Susan Hall
Bio:
Recent Articles:
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Howard Schatz Photographs With Child Photography
Pregnant with Beauty
By: - Oct 26th, 2011Howard Schatz has a monthly ongoing feature in Vanity Fair entitled "In Character." In all his images, he succeeds in bringing character forward with drama and beauty. Schatz started out as an opthalmologist and perhaps this work trained an unusually sensitive and acute eye.
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Faust from the Royal Opera House, London Music
Opera in Cinema Expands its Horizons
By: - Oct 25th, 2011The Morgan Library in New York, and the Berkshire Museum, showed a performance of Gounod's Faust straight from Covent Garden and featuring a stellar cast. We are going to have a banquet of operas to choose from, and filming decisions made in this production felt a lot more like opera than the Metropolitan's HDs.
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Angela Meade's Glorious Anna Bolena at the Met Opera Music
Comparisons to Joan Sutherland
By: - Oct 25th, 2011Meade make her mark in the Berkshires singing excerpts from Norma and I Lombardi last summer. If you hear her, you will never forget her. A big, glorious voice full of all the complex detail the style requires.
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The Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall Music
Fabio Luisi Conducts a Harbison World Premier
By: - Oct 17th, 2011Fabio Luisi conducted the Met Orchestra as the new Principal Conductor. Luisi and the Orchestra are on the same page, seeming to enjoy each other and make wonderful music. Let's hope that he is made Artistic Director soon. The post has been vacant for too long.
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Above and Beyond Dance's Chriselle Tidrick Dance
Manhattan Movement and Arts Center
By: - Oct 15th, 2011Joining the ideas of the circus arts with dance opens up the eyes to unimagined images of moving beauty. Tidrick is a determined and brilliant choreographer and performer who deserves a wide audience.
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Playwright Katori Hall Dreams about Martin Luther King, Jr. Theatre
Capturing the Man As He Was is a Tough Climb
By: - Oct 15th, 2011The surviving members of the King family have made it very difficult to portray Martin Luther King, Jr. as a human. In her play, King says that to fear is to be human. Hall richly portrays King's fears.
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Gotham Opera and Nico Muhly at Le Poisson Rouge Music
An Exciting Evening of Song
By: - Oct 15th, 2011While naturally-occurring sounds of the kitchen sometimes accompany singers, Le Poisson Rouge is surely the venue of the future. Intimate venues where performance of classical music is up close and personal draw packed houses. The three dinosaurs at Lincoln Center will probably have to go.
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Adriana Lecouvreur from Convent Garden in HD Music
Direct to the Berkshires on October 23
By: - Oct 12th, 2011The HD broadcast field expands to include wonderful opera productions from around the world. Adriana Lecouvreur from Convent Garden will be a treat with Angela Gherghiu, banned at the Met, and Jonas Kaufman.
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Gergiev Conducts The Mariinsky at Carnegie Hall Music
A Spellbinding Performance of Tchaikovsky
By: - Oct 11th, 2011Valery Gergiev is one of the busiest conductors in the world. Last spring, he was booked in Moscow one day and at the Met in New York the next. He didn't quite make it to the second assignment, sad for us in the US. But here he is at Carnegie, thrilling a Sunday afternoon audience.
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Benito Cereno Presented by the Horizon Theater Rep Theatre
Woodie King, Jr. Directs
By: - Oct 09th, 2011Woodie King, Jr. directs this marvelous Robert Lowell play at the Flea Theater in New York. King is one of America's great directors and this production is just the latest of wonderful theatrical evenings he has put on.
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Tobias Picker Honored at Columbia University Music
The Miller Theater Presents a Compelling Composer Portrait
By: - Oct 07th, 2011Tobias Picker collaborates with performers. Ursula Oppens, who has been his muse and articulator for decades,was on stage to talk to the charming and witty composer. Sometimes called 'conservative' because his music is easy on the ear, challenging and beautiful are better adjectives for this important American composer.
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Placido Domingo on a Tear Music
Attacks Washington Post Critic
By: - Oct 04th, 2011We have noted in the past that Domingo is a wonderful singer who deserves to sing forever. But, as a conductor, the great Metropolitan Orchestra and the Met's singers deserve better. Now he fights back.
