Theatre
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A Florentine Tragedy and Gianni Schicchi
At Livermore Valley Opera
By: - Mar 09th, 2020These two operas make for a highly entertaining evening. The only false note concerns the orchestra, which was skillful in the comedy on opening night. But especially in the overture and early parts of the tragedy, dissonant tracts sounded more out of tune and out of sync as if the orchestra hadn’t mastered Zemlinsky’s more challenging and unfriendly music. It also overpowered the singers at times.
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New York Philharmonic Pairs Schoenberg and Bartok
From Sweden Come Rich New Takes
By: - Sep 29th, 2019The New York Philharmonic became an opera orchestra for Schoenberg’s Erwartung and Bela Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle. A Swedish cast, including the incomparable Nine Stemme and directed by Bengt Gomer, provided new twists to the tales, emphasizing the real or imagined murder of an errant lover and possible survival of an eighth wife of Bluebeard. His beard is not blue, and attractions go beyond a castle and riches.
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The Irish Troubles
An Overview in the Arts
By: - Jul 19th, 2019A particular period of Irish history has been the focus of several recent remarkable works of art: two books, one an experimental novel, and the other journalistic nonfiction, plus a much-praised Broadway drama. All of them won multiple awards. I’ll also add a 2008 film to this list of artistic works. They all commemorate the years of the Troubles, that period of history of Northern Ireland in which more than 3500 people died or were disappeared.
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The Diary of Anne Frank
Palm Canyon Theatre
By: - May 11th, 2019“The Diary of Anne Frank”, at the Palm Canyon Theatre (PCT) in Palm Springs, is a must-see production no matter wherever and/or whenever it is staged. It’s a poignantly dramatized play written 76 years ago by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, that unfortunately is very relevant today.
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Meister Debuts at the Metropolitan Opera
Don Giovanni Gets a Special Spin
By: - Jan 30th, 2019The conductor Cornelius Meister is a fast-rising star in Europe. Having just finished a lengthy run at the helm of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, he is now the music director o the State Opera and the State Orchestra in the German city of Stuttgart. On January 30, Mr. Meister will make his debut at the Met. His task: conducting one of Mozart's finest and darkest operas: the deliciously twisted Don Giovanni. This week, Superconductor found time to sit down with the maestro to talk all things dramma giocoso.
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Tao and Teicher at the Guggenheim Museum
World Premiere of More Forever
By: - Jan 07th, 2019Caleb Teicher is no stranger to Jacob's Pillow. This summer he will perform More Forever, which had its world premiere at the Guggenheim Museum in New York this weekend. It is a glorious piece developed in collaboration with pianist, composer and actor Conrad Tao.
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New Federal Theatre Presents Fall Reading Series
The Best of Two Character Plays Honors Ntozake Shange
By: - Nov 13th, 2018Woodie King's New Federal Theatre has dedicated its November Readings Series to the memory of the late playwright Ntozake Shange, who died October 27. New Federal Theatre's close association with Ntozake Shange goes back to its 1976-76 season, when it presented the first production of "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enough."
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Dracula In Miami
World Premiere Of Play In South Florida
By: - Oct 15th, 2018Playwright Michael McKeever has created a feminist, modern take on the classic Bram Stoker novel. The World Premiere production runs through Oct. 28 at Downtown Miami's Zoetic Stage. A fine cast and crew are mounting a production that is suspenseful and scary but not too graphic. The sound effects work well in enhancing dramatic, tension-filled moments.
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35MM: A Musical Exhibition
Unconventional Show in Boca Raton
By: - Sep 23rd, 2018Entertaining musical features electric dancing, singing and stunning visuals 35MM: A Musical Exhibition fuses photography and musical theater. Measure for Measure Theatre Company in South Florida, for the most part, scores a hit with their Ryan Scott Oliver/Matthew Murphy show
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Lempicka an Art Deco Musical at Williamstown
World Premiere by Carson Kreitzer and Matt Gould
By: - Jul 26th, 2018Fleeing the Russian Revolution Tamara Lempicka (born Maria Gorska, 16 May 1898-18 March 1980) settled in Paris. Initially the couple with an infant girl survived selling the last of family jewlery. Her husband, Tadeusz Lempicki, a lawyer and aristocrat at first refused to get a job. She took up painting society portraits as a means of supporting their daughter. During the 1920s she was a leading exponent of the Art Deco style. It fell out of fashion during the depression and war years. Williamstown Theatre Festival has a world premiere musical about her life and career.
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On Site Opera at Museum at Eldridge Street
Ricky Ian Gordon's Morning Star
By: - Mar 22nd, 2018The Triangle Fire of 1911, in which more lives were lost than in any other disaster before 9/11, flames in the background of Ricky Ian Gordon and William Hoffman’s opera Morning Star.
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The Fall at St. Ann's Warehouse
Baxter Theatre Takes Down Cecil B. Rhodes
By: - Mar 15th, 2018Al Sharpton wanted to take down the Jefferson Memorial and hasn't yet succeeded. The US military helped Iraquis topple Saddam Hussein's statue. In an engaging and lively student occupation on the campus of the University of Cape Town, seven members of the Baxter Theatre troop take down Cecil B. Rhodes in "The Fall" at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn.
