Susan Hall
Bio:
Recent Articles:
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What's Up at the Metropolitan Opera? Opinion
An Insider's View
By: - Aug 10th, 2014The jury is still out on when the Metropoitan Opera season will actually start. The bulk of the rehearsals for the Marriage of Figaro have already been completed, so it may be possible for the House to be ready for opening night. One rumor circulating is that Gelb will plan his lockout during the scheduled rehearsal time for Death of Klinghoffer, so that he can cancel the production. This would mean that he could extricate himself from that publicity disaster and blame the unions for it. An independent budget analysis is supposed to be completed by August 11th. It will be interesting to see how negotiations go forward after that.
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James Conlon Conducts Salome at Ravinia Music
Patricia Racette Triumphs as the Virgin Vixen
By: - Aug 03rd, 2014James Conlon, who conducted the Chicago Symphony in the evening’s performance, persuaded the great soprano Patricia Racette to undertake this taxing and for her novel role. Conlon is seldom wrong, and certainly his conviction here was borne out in Racette’s coquettish and yet passionate performance.
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Matthias Goerne at Ravinia Music
The Sound Delivers the Message
By: - Aug 01st, 2014Often called the heir of Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, Goerne's baritone is perhaps even richer, more nuanced and ranging than his teacher's. Goerne not only calls you to attention, but soon he is under your skin: probing, thrilling, moving. He stepped into the Wozzeck role earlier this year at the Metropolitan Opera and will perform accompanied by William Kentridge's animation at Lincoln Center in November.
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Reality Strikes Music
Denver Considers Demoliahing their Symphony's Concert Hall
By: - Jul 28th, 2014All around the country symphony orchestras are struggling. Denver can only half fill Boettcher Hall, the first in the round venue to be built. The city argues that an outdoor ampitheatre would cost less than renovating Boettcher and attract its growing population of Hispanics and young people. Do symphony's need a home? Would they be better off as itinerants, performing in spaces suitable to programming? Every symphony board member and executive has to ask these questions.
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This is Our Youth: Steppenwolf to Broadway Theatre
Kenneth Lonergan's Classic Play Coming to the Cort
By: - Jul 19th, 2014If these are the children of the 80’s and now the parents of the 21st century, what kind of kids are they producing? In the upper echelons of New York, many of these characters are working their way out of adolescence in paretts’ homes or supported by their successful parents. Drugs and alcohol continue to make the passage to adulthood even more complicated than it always has been. If our children have to smell a bit to help us release the offspring we love so much and wish to protect, the stink has not gone. And Broadway should welcome them in this taut, funny, moving Steppenwolf production.
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A Psychiatrist Appointed President of BSO Board Opinion
Dr. Paul Buttenwieser to the Rescue
By: - Jul 17th, 2014When Dr. Paul Buttenwieser, the newly-appointed President of the BSO's Board, stepped down from the board of the Institute of Contemporary Art, he performed on the piano at a sold-out fundraiser. He had studied piano as a young man in New York. He is a descendant of the Lehman banking family, which of course adds materially to his board credentials. But that he is a competent enough pianist to perform with Yo-Yo Ma in a sold out fundraiser is also an important credential.
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Fireworks with Andris Nelsons at Tanglewood Music
Present and Future Orchestras Shine on Stage
By: - Jul 13th, 2014Fireworks started at Tanglewood immediately after the intermission of the gala performance welcoming music director designate Andris Nelsons. In the second half of the program, the Boston Symphony performed with the conductor and the match seemed perfect, in part because the Rachmaninoff and Ravel suited the Maestro and his instrumentalists. On stage fireworks exploded. The Maestro left nothing on the podium as he exited to fireworks falling out of the night Berkshire sky.
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Youthful Andris Nelsons Debuts at Tanglewood Music
A Varied Antonín Dvo?ák Program Entranced on a Summer Night
By: - Jul 12th, 2014Speaking with Nelsons after the Saturday morning rehearsal, he seemed eager to dig in to making music live in Lenox and Boston as he takes on the task of making classic symphonic music relevant to today’s audience. This is particularly difficult in the US where children are not as exposed to the classical form as they are in Europe.
