Front Page
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Arabella at San Francisco Opera
By Richard Strauss with Libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
By: - Oct 26th, 2018Arabella does not artistically match the model it targeted, Der Rosenkavalier, nor does it replicate the earlier work’s market success. Despite some issues with this opera, it certainly deserves its place in the repertoire.
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Marnie at the Metropolitan Opera
Nico Muhly's North American Premier
By: - Oct 26th, 2018Nico Muhly’s third opera, his second for the Metropolitan Opera, has its North American premiere this month and next. Muhly states clearly that when he was approached by director Michael Mayer about making the book Marnie into an opera, he was intrigued. At the end of opera, one wonders what happened to the screenplay of Alfred Hitchcock’s film based on the book.
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Exploring Spectacular Biltmore (Wine Included)
Vanderbilt's Chateau Near Asheville
By: - Oct 27th, 2018The Biltmore Estate, near Asheville, North Carolina, is a 250 room mansion that opened on Christmas Eve, 1895. The Vanderbilts lived there until 1930, when the property was opened to the public. Presently, it is the state's top tourist attraction and home to a vineyard and winery that produces close to a million bottles a year.
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Detroit Then and Now
Soaring Spaces and Gracious Rooms of Motown
By: - Oct 27th, 2018Downtown Detroit has been the business heart of the city since the 1850s, expressing prosperity in structures like the 40-story Guardian Building, a 1929 Art Deco skyscraper. The soaring structure with its 632-foot high spire earned the nickname Cathedral of Finance, but its purpose was all business, and during World War II it even served as the U.S. Army Command Center for war time production.
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One Night In Miami
Kemp Powers Play On South Beach
By: - Oct 28th, 2018Historic Night in Segregated Miami is depicted in One Night in Miami. Miami New Drama opens its season with Kemp Powers poet play featuring familiar real life, historical characters. In Powers' play, Cassius Clay, Sam Cooke, Malcolm X and Jim Brown spend a night at a Miami hotel when the city was segregated.
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Ed Sanders Delivers Annual Olson Lecture
A Letter from Gloucester
By: - Nov 06th, 2018Our correspondent, Piippy Giuliano, has more arts related news and commentary in another lively Letter from Gloucester. She reports that "Ed Sanders delivered the ninth annual Charles Olson Lecture at the Cape Ann Museum this weekend to a packed crowd." She also atteneded the vernissage of Lost in America featuring work by Susan Erony at Trident Gallery. She marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of Virginia Lee Burton’s classic children’s book, The Little House.
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Kurt Vonnegut at 59E59 Theaters
Brian Katz Adapts Mother Night for the Stage
By: - Oct 30th, 2018Brian Katz' adaptation and direction of Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night puts the infernal specters of WWII on the stage at 59E59 Theaters. It is produced by The Custom Made Theatre Company with Executive Producers William & Ruth Isenberg and Leah Abrams, and Producer Jay Yamada. We find ourselves witnesses to the conscience of an American born-German playwright Howard W. Campbell, (Gabriel Grilli), who has spent his youth in Germany writing propaganda for the the Third Reich.
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Robert Schenkkan's All the Way
Exploring LBJ's Presidency
By: - Nov 07th, 2018Playwright Robert Schenkkan explores the year from LBJ’s tragic ascension to the presidency through his election in the powerful and fast-paced, Tony Award winning All the Way. Michael Monagle tackles the many facets of President Lyndon Johnson with gusto.
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St. Thomas Church Presents a New Organ
Parry, Janacek, Poulenc, Bernstein and Barber Featured
By: - Nov 05th, 2018St. Thomas Church in New York is introducing its magnificent new organ with a series of concerts. A recent program of ferociously reverent music displayed the grand instrument in all its glory. The Choir of Men and Boys was joined by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Sara Cutler was featured on the harp, soprano soloist Hyesang Park, and Benjamin Sheen on the brand new organ.
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Hungarian State Opera Arrives in New York
Superb Company Offers Seldom Heard Masterpieces
By: - Nov 06th, 2018The Hungarian State Opera is a company full of talented artists whose work has not been presented to American audiences, unless they are fortunate enough to have visited Buda and Pest, and cities throughout the country that presents opera all the time, everywhere. The troop is in New York for two weeks, presenting opera, their orchestra and also dance, for which the Hungarians are famous.
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ATCA at Sardi’s
Critics Lunch with Broadway Stars
By: - Nov 07th, 2018The stars came out in droves for the annual luncheon with critics at Sardi's the show bis watering hole. Sixteen individuals representing thirteen current plays broke bread with the scribes.
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Waiting for Godot by the Druid Theatre
Lincoln Center's White Light Festival
By: - Nov 07th, 2018Waiting for Godot with the Druid Theater Company graces the White Light Festival at Lincoln Center. It is an evening full of laughs in a bunker. Beckett as a member of the French Resistance had escaped Paris when the Gestapo targeted him. This experience led him to create a new theatrical form after the War.
