 season, Riccardo Muti mounted a concert performance which was almost universally heralded as the event of the season. Singing the title role under the Maestro was Aleksandrs Antonenko, who delivered a performance of technical perfection and rich emotion. Antonenko has not forgotten the lessons he learned from Muti, and has, in fact, built on them. His performance at the Metropolitan Opera is wrenching.
-
Andy, the Popera by Heath Allen and Dan Visconti Front Page
Opera Philadelphia and The Bearded Ladies Collaborate
By: - Sep 19th, 2015Why not create opera in a warehouse like Andy Warhol's Factory? Take an over-the-top cast of characters familiar to opera goers, mash up classic and pop music, and fly? Why not? That's just what Opera Philadelphia and an intriguing cabaret group The Bearded Ladies have done. It is a wonderful opera.
<< Previous Next >>