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  • Die Komische Oper Berlin, Germany

    Poro and M-eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder

    By: Angelika Jansen - May 13th, 2019

    At the end of the 2018/19 season the Komische Oper Berlin produced two more operas: 'Poro,' by Georg Friedrich Haendel, and 'M- Eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder,' by Moritz Eggert. Two very opposite experiences!

  • Refus Global to Intersectionality

    Rethinking Paradigms for Canadian Art

    By: Charles Giuliano - May 14th, 2019

    In a complex reconfiguration of permanent collections of Canadian museums there is a mandate for integration of First Nations work with galleries of post war abstraction. While change is welcome and necessary, for now, the juxtapositions are complex and disorienting. There is more contrast than confluence.

  • Patience & Sarah at Danny Kaye Theater

    Paula Kimper's Folktale of Love Come True

    By: Susan Hall - May 14th, 2019

    Patience & Sarah was one of the first same sex love stories produced in the United States. It was radical subject matter in the 20th century. It hardly seems daring today, as Brokeback Mountain has stormed opera houses and a transgender work, As One, will have a New York premiere later this month. Yet the production by Hunter College and American Opera Projects was lovely and hopeful.

  • Albright-Knox Art Gallery Plans AK360

    Buffalo’s Great Museum Gets Even Better

    By: Charles Giuliano - May 15th, 2019

    Founded in 1862 as Buffalo Fine Arts Academy today Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery is regarded as one of America's foremost small, regional museums. Its first building opened in 1906. In 1962 a wing was added and a new 30,000 square foot structure will begin construction at the end of this year. It will double space for the permanent collection and special exhibitions.

  • The Power Plant

    Toronto’s Renowned Contemporary Art Kunsthalle

    By: Charles Giuliano - May 16th, 2019

    Occupying a former municipal structure, since 1987, The Power Plant in Toronto has been a renowned presenter of Canadian and global contemporary art. We visited during the final days of three solo exhibitions: “Same Dream” by Omar Ba a Senegalese artist who divides time between Dakar and Geneva, Switzland. Shuvinai Ashoona, a member of a renowned family of Inuit artists, presented “Mapping Worlds.” For twenty years, Alicia Henry, a graduate of Yale, has resided in Nashville, Tennessee where she teaches at Fisk University. Her show was titled "Witnessing."

  • Kopernikus at the Image Project Room

    Claude Vivier Takes the Fear Out of Death

    By: Susan Hall - May 18th, 2019

    Claude Vivier died in 1983 at age 35. He lived in Paris at the end of his life and was stabbed to death by a young man he had been attracted to. His final opera which told this story before it happened was sitting on his work table. He never heard Koperikus produced, but in this century it has built up a head of steam. Its New York premiere was held at the Image Project Room in Brooklyn.

  • The Victorian Ladies’ Detective Collective

    Patricia Milton World Premiere at Berkeley City Club

    By: Victor Cordell - May 18th, 2019

    Central Works’ world premiere of Patricia Milton’s The Victorian Ladies’ Detective Collective is a brisk and bright crime procedural. It is a feminist cry. Taking place in London at the end of the 19th century, we are reminded that the misogynism of that day has been diminished but not extinguished.

  • Kathleen Jacobs’ Natural Abstraction

    Echos at TurnPark Art Space in West Stockbridge

    By: Charles Giuliano - May 19th, 2019

    During four years in China Kathleen Jacobs learned calligraphy from a master. That entailed rubbing ancient reliefs and copying the inscriptions. Several years ago she developed a technique of making paintings by attaching canvas to trees. The surfaces are rubbed and the canvases left outside to endure a year of seasons. The paintings are finished in the studio. Through Echos finished paintings and works in progress are on view at TurnPark Art Space in West Stockbridge, in the Berkshires.

  • Murasaki's Moon at Metropolitan Museum

    Michi Wiancko's Opera Debuts

    By: Susan Hall - May 20th, 2019

    Musical artist Michi Wiancko under the wing of the American Lyric Theater’s development program and backed by Opera America has written a new opera with librettist Deborah Brevoort. The 17th century Astor Chinese Garden Court was the setting of a modern take on the 11th century Tales of Genji. It was written by court lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu who lived between 973-1025 C.E. in Japan. She was the daughter of a petty court noble.

  • Dominican Heroines at Repertorio Espagnol

    Caridad Svich Tells the Story of Mariposas

    By: Susan Hall - May 21st, 2019

    There had been a surge of interest in the Mariposa sisters since Junio Diaz told their story in his Pulitzer Prize winning, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. In a middle-class family, three out of four sisters formed an underground resistance to the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, each in her own way. Minerva studied law and led her group. She could not sit by and leave her children living in a world created by a tyrant.

  • Sister Act – the Musical

    Produced by Theatre Rhinoceros

    By: Victor Cordell - May 22nd, 2019

    As “the longest running LGBT theatre anywhere,” Theatre Rhinoceros’s mission is to “enlighten, enrich, and explore . . . aspects of our queer community.” So what connection would prompt Rhino to produce this musical? By convincing the license holder to allow a first – gender switching the key roles – Rhino made it fit.

  • Barbara Hannigan at the Ojai Festival

    From The Rake's Progress to a Crazy Girl Suite

    By: Susan Hall - May 21st, 2019

    What makes the Ojai Festival in California unique among festivals? Its Artistic Director continues year after year. Each year a different Music Director is chosen. That person curates the festival as through-performance. You are led by the music on a journey full of surprises and delights.

  • A Cultural Trip Through Canada

    Encountering First Nations Artworks

    By: Astrid A. Hiemer - May 23rd, 2019

    On the spot, fully packed and ready to travel, we decided on a car trip to Canadian locations: Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Niagara Falls, after we were denied boarding an airplane to Chicago. Our final destination was (not) to be Edinburgh, Scotland and London, England. Here's a cultural overview of our ersatz-trip, which turned out to be just great!

