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Susan Hall

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  • Ginny Williams, Art Whisperer Front Page

    A Moving Film

    By: Susan Hall - Dec 10th, 2025

    Director Flemming Fynsk's moving film The Art Whisperer is in contention for awards this year. Its subject, Ginny Williams, was an art collector and gallery owner of remarkable instinct and vision.

  • Film at Lincoln Center Presents Yoshimuro Front Page

    Brilliant and Underappreciated Filmmaker

    By: Susan Hall - Nov 28th, 2025

    Film at Lincoln Center will present “Kozaburo Yoshimura: Tides of Emotion,” a retrospective of 13 films by one of the accomplished yet underappreciated figures of the golden age of Japanese cinema. Running from December 5 through December 11, 2025, the festival is presented in partnership with the Japan Foundation.

  • Endgame at the Irish Arts Center Front Page

    Druid Mounts a Magnificnet Production

    By: Susan Hall - Nov 03rd, 2025

    The Druid theater is mounting Samuel Beckett’s Endgame at the Irish Arts Center in New York.  The set is striking. It is curved like the inside of the two garbage cans sitting on the stage, covered by cloth at the start.  Inside tthe actual cans are two stumps–a happily married couple, Negg and Nell, played here by Bosco Hogan and Marie Mullen (one of the founders of Druid). 

  • Krapp's Last Tape at NYU Front Page

    Stephen Rea Stars in the Skirball Production

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 19th, 2025

    Krapp’s Last Tape by  Samuel Beckett  is playing at NYU’s Skirball Theater, with the great Stephen Rea in the title role. Years ago, Rea rehearsed this play with Samuel Beckett himself and recorded Krapp’s early memories. It is those old recordings we now hear in this production—Rea, in the present, listening to the voice of his younger self.

  • Saariaho's Passion in New York Front Page

    Mannes Opera Presents La Passion de Simone

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 14th, 2025

    Mannes, the most interesting and daring music school in New York, presented Kaija Saariaho’s La Passion de Simone at the Nagelberg Theater, just steps from its usual home in the Tishman Auditorium. At the Tishman, works were often presented catwalk-style, the action taking place on a narrow strip in front of the orchestra. At the Nagelberg, director Emma Griffin finally had space to mount the first fully staged chamber version of Saariaho’s oratorio.

  • Jeremy Denk at the Park Avenue Armory Front Page

    Six Partita Characters in Search of Interpretation

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 09th, 2025

    Jeremy Denk performs the six Bach partitas for keyboard in the Officer’s Board Room of the Park Avenue Armory. We all come back to Bach.  Jeremy Denk never left him. And Denk's insights have expanded over the years. The joy, the sense of humor and the play have always been there.  Denk makes Bach clear and present.

  • Park Avenue Armory Hosts 11,000 Strings Front Page

    Composer G.F. Haas Imagines Space

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 05th, 2025

    Park Avenue Armory is hosting 11,000 Strings, a trsnsportting soundscaoe creaated by composer G. F. Haas. The work is a play on sounds created by the space between two notes.

  • All the Men Who've Frightened Me Front Page

    La Jolla Playhouse Presents

    By: Sharon Eubanks - Oct 03rd, 2025

    The presentation of All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me comes to the La Jolla Playhouse via it’s DNA New Work Series.  The play follows young married couple Ty (Hennesey Winkler) and Nora (Kineta Kunutu) as they move into Ty’s childhood home.

  • Bates, Szymanowski, Lutoslawski at NY Phil Front Page

    David Robertson Conducts

    By: Susan Hall - Sep 29th, 2025

    David Robertson and the New York Philharmonic performed a program that displayed the orchestra in all its glory.

  • Pene Pate at the Park Avenue Armory Front Page

    Tenor of the Century Performs

    By: Susan Hall - Sep 28th, 2025

    Tenor Pene Pate gave his first concert in New York at the Park Aveneue Armory. He has a superb voice, impeccable, warm deilvery and a special generosity, charcteeristic of his Samoan heritage.

  • Kavalier and Clay Come to the Met Front Page

    Composer Mason Bates Not Well Served

    By: Susan Hall - Sep 26th, 2025

    If you listened carefully to a panel discussion at the Guggenheim Museum a few weeks before the opera by Mason Bates, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, opened, you could hear the problems staging this work was going to face at the Metropolitan Opera.

  • Victoria Bond at The Village Trip Front Page

    Wonderful, Wild Music in New York

    By: Susan Hall - Sep 19th, 2025

    Poets of Patchin Place features the première of settings of Barnes’ poetry by William Kentner Anderson. Also on the program: Victoria Bond: “Leopold Bloom’s Homecoming” from Ulysses by James Joyce. Nehemiah Luckett: “Oceans Always Lead to Some Great Good Place,” inspired by James Baldwin’s Another Country and commissioned by The Village Trip for Baldwin’s centennial,

  • White Raven, Black Dove in Boston Front Page

    White Snakes Projects Presents

    By: Susan Hall - Sep 17th, 2025

    Celebrated for creating diverse, timely and relevant opera, White Snake Projects (WSP) returns to Boston’s Strand Theatre, September 26-28, 2025, for the world premiere of White Raven, Black Dove, in a season dedicated to addressing the climate crisis through art. Composed by Jacinth Greywoode and Andrew Lynch, and written by librettist Cerise Lim Jacob, White Raven, Blake Dove is an original work of science fiction fantasy exploring two issues consuming America today – race and climate change.