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Thousand Pines, at Westport Country Playhouse
World Premiere by Matthew Greene
By: - Nov 10th, 2018I found this moving and fascinating. As the playwright said, “to be honest, I’d love for this play to stop being ‘relevant.’” Yes, it is a difficult subject but it is handled with such care by all involved that it is well worth seeing.
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Two Broadway Dramas
The Ferryman and The Waverly Gallery
By: - Nov 11th, 2018In town for the ATCA NY Theatre Conference our Chicago correspondent covered two compelling dramas. Both plays are in long runs. The Ferryman by Jez Butterworth continues through February 17 and Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery runs until January 27
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Love, Linda
Cole and Linda Porter Bio-Musical Off-Broadway
By: - Nov 14th, 2018Love, Linda is a lavish show illustrating the love Linda Porter had for her husband, the late, great composer lyricist, Cole Porter. A stylish production Off-Broadway recently ended its run. Stevie Holland, a widely-acclaimed performer, shined in the role of Mrs. Porter in the one-woman show.
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Mefistofele at the Metropolitan Opera
Christian Hale is the Devil
By: - Nov 12th, 2018The Devil always gets a bad rap. That's the premise behind Mefistofele, Arrigo Boito's lone completed opera. An ambitious setting of Goethe's Faust that retells the story from the Devil's point of view, Mefistofele used to prance its sulfur strut across the world's opera stages. But Thursday night's revival at the Metropolitan Opera was the first time that the opera had been seen, fully staged, in New York in eighteen years.
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The Book of Merman at the St. Luke's Theatre
A Parody of a Parody is Brash and Fun
By: - Nov 12th, 2018The Book of Merman is an engaging musical playing at the St. Luke's Theatre in New York. A parody of a parody, it is fresh from the first moment the two Mormon Elders, who are very young indeed, start knocking on doors in the theater district.
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Joyce di Donato, Mason Bates and Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin Leads
By: - Nov 15th, 2018Before he took the job as the music director of the Metropolitan Opera, the conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin became leader of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Happily for both ensembles he appears willing and able to balance duties in both cities. On Tuesday night, the maestro and his band came to Carnegie Hall for the first of their scheduled subscription appearances this season. They brought with them an impressive centuries-spanning program that played to the many strengths of this remarkable ensemble.
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The Gershwin's Crazy for You
At the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco
By: - Nov 15th, 2018In addition to great music and dance, Crazy for You is full of some of the corniest imaginable humor and inside jokes that are compatible with the tone of the work. And they are delivered well.
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Tanglewood Program 2019
Preseason Starts June 15
By: - Nov 15th, 2018The 2019 Tanglewood season will see Boston Symphony Music Director Andris Nelsons in residence throughout the month of July, leading 14 programs, including a first for Tanglewood—a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and a star-studded cast, presented in three [Andris Nelsons]concerts over a two-day period, July 27 & 28. Tanglewood will also be the setting for the BSO’s Nelsons-led world premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts’ The Brightness of Light, a work for voices and orchestra inspired by letters between Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz; it was written especially for Renée Fleming and Rod Gilfry, who will be the featured soloists.
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Severin von Eckardstein Performs at the Park Avenue Armory
Schumann Featured in The Officer's Room
By: - Nov 15th, 2018Severin von Eckardstein, the young German pianist, trailing multiple awards, arrived in New York for two concerts featuring Robert Schumann, for whom he has a clear affinity. If the composer was with us, he would have reciprocated.
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Wicked Dark and Brisk in Glostah
Another Letter on the Arts from Cape Ann
By: - Nov 17th, 2018Saturday, November 10th, Susan Erony set the pace with a 1pm lecture at the Trident Gallery. Seats were improvised as the crowd swelled. They came to hear Erony describe her political, temporal and psychic, journey from concept to execution of paintings and works in her current show, Lost in America, on view at the Trident through November 25.
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Everything is Illuminated Adapted by Simon Block
Produced by Aurora Theatre
By: - Nov 18th, 2018Everything is Illuminated merits its place on the stage. Not everyone will like it, but it should be respected for its poignant content, interesting structure, well-defined characters, and ability to embrace humor and grief without loss of credibility.
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Buyer & Cellar
Jonathan Tolins' Delightful Comedy in Florida
By: - Nov 19th, 2018Playwright's fertile imagination is on full display with Buyer & Cellar near Ft. Lauderdale. Jonathan Tolins far-fetched comic-fantasy imagines a down-on-his-luck actor running a mega-star's basement shopping mall. Prolific performer Matthew Buffalo shines in several roles in play about fame, fortune, ambition. Buyer & Cellar examines complex relationship between gay men and divas.
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It’s a Wonderful Life
At San Francisco Opera
By: - Nov 22nd, 2018It’s a Wonderful Life is a quintessential American opera in its language, content, and social perspective. Composer Jake Heggie has never been intimidated by cutting-edge contemporary opera standards and has created work that unapologetically draws on past musical forms with warmth, emotion, and melody.
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