Susan Hall
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Recent Articles:
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La Clemenza di Tito at the Lyric Opera Music
Mozart Triumphs in the Human Voice
By: - Mar 18th, 2014La Clemenza di Tito is full of glorious Mozart arias and recitatives, and an occasional duet. It is an odd opera, which does not have a developing story arc, but rather presents one emotionally-telling vignette after another: thwarted love, political trickery, treachery and betrayal, noble friendships and a hero’s stance. The singing is classic Mozart in this Lyric Opera production.
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Critical Analysis of Andris Nelsons's BSO Season Music
Programming to Reveal the Arc of the Maestro's Musical Journay
By: - Mar 06th, 2014The new music director of the Boston Symphony announced the 2014-15 season and the air was crackling with excitement. In addition to the full schedule we offer a sidebar for what this portends for the orchestra immediately and in the future. Our critic, Susan Hall, had lunch with him well before the appointment. Be still dear heart.
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Rusalka Re-Imagined in Chicago Music
Ana Maria Martinez Captivates as Rusalka
By: - Mar 01st, 2014In the front row of the Civic Opera House, Renée Fleming sat watching an enchanting water nymph take on the role which has been Fleming's signature for decades. The audience fell for Ana Maria Martinez from her first notes and throughout the challenging first Act. What would Fleming make of the performance?
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Michael Fabiano Wins Beverly Sills Award Music
The Young Tenor Captured Our Attention Immediately
By: - Feb 21st, 2014The Sills Award honoring and supporting up and coming opera singers is one of the most prestigious. This year the Award was given o Michael Fabiano, a wonderfully gifted young singer.
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Barber of Seville at Lyric Opera of Chicago Music
Rob Ashford Makes a 198-Year -Old Opera Fresh
By: - Feb 19th, 2014Anthony Freud, the non pareil general manager of opera, brought Rob Ashford to the Lyric to mount his first opera. The Tony and Emmy award winning choreographer and director does a brilliant job by honoring the form of Beaumarchais and Rossini.
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The How and The Why by Sarah Treem Theatre
No Answers, Only Questions at Chicago's Timeline
By: - Feb 15th, 2014Sarah Treem contributed to Netflix's brilliant House of Cards and works also on HBO series. But she comes from a live theatre background. This is made clear in her intoxicating new play.
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Aliens Arrive at Symphony Hall in Chicago Music
City on High Alert, but Children Entranced
By: - Feb 09th, 2014Aliens from Planet X landed in Chicago on the stage of Symphony Hall at approximately 11 am on Saturday, February 8th. Quickly word spread that a Martian cylinder had landed in Chicago. Orson Welles broadcast an earlier Martian arrival. While the city’s panicked citizens fled town through fat puffs of snowflakes falling over Michigan Drive, many young people embraced the two ETs on stage, who were unable to speak an earthly language, but gestured in a language of signs.
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Chicago Symphony Orchestra Under Riccardo Muti Music
Musical Messages Delivered with Passionate Panache
By: - Feb 07th, 2014This evening introduced spaghetti-Western composer Ennio Morricone. Often nominated for an Academy Award, he finally won one for lifetime achievement. Clint Eastwood translated his acceptance speech live. Before Muti began to conduct Morricone’s tribute to 9/11, Maestro Muti pointed out that this music has a message. The piece begins with a poem by the South African Richard Moore Rive. Ora Jones beautifully articulated the rainbow of our world, where words are neither white nor black. “Where the rainbow ends, there’s going to be a place…where we can sing together, a sad song. “
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Robert Falls Directs Luna Gale Theatre
The Material Triumphs in Rebecca Gilman's New Play
By: - Feb 03rd, 2014Luna Gale by Rebecca Gilman is mounted at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago with its usual style and punch. Todd Rosenthal’s set perfectly captures the multiple settings of human dramas which unfold in this Human Service case. A mother’s home, her child’s, an emergency room and social services office and lunch room open on a turntable and are separated also by the brilliant lighting of Robert Wierzel.
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Bill W. and Dr. Bob at the Soho Playhouse Theatre
An AA Meeting On Stage
By: - Jan 31st, 2014AA is well established now, but when it was formed almost a century ago, it teetered and tottered into the formation of meetings and the writing of the Big Book. Some movements start with a few passionate advocates. AA was a bit different, because the founders were both alcoholics. They could find no way to stop drinking.
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Women's Theater Project Presents Row After Row Theatre
Jessica Dickey's New Play is Re-enacting
By: - Jan 30th, 2014Row After Row is by the gifted young playwright Jessica Dickey. Her eye for the dramatic moment is clear from the very first image, a Civil War soldier barking orders from a hill, surrounded by the sounds of battle and warriors’ cries.
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Dr. Dubois and Miss Ovington at New Federal Theatre Theatre
Chalfant and Simonson Star in Clare Coss Play
By: - Jan 29th, 2014The New Federal Theatre founded and directed by Woodie King, Jr. and thriving in a new alliance with the Casilllo Theatre on West 42nd Street in Manhattan, has produced an engaging and deeply moving play, Dr. Dubois and Miss Ovington. The playwright Clare Coss says it is within our power to create a just and sane world. She may be on a mission, but her new play is not at all didactic. Multi-leveled, it is the story of the founding of the NAACP, of Crisis magazine and two of the civil rights’ movements early leaders.thing over 255 chars will be deleted.
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Peter Mattei Superb at Carnegie Hall Music
The Met Orchestra Struggles with the Return of Levine
By: - Dec 23rd, 2013All was not well at Carnegie Hall as James Levine conducted Mahler with Met Orchestra. Despite inconsistencies this afternoon was wonderful because Peter Mattei sang.