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Alan Gilbert Triumphs with the New York Philharmonic Music
Stephanie Blythe Sings a Gorgeous World Premiere by John Corigliano
By: - Oct 01st, 2011A dark and elegiac tone pervaded Avery Fisher Hall last night but the sheer beauty of the music performed, and the moving music Alan Gilbert drew from the orchestra and Stephanie Blythe riveted and stunned the audience.
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Anna Bolena at the Metropolitan Opera Music
Live in HD on October 15
By: - Sep 28th, 2011Don't worry about the glitches and problem pitches in the Met's new production by David McVicar. HD transmission covers a multitude of sins.
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Moneyball with Brad Pitt Film
How the Red Sox Found Their Winning Ways
By: - Sep 22nd, 2011It started in Oakland where a failed ballplayer had to find cheap means to deliver a winning team. It continued as the Red Sox won the World Series. Baseball fan or not, you will love Moneyball and particularly the gutsy, subtle performances of Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
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Day to Night by Stephen Wilkes Photography
Photography at NY's Clampart Gallery
By: - Sep 16th, 2011Even those familiar with the brilliant work of photographer Stephen Wilkes will be surprised by his new images, which extend the time encapsulated by a frame. Yet the origins of these giant prints which are more like canvases are clear in his art from the start.
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The Mettawee Theater Company at St. John the Divine Theatre
Ralph's Lee's Puppet and Mask Designs Star
By: - Sep 12th, 2011Songs of the Ainu aborigines of northern Japan were sung, danced, and acted in the Bishop‘s garden of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The polytheist Ainu worshiped Gods by facing east. The Cathedral faces west, but the corner into which the garden is tucked welcomes all forms of worship, and particularly the worshipful appreciation of nature and its treasures.
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Manahan Conducts Mahler at Baryshnikov Arts Center Music
Jennifer Johnson Cano and Paul Groves Shine
By: - Sep 10th, 2011With 9/11 looming in the background, Mahler's gorgeous tribute to the joys of life and also its perils was a perfect prelude to commemorations. Maestro Manahan conducted the Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York. It is the 100th anniversary of the premier of the song symphony.
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Cavalli Comes to Le Poisson Rouge Music
Opera Omnia Presents a Ribald Myth
By: - Sep 08th, 2011Under the same constraints that the original production had, Wesley Chinn re-iamgined this opera, the I Love Lucy of its time, with great singers and a charming staging.
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Cisne Negro Dance Company at the Joyce Theater Dance
On Tour from Brazil
By: - Aug 22nd, 2011Cisne Negro Dance Company is one of South America's leading dance organizations. It was easy to see why on stage at New York's Joyce Theatre. Rooted in classical ballet forms, the dancers’ moves range from classic positions to poses and gestures only a superb athlete could achieve. In familiar moves members of the company take off in unexpected and delightful tangents.
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Miners Alley Playhouse Presents a Touch of Spring Theatre
Glowing in Golden, Colorado
By: - Aug 19th, 2011Sometimes it's a big relief to sit back and laugh at a witty production of a play that's almost pure confection, with just a dash of serious thought. Taylor, who made his name as the creator of Sabrina, provides just such an evening at the Miners Alley Playhouse.
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Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind Theatre
Denver's Paragon Theatre Erupts in Language
By: - Aug 18th, 2011Considered by many one of Shepard's finest plays and a great play of 20th century, A Life of the Mind was brilliantly mounted in Denver, showing us what Ethan Hawke did not in a recent New York production.
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Berg, Vivaldi and Menotti at the Santa Fe Opera Opinion
Summer Opera in the Burnt Sienna of Santa Fe
By: - Aug 13th, 2011A great case for opera during the summer is made by the Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico. Tried and true and up and coming talent come from all over the world to participate here. What a marvelous venue.
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Dixie Longate's Tupperware Party Theatre
A Solution for Tough Times
By: - Aug 12th, 2011This delightful performance at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts suggests to the current adminsitration a possible solution for the dire employment situation in the US. Is Dixie Longate a long term problem solver? Maybe. Probably yes.
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Gogul's Inspector General at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival Theatre
Boulder Is Better
By: - Aug 11th, 2011An engaging and delightful production of Gogul's classic was imported from Russia and produced in English against all odds. In Russia it is still controversial to mount this play about corruption and bribery in high places.
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