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Judy Collins for the 4th of July Music
At the Green Music Center, California
By: - Jul 05th, 2014If you closed your eyes for the drive up to the Green Music Center in Rohnert Park, California, and then opened them when you arrived at Weill Hall, you might think you were at Tanglewood. This hall is modeled after Ozawa Hall in Lenox. Judy Collins, regal and still going strong at 75, packed the Sonoma Music Center.
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Chicago' s Response to Sustaining Lyric Opera Music
Anthony Freud Reports a Splendid Season
By: - Jul 01st, 2014News from the Lyric Opera of Chicago stands out in stark contrast to the unfolding drama at the Metropolitan Opera. The Lyric is in black for the 2013/14 season with ticket sales increasing by 8%. Some 25% of tickets were sold to first-time opera buyers. What does it take to keep opera a live? Surely Anthony Freud is one answer. Snother is lighter programming like My Fair Lady for which 71,074 tikets were sold. It is a record for the company.
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Camus; Les Juste at The Trap Door Theatre
Dynamic Reversals Charge This Chicago Interpretation
By: - Jun 29th, 2014In some ways Camus’ plays are as difficult to translate as the famous first line of The Stranger, best expressed, “Today, mother died.†It is the ‘todayness’ that often gets lost in translation. By 'Regarding the Just' and twisting from stage action to commentary, Chicago's Trap Door succeeds in making Camus live.
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ICE, Dan Dehaan in Chicago Music
Claire Chase's Ensemble Ends Brilliant Season
By: - Jun 16th, 2014This was the International Contemporary Ensemble’s final performance of the season in which they have performed hundreds of new works in countries around the world. Founder Claire Chase’s ability to attract musical talent and to commission cutting edge works in her ICELab, is the musical adventure of a lifetime.
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Jaap van Zweden, Simone Lamsma Opinion
Making the Case for Music at Chicago Symphony
By: - Jun 06th, 2014The Shostakovich story has unfolded over the past ten days in Chicago. The Fifth Symphony is more formal than his other works. Its contrasts, the beautiful flute solos performed by Mathieu DuFour, inarguably the world’s greatest flutist, and the horns, the trombones, the clarinet and bassoons all fill the ears and heart. The conductor’s intensity and the smiles he shares with the harpist with whom he has obviously worked with on a particular pluck approach which succeeds in concert, all add to the pleasure.
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Memorial Day with Chicago Symphony Music
Jaap van Zweden Unearths Hidden Truths
By: - May 25th, 2014It is the human terms of war we remember on Memorial Day. No one has portrayed them more movingly in music than Dmitri Shostakovich. Born in Leningrad, and living there when the Germans began their almost 900 day seige in 1939, Shostakovich remained in his home and began to compose his Leningrad Symphony.
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Mary Zimmerman's The White Snake Opinion
Goodman Theater in Chicago Mounts the Chinese Tale
By: - May 19th, 2014Mary Zimmerman’s The White Snake is now playing at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. It has been produced at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and also at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, so this is not a premier struggling to find its way. Yet it fails.
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The Joffrey Ballet's Romeo and Juliet Dance
Polish Choreographer Kryzsztof Masterful
By: - May 12th, 2014Romeo and Juliet is the most popular of Shakespeare’s plays which have been transformed into ballets. The Kenneth Macmillan choreography is seen most frequently and was made into a film which clearly set a barre for conventional presentation, although of course Macmillan allowed dancers to be dragged across the stage, which was both sumptuous and glamorous. The texture of the Joffrey production was rich, but rich mainly in its emotional variety and stunning dancers. No holds barred in this new production, but it is thrilling as it takes off from pointe work, always grounded and inviting.