  • Spring Awakening at Hancock Shaker Village

    Borrowed Light Watercolors by Barbara Ernst Prey

    By: Charles Giuliano - May 24th, 2019

    Working "24/7" over several months the renowned, Williamstown-based artist, Barbara Ernst Prey, created Borrowed Light. The suite of watercolor renderings of interiors is on view in a converted chicken coop of Hancock Shaker Village. It is a part of expanded contemporary programming under the director Jennifer Trainer Thompson. She was a founding member of the MASS MoCA team. They have been neighbors and friends for many years. It was intuitive for them to undertake this remarkable project.

  • Young People's Chorus Premieres Ellen Reid

    Joined by Shallaway Choir and Mantra Percussion

    By: Susan Hall - May 23rd, 2019

    The Young People’s Chorus gave their third annual Vocal Resolutions Concert on May 19th at the Gerald Lynch Theater in New York. This group, founded by Francisco Nunez three decades ago, has reached the pinnacle of professional success. They invited an equally celebrated group, the Shalloway Choir from Newfoundland, to join them this year. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2019, Ellen Reid's world premiere composition for YPC was a highlight of the program.

  • Theatre Festival, Berlin

    May 5 - May 20, Berliner Festspiele

    By: Angelika Jansen - May 25th, 2019

    Two weeks of theatre mania, the Theatre Festival, came to an end on May 20. Selected productions from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland could be experienced on several Berlin stages. Serious and timeless human struggles and subjects took center stage.

  • MASS MoCA Launches Summer Season

    Annie Lennox Life of the Party

    By: Charles Giuliano - May 26th, 2019

    For the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend general admission to MASS MoCA was free. For the launch of it's 20th summer season the museum was mobbed. There were food and drink stands as well as many family oriented activities. For tickets ranging from $100 to $1000 there was a performance by British rock star Annie Lennox. There was also an installation of her memorabelia and legacy which will be on view for the coming months. The museum launched many new temporary exhibitions. There are also long term displays of contemporary masters.

  • Kings written by Sarah Burgess

    Produced by Shotgun Players

    By: Victor Cordell - May 27th, 2019

    The central character of Kings is Sydney Millsap, the newly elected U.S. Representative from the 24th district of Texas, modeled after the new wave of congresswomen like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

  • Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi

    By West Bay Opera

    By: Victor Cordell - May 28th, 2019

    Verdi was no doubt drawn to the bigger-than-life character of Falstaff. Lecherous and self-indulgent, he is one of the great comic characters from literature. The success of the production rides first on the able shoulders of Richard Zeller, a classic Falstaff. With the aid of costumery, makeup, and wig, he looks the part of the corpulent rogue.

  • Ink by James Graham

    Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater

    By: Karen Isaacs - May 28th, 2019

    Ink is not just about Rupert Murdoch; it is actually more about Larry Lamb, the man he brought in from a northern England city where he had been editing a paper, to edit The Sun and overtake its rival.

  • Hamilton by Ishmael Reed

    Full Production to Tag National Tour of Miranda's Version

    By: Rachel de Aragon - May 29th, 2019

    Nuyorican Poets Cafe and writer Ishmael Reed present The Haunting Of Lin Manuel Miranda through June 17th. Amid the flurry of enthusiasm for the Broadway show, Hamilton, Reed lays waste to the show's premises and assumptions, without deriding the talent or intentions of the remarkably gifted Miranda or his cast.

  • A Man for All Seasons Howie Levitz

    Photographer, Piano Man and Raconteur

    By: Charles Giuliano - May 30th, 2019

    In 1969 Howie and Dale Levitz moved to the Berkshires when he became head of the photography department at Williams College. After seven years they opened a photo store which had a smaller iteration on Holden Street in North Adams. He was the piano man with a vast command of songs. Howie loved to entertain with tales, anecdotes and jokes. He passed away over the Memorial Day weekend.

  • The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? by Edward Albee

    Bestiality Explored by Berkshire Theatre Group

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 01st, 2019

    On his 50th birthday the architect Martin (David Adkins) is on the cusp of loss and gain. He is forgetting things like why he has entered a room. A lifelong friend Ross (Josh Aaron McCabe) is taping a TV interview. He is young to win the Pritzker Prize. But Martin is too distracted. Probing the problem Ross pushes Martin to admit to an affair. No biggie. But, it ensues, his beloved Sylvia is a goat. The late play by Edard Albee The Goat or Who is Silvia? won a Tony for best new play in 2002. Since then it has been regarded as controversial and problematic. We discover why in a tsunami production directed by Eric Hill for Berkshire Theatre Group.

  • First Nations at Art Gallery of Ontario

    A Third of the Museum’s Gallery Space

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 03rd, 2019

    During a recent road trip we visited museums in Montreal, Ottowa and Toronto. We noted different strategies to intergate First Nations artists into special exhibitions and permanent collection galleries. A third of the exhibition space of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto features First Nations artists. With an unfavorable comparison only a handful of American museums have a commitment to feature Native American art and culture.

  • MFA Addresses Recent Incident of Racism

    An Open Letter from Director Matthew Teitelbaum

    By: MFA - Jun 03rd, 2019

    A group of 26 middle-school students with chaperones from the Helen Y. Davis Leadership Academy visited the MFA on May 16, 2019. They were on a self-guided visit. Before leaving the Museum, the group filed a complaint with Member and Visitor Services that they were met with racism and verbal abuse from visitors and staff during the visit. In an open letter to the MFA Community its director Matthew Teitelbaum details the museum's response and plan of action.

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