  • The Heart at La Jolla Front Page

    By Kate Kerrigan, Music and Lyrics by Anne Eisendrath and Ian Eisendrath

    By: Sharon Eubanks - Sep 08th, 2025

    The Heart is written by Kate Kerrigan, with music and lyrics by Anne Eisendrath and Ian Eisendrath. It is based on the novel, Réparer les Vivants by Maylis de Kerangal.  In the LA Jolla Playhouse production, over 24 hours, the heart of a person in the wrong place at the wrong time is connected to another person who was in the right place at the right time to answer the call.

  • Berio and Boulez at the Berlin Music Festiva; Front Page

    Both Composers 100th Birthdays

    By: Susan Hall - Sep 05th, 2025

    The Berlin Music Festival is honoring Luciano Berio on the occasion of his 100th birthday with eight concerts devoted to his work. His explorations of acoustic sound fused with electronics, his relentless push to test the technical and expressive limits of instruments, his inventive musical collage and dialogues between traditions are all being showcased. Pierre Boulez, whose centenary also falls this year, is likewise being celebrated.

  • Berlin Philharmonic Opens Its Season Front Page

    Kirill Petrenko Compels

    By: Susan Hall - Aug 31st, 2025

    The Berlin Philharmonic launched its 2025–26 season with a program that set Schumann, Zimmermann, and Brahms in conversation across a century of musical upheaval. Under Kirill Petrenko’s direction, the evening unfolded less like a sequence of works than  a drama in three acts.

  • BSO Opens its Boston Season Front Page

    Free Concert in Symphony Hall

    By: Susan Hall - Aug 26th, 2025

    The Boston Symphony opens its fall season with a free concert at Symphony Hall on September 17.

  • Patricia White 1948-2025 Front Page

    A Guiding Light for Emerging Voices in Theater

    By: Susan Hall - Aug 15th, 2025

    Patricia White, the long-time company manager of Woodie King, Jr.'s New Federal Theatre (NFT) and a well-known figure in Black Theatre, died August 10 after a brief illness. "Pat," as she was widely called, was well-known throughout the theater community as a director, mentor, producer, backstage coordinator, grant writer, box office manager and administrator. Her comprehensive understanding of the theatrical process helped shape countless productions and careers.

  • The Federal Theatre Project as Play Front Page

    Hallie Flanagan and Subsidized Art

    By: Susan Hall - Aug 10th, 2025

    This is exactly the moment to remember a time when the federal government saw theatre not as a luxury, but as a public good—bringing professional productions to cities large and small across America.

  • Dream Up Theater Festival in NY Front Page

    Theater for a New City Presents

    By: Susan HAll - Aug 08th, 2025

    From August 24 to September 14, 2025, Theater for the New City (TNC), under the direction of Crystal Field, will present its thirteenth  Dream Up Festival, adventurous drama in New York. 

  • Faure's Penelope at Munich Opera Front Page

    Karkacheva and Jovanovich Star

    By: Susan Hall - Aug 01st, 2025

    As part of its 150th anniversary celebration, the Munich Opera Festival presented Pénélope by Gabriel Fauré—a bold and welcome choice. To champion this rarely performed work, the company brought in Andrea Breth, one of Germany’s most accomplished theater directors. The cast clearly responded to her direction with commitment and nuance.

  • Mundruczó's Lohengrin in Munich Front Page

    Munich Opera Festival Mounts Wagner's Most Frequentlyly Performed Work

    By: Susan Hall - Jul 31st, 2025

    No opera company today rivals the Munich Opera when it comes to innovative yet deeply respectful productions of the classic repertoire. While it’s tempting—and often rewarding—to look beyond the traditional opera circuit for new creative voices, few choices are as effective as Hungarian filmmaker and theater director Kornél Mundruczó.

  • Das Rheingold in Munich Front Page

    Prelude to a Stunning New Ring Cycle by Tobias Kratzger

    By: Susan Hall - Jul 29th, 2025

    The Munich Opera celebrates summer with an annual festival. This year, the prelude to the Ring Cycle by Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold, provided novel and thrilling music and drama.

  • Opera Comes to the Williamstown Festival Front Page

    Samuel Barber's Vanessa in a New Take by Heartbeat Opera

    By: Susan Hall - Jul 12th, 2025

    Vanessa is the first opera to be performed at the Williamstown Festival, running from July 17 through August 3. It will be produced by Heartbeat Opera, a company known for revitalizing underperformed masterpieces and breathing new life into opera’s  staples.

  • Berkshire Festival Opera to Produce La Traviata Front Page

    Exciting Programs in Berkshires' Backyard

    By: Susan Hall - Jun 26th, 2025

    The Berkshire Opera Festival has restored world-class, fully-staged opera to the Berkshires.  Their  tenth anniversary season in Great Barrington features Giuseppe Verdi's masterpiece La Traviata at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center on August 23, 26, and 29.

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