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Die Fledermaus Rollicks at Lyric Opera Music
Who Wins: The Butterfly or the Bat?
By: - Dec 17th, 2013Only the Bat knows. Loren-Meeker who has mounted showcase and studio productions at Houston Grand Opera, a Hoffman for the ages at the Danny Kaye in New York and has directed at smaller opera houses around America, hits her stride in the big-time in the Johan Strauss, Jr. operetta, the most popular operetta of all time.
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La Traviata at the Lyric Opera of Chicago Music
Marina Rebeka Stars in Fabulous Production
By: - Dec 02nd, 2013Under General Director Anthony Freud, the Lyric Opera is transforming opera for the 21st century. Coming seasons will be increasingly General Manager Anthony Freud’s own creations and should be fascinating to watch unfold.
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The Normal Heart Beats at Chicago's Timeline Theatre
Larry Kramer's Play is Timeless
By: - Nov 18th, 2013Willful blindness is part of the human condition. We refuse to see what we see perfectly clearly. In the early phases of the AIDs epidemic, a few strident voices insisted on being heard. Lives were saved, but more would have been if eyes had not been wide shut.
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Nico Muhly's Opera Two Boys at the Met Music
From Awakening Desire to Identity, A Treacherous Course
By: - Nov 14th, 2013Nico Muhly's opera Two Boys was a success at the Metropolitan Opera. What the music and the story convey is the feeling of sexual awakening in puberty. Only a first-rate article in Salon.com by J. Bryan Lowder talks about “desire before identity.â€
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Parsifal at Lyric Opera of Chicago Music
Groves, Youn, Hampson and Karanas Deliver
By: - Nov 10th, 2013John Caird and Johan Engels’ production of Parsifal at the Lyric Opera of Chicago is an unqualified success. A difficult and long opera is made accessible without violating the composer. Exiting the theater with the packed house over and over laudatory phrases were lofted: “Home run for Wagner.†“I can’t believe it was so long. I was rapt.†“Beautiful in every way.â€
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Baden Baden 1927 At Gotham Chamber Opera Music
Hindemith, Milhaud, Toch and Weill in One Acts
By: - Nov 06th, 2013The Gotham Chamber Opera, founded and enlivened over the years by conductor Neal Goren, offers terrific fare on a more intimate scale. Its concepts are often large and work both as opera and fine art. Gotham opened its fall season tackling all kinds of musical forms.
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Smokefall at the Goodman Theatre Theatre
Provocative Descendant of Our Town
By: - Nov 05th, 2013Noah Haidle’s play Smokefall is a provocative Midwestern take on "Our Town." Punctuated with apt and engaging humor at every step of the way, it is a drama that is at times startling as well as poignant. Mike Nussbaum is a standout as the Colonel, the grandpater famiilas in Act I. He is losing his mind, but not so much so that he can’t remember having sex four times a day with his late wife Lenore. He often walks to the graveyard to celebrate the good times of yore. Mixing language from PBS programs and a good amount of birthing pain, the playwright gets our attention.
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Goodman Theatre Sings Pullman Porter Blues Theatre
Cheryl L. West's Brilliant Play is Soulful and Brimful of Pleasure
By: - Oct 27th, 2013Pullman Porter Blues is richly textured entertainment. The show is comprised of a narrative orchestrated by twelve songs appropriately plucked from the blues literature, with a little barbershop intermixed, thread through the show. The emotional arc is clear from the start. ‘Women don’t take no shit.†Men have to learn how to follow suit. Set in the 1930s, it is focused on three generations of the Sykes family who work together as Pullman Porters. Here Blues and train travel intermingle to establish a special time and place.
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Otello at the Lyric Opera of Chicago Music
Triumvirate of Botha, Martinez and Struckmann Excels
By: - Oct 15th, 2013The Lyric revived a 2001 production by Sir Peter Hall, and it is masterful. Brought forward to the 19th century when the opera was composed, Shakespeare is tipped in the basic ‘public’ set which is shaped like the Globe Theater, a semi circle with three tiers of balconies. Action takes place on all levels and is a delight to the eye. The pageantry of opera opens as Otello returns home victorious through a wild storm of eleventh chords, woodwind lightning and ripping winds in the strings. The chorus prays for Otello’s safety.
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Muti, Verdi, Chicago Symphony, Magnificent. Music
A Bang Up 200th Birthday Celebration
By: - Oct 11th, 2013Mario Zefferi, a tenor termed bel canto, pierced through the orchestra with every note he delivered. Singing through the mask, with a ping that contrasted with his partners on stage, his tone was perfectly beautiful. Verid’s own choice for this role was a tenor who had a beautiful voice, but was notably stupid. Zefferi in no ‘pumpkinhead.’
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Muti Magic with Chicago Symphony Orchestra Music
Tatiana Serjan a Revelation as Lady Macbeth
By: - Oct 07th, 2013Why do we need sets and costumes? Certainly when you hear a concert performance of Verdi's Macbeth led by Riccardo Muti, you could ask for nothing more. Great stage directors like Willy Decker and Sir David McVicar do not distract in their productions, but many modern directors do. Certainly this Macbeth completely satisfied with no props.
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Netrebko, Putin, Eugene Onegin and Lincoln Center Music
The Metropolitan Opera Opens Its Season
By: - Sep 28th, 2013Peter Gelb continues to display survival skill at the Metropolitan Opera, even though he may have no others. Ambassador Nicholas Taubman, extremely popular in Romania where he brought US business to the country, has always wanted to give a couple of million dollars to the Met. The usual suspects for funding new productions are wary after surveying Gelb’s track record,. Taubman, however, jumped in to finance the new production of Eugene Onegin. Its predecessor was more interesting.
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