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Jerry Springer, the Opera at The New Group
Smash London Hit Transfers to New York
By: - Feb 22nd, 2018An obsession with the Jerry Springer show grew into Jerry Springer, the Opera. The show was a smash hit on London’s West End over a decade go. Tentative stabs at transfer across the pond are now fixed in a production by The New Group. Scott Elliott, artistic director of The New Group sensed that the time was now. After all, we have a reality show host in the White House.
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Philip Glass is Reflected at Carnegie Hall
Glass and Next Generation
By: - Dec 09th, 2017American Composers Orchestra performs at Carnegie Hall each year. Their December 8 concert at Zankel Hall was the first to honor the holder of the Debs Composer’s Chair this season, Philip Glass. Glass was over forty when he was able to give up his day job. He has created a world in which young composers can compose full time much earlier in their careers. We heard two of his protégés and the master himself in an intriguing and moving program.
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Hannigan and de Leeuw at Park Avenue Armory
Eric Satie's Death of Socrates Performed
By: - Nov 19th, 2017The lights in the corridor outside the Veterans Room in the Park Avenue Armory, dimmed to black and down the hallway proceeded the featured artist, Barbara Hannigan, bearing a candle.
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National Sawdust 5 Boroughs Music Fest
New York's Composers a Riot of Song
By: - Nov 17th, 2017In one fell swoop, Jesse Bloomberg, the artistic director for the 5 Boroughs Music Festival, brings together a sampling of composers who are tucked into the nooks and crannies of our city. Assigning them the subject of the city unleashes their spirited take on New York. Songs ranged from poetic evocation to the tiny drama about a struggling barista which was inspired by Monteverdi.
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Alyson Cambridge Sings at The Crypt
William Bolcom's Song Cycle on Sally Hemings
By: - Nov 16th, 2017Composer William Bolcom and librettist Sanda Seaton have drawn a complex and moving picture of Sally Heings in an 18 song cycle. Soprano Alyson Cambridge is Sally and her performances evokes the slave/mistress of Thomas Jefferson.
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Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera
James Morris' 1000th performance at the Met
By: - Oct 18th, 2017Turandot is Giacomo Puccini’s final, unfinished work. It is a a grand fantasy of legendary China as reimagined through the lens of Italian romanticism. It is a farm tale, the story of an ice-hearted princess and the fearless Prince who wins her hand. It is seen (wrongly) as the end point of the genre of Italian opera. It is also, along with La bohème, the last of the Metropolitan Opera’s giant Franco Zeffirelli productions, crowded extravaganzas that evoke the opulence of a bygone era. (In this case, we’re talking about the 1980s.)
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Opera at the Apollo
We Shall Not Be Moved Triumphs
By: - Oct 09th, 2017We Shall Not Be Moved opened at the Apollo last weekend. Under the bright lights on the Apollo marquee on 125th Street in Harlem, the gathering crowd was dressed in high fashion, from tinsel and glitter to designer jeans and platform heels. Talk was all of the subject matter and the artists who had created this opera. Bill T. Jones is well-known, but the composer and librettist not so. People were going to see the work of their own community.
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On Your Feet! in Miami
National Tour of Show About the Estefans
By: - Oct 06th, 2017On Your Feet! opens in main characters' hometown of Miami. An energetic cast sizzles in first national tour of Broadway musical. The show's emotional core is not lost in vibrant dancing, dazzling choreography and spectacle.
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The Breathing Hole By Colleen Murphy
Inuit Play at Stratford Festival
By: - Oct 03rd, 2017Hardly anyone leaves a performance of Stratford’s The Breathing Hole unaffected.
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Bounce Opens in Lexington, Kentucky
Basketball Opera Comes to Basketball's Home
By: - Oct 03rd, 2017Artists committed to the continuing attraction of opera as a form that draws an audience are experimenting. A workshop of Bounce, an opera conceived by Grete Holby and her Ardea Arts in conjunction with the University of Kentucky, is performed in a park in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. With dribbles as drumming and heros like Flight and Future, the future of opera itself is secured. Now this opera goes to the University of Kentucky, collaborators on its creation.
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Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
Chicago's Eclectic Theatre at the Athenaeum
By: - Oct 03rd, 2017Stephen Adly Guirgis’ 2005 play The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a deliciously irreverent romp through a parade of history and fiction, including Judas’ imagined childhood.
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Principles of Uncertainty at BAM
John Heginbotham and Maira Kalman
By: - Sep 29th, 2017John Heginbotham of DH Dance wanted to work with Maira Kalman after he read her books. They walked together, drank coffee, talked and decided they'd like to do something. They had no idea what. Jacob's Pillow premiered the result in August. Now it is playing at BAM in Brooklyn.
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As You Like It at Classic Stage
A Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration
By: - Sep 29th, 2017The Classic Stage Theater is celebrating its 50th Anniversary and Shakespeare seems a natural choice. Classic Stage always has an interesting take on playwrights in their productions. This is reflected as soon as you enter the theater area. For this production, it looks unlike any other production you’ve seen here.
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