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Juno at the Timeline Theatre, Chicago Theatre
O'Casey to Stein to Blitzstein, A Compelling Musical
By: - May 09th, 2014Joseph Stein had been overwhelmed by the power of Juno and the Paycock, and thought its language and story “bursting with humor and wit and drama" would be perfect for a musical. He went to visit O'Casey with a tape of My Fair Lady in hand. O’Casey had nothing to play My Fair Lady on, but was jealous of GBShaw’s financial success, so he signed for the exclusive musicalizing of his play. He told a friend that he did not expect Don Giovanni or Boris Godunov, but knew it could be made be a seed pearl of loveliness. Faithful to the play, Stein and Blitzstein created a piece of great power. Timeline has captured it essence.
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Dohnányi and Paul Lewis at Chicago Symphony Opinion
A Prelude to Tanglewood July 24th
By: - May 05th, 2014The audience and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra worked hard at a dress rehearsal for a program that included the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3. Christoph von Dohnányi is a sought after conductor the world over and it is easy to understand why. Instrumentalists respect and enjoy working with him, even though a flautist in the CSO turned a bright red in the face trying to execute a passage to the Maestro’s taste.
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The Sound of Music at the Lyric Opera Music
The Hills Are Alive in Chicago
By: - May 01st, 2014The Sound of Music has been a staple of musical theatre since 1959. While the music seems tame compared to South Pacific and Carousel, its songs stick with you. As a matter of fact with the title song and "Do-Re-Mi" "My Favorite Things" "Climb Every Mountain" "So long, Farewell" and "Edelweiss" The Sound of Music has more hit songs than any other musical. In Vienna, the audience sings along with "Edelweiss," but we are more restrained in the US.
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A Darwinian Love Story at the Lookingglass Theater Theatre
Sara Gmitter's World Premier: In the Garden
By: - Apr 27th, 2014In the Garden is a provocative, engaging production that will leave you asking why when you think about the Higgs Boson at the cyclotron in Cern and also embracing more tightly those you love. While some find the current discussion about religion’s role in society antediluvian, this play offers a civil solution: respect, empathy and gentle debate, something we have long forgotten in this country. It suggests a small space where both sides can comfortably exist.
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Christopher Williams at the Art Institute of Chicago Photography
Play and Dream an Image. Let Someone Else Click.
By: - Apr 21st, 2014The title of the exhibit, "The Production Line of Happiness" is taken from a Jean Luc Godard documentary in which an amateur filmmaker compares his day job as a factory worker with his hobby of editing his films of the Swiss countryside. Williams says that today's consumer culture pictures and produces endless images to be consumed.
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Degenerate Art in Nazi Germany Opinion
The Neue Galerie Mounts an Important Exhibit
By: - Apr 13th, 2014The Nazis seized ‘degenerate art’ from museums and private collections. A three-year traveling exhibition of this art criss-crossed Germany and Austria. Most of the paintings were sold, lost, or presumed destroyed. The recent discovery in Munich of the Gurlitt trove of such artwork has attracted attention. The film "The Monuments Men", directed by George Clooney, is about the seized art. The Neue Galerie mounts a moving exhibit of the work and compares it with some of Hitler's favorite art.
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Christopher Wool at the Art Institute Fine Arts
Chicago Celebrates a Native Son
By: - Apr 11th, 2014Thirty-one letters brought more than 26 million dollars at an art auction last fall. Visually the letters are compressed, blob-like, stacked. Musically, each of the three phrases has a sound which is considered one of the most beautiful in the English language: sell or cell. Two hard "c" sounds (actually a ‘kâ€) break up the beauty. The entire phrase startles because selling the kids is verboten. Do you have to know the title, "Apocalypse Now", to react?
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King Lear at Theater for A New Audience Theatre
Michael Pennington Is a Nuanced Lear
By: - Mar 30th, 2014Directo Arin Arbus and Set Designer Riccardo Hernandez collaborated recently on a brilliant production of La Traviata at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. They do it again in Brooklyn at the new home of the Theater for A New Audience.
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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Conversations Music
Mitsuko Uchida and Muti Lead the Dialogue
By: - Mar 23rd, 2014The mighty Riccardo Muti conducted. The powerful and yet delicate Mitsuko Uchida was piano soloist. An extraordinary oboist, Eugene Izotov, led us through Schubert's Great 9th Symphony. Such pleasure in sharing musical greatness in the Symphony Center in Chicago.
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