Susan Hall
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Recent Articles:
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The Hours by Kevin Puts Front Page
Philadelphia Hosts Renee Fleming, Kelli O'Hara and Jenifer Johnson Cano
By: - Mar 21st, 2022The Hours, a new opera by Kevin Puts, previewed at Verizon Hall in the Kimmel Cultural Center in Philadelphia. The stellar cast featuring Renee Fleming in what we call the Meryl Streep role, Kelli O’Hara in Julianne Moore’s and Jennifer Johnson Cano in the role for which Nicole Kidman, with a fake nose, won an Academy Award for best actress. Philip Glass wrote the score for the film. Puts gives us a richer diversity in orchestration.
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Huang Ruo and Basil Twist Team-up in New York Front Page
St. Ann's Warehouse Holds Magical Moments
By: - Mar 18th, 2022Book of Mountains & Seas, a new opera by Huang Ruo and Basil Twist, takes us out of ourselves and our space into a new and exotic world. Yet we are anchored in human concerns. Huang Ruo originally adapted The Book of Mountains and Seas, a work created in China in the 4th century BC and set its spirit in a vocal-theater for twelve singers. Full of good humor and infinite curiosity, Ruo comments on the visions possible with this unusual number: 2, 3, 4, 6. He uses all the combinations seamlessly.
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Boston Symphony Performs Stunning Wozzech Front Page
Carnegie Hall Hosts
By: - Mar 16th, 2022The Boston Symphony with Andris Nelsons at the helm performed Alban Berg’s Wozzeck at Carnegie Hall. The composer left an early performance of Georg Buchner’s play on which the opera would be based, remarking: this must be an opera and I will compose it. The Boston Symphony gave a defining performance of the work.
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Opera Philadelphia Returns with O Festival Front Page
Premiere Opera Company Surprises and Delights
By: - Mar 15th, 2022Opera Philadelphia will return with the O Festival in September. 2022.
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Prayer for the French Republic at Manhattan Theatre Club Front Page
Joshua Harmon and David Cromer Team Up
By: - Mar 12th, 2022Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic has been extended until March 27 at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York. In constructing a multi-generation family on stage, playwright Joshua Harmon has given director David Cromer a rich opportunity to explore presentation.
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Touch of the Poet at Irish Repertory Theatre Front Page
Richly Rewarding Live Performances
By: - Mar 10th, 2022The Irish Repertory Theatre was preparing to present Eugene O’Neill’s Touch of the Poet when Covid struck and theaters closed. Sets were ready. Costumes had been fitted. Rehearsals underway. Ever inventively, the troupe re-grouped to put the production on streaming. Directed by Ciarán O’Reilly, this work was a masterful performance on screen. Now it is back live
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The Chinese Lady at The Public Theater Front Page
Premiere by Barrington Stage Arrives in New York
By: - Mar 07th, 2022The Chinese Lady produced by Ma Yi Theater Company and The Public Theatre has arrived in New York. This production was created for its world premiere by The Barrington Stage Company and Ma Yi. Written by Lloyd Sun, Ralph B. Pena directs. Women’s history month is the occasion for this mounting.
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Gordon Getty Premiers a New Opera in New York Front Page
New York City Opera and Festival Napa Valley Co-Present
By: - Mar 03rd, 2022The opera by Gordon Getty, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, had its New York premiere as an opera reimagined for film. Co-presented by New York City Opera (NYCO) and Festival Napa Valley, Getty’s fourth opera is based on the popular 1934 novella Goodbye, Mr. Chips and other stories by James Hilton.
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Gordon Getty Preludes His New Opera Front Page
Goodbye Mr. Chips Prmeieres at Walter Reade Theater
By: - Mar 01st, 2022Gordon Getty is his own man, as composer, librettist and supporter of the arts. His new opera, Goodbye Mr. Chilps, premieres on film on March 2nd at the Walter Reade Theatre. Berkshire Fine Arts asked a few questions.
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First Down at 59e59 Theaters Front Page
Dramatizing Protest by Beleaguered Minorities
By: - Feb 28th, 2022First Down is a terrific new play by Sevan now running at the 59e59 Theatres. Johanna McKeon directs the quartet to give us insight into the pain caused outsiders in the United States by people who were outsiders themselves when they arrived.
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Repertorio Espanol Mounts La Dama Boba Front Page
Lope de Vega Amuses and Moves
By: - Feb 22nd, 2022Lope deVega is not simply setting us up for a good laugh. The play takes a sharp look at the meaning of the ideal woman. What attributes are truly important? Is there room in marriage for the intellectually driven woman? Is there room for the woman who cannot enhance her husband's social standing? Is economic security the real motive for our emotional commitments?
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Black No More at the New Group Music
Bill T. Jones Choreographs, Scott Elliott Directs
By: - Feb 19th, 2022Broadway Bound? Black No More is packed with A list creative talent. It is in a limited run produced by the New Group, The book’s creators wondered whether rap would work for a serious story. Black No More succeeds in spades. Andy Blankenbeuler (Lian Manuel Miranda’s dance man) learned to tell a story in movement from Bill T. Jones. Jones is the choreographer of this show.
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Prism at Roulette in Brooklyn Front Page
World Premiere is Luminescent
By: - Feb 17th, 2022Four instruments shimmering in the lights of Roulette, the iconic Brooklyn venue, might suggest you are at the brass concert. The saxophone in all its glories, principally soprano, tenor, baritone and bass, Is a member of the wind group. It sounds are full, rich, warm and smooth. Together, the Prism group makes one single sound. It can be raucous for fun. Or very dark when the mood requires.
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Theatre for a New Audience's Merchant of Venice Front Page
John Douglas Thompson Humanizes Shylock
By: - Feb 15th, 2022Shakespeare invites the elevation of Shylock to centrality in Merchant of Venice. Many characters in his play have equal time. Now Theater for a New Audience (TFANA) makes the case for the play as Shylock’s. John Douglas Thompson assumes the role as the ultimate outsider. He is an irresistible actor who quickly overcomes resistance any prior knowledge of the play calls forth
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Heartbeat Opera's Fidelio Front Page
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art
By: - Feb 14th, 2022Heartbeat Opera is a New York based company committed to making opera for the Now. Years before George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, they adapted Fidelio, Beethoven’s sole opera, to prison life today.
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Manhattan Theater Club Revives Skeleton Crew Front Page
Dominique Morisseau's Masterpiece in New York
By: - Feb 12th, 2022For Black History Month, Broadway has opened its arms and stages. Skeleton Crew, by an honored Black playwright, makes no mention of race. The cast is all Black. The characters are all Black. The city of Detroit, where the play takes place, has been felled by race riots and a hardhit economy.
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Ottensamer and Bax Perform at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Music as Song Delights
By: - Feb 11th, 2022Alessio Bax and Andrea Ottensamer, two consummate artists, performed together and individually in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall. They both seek to help us hear the origins of music as a communicative and an expressive medium. Yet there is nothing ponderous about their approaches.
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Lynn Nottage at Lincoln Center Theater Front Page
Intimate Apparel with a Score by Ricky Ian Gordon
By: - Feb 09th, 2022Lynn Nottage’s brilliant play Intimate Apparel has been incubating as an opera since 2007 when Ricky Ian Gordon was commissioned to write the music by the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center Theater. Nottage speaks of development meetings with Peter Gelb of the Met and Andre Bishop of LCT, each tugging for their own interests.
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World Premiere Opera in Washington Front Page
Four A List Composer/librettist Teams Contribute
By: - Feb 07th, 2022Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum offered a preview of a world premiere opera developed by Washington National Opera. Written in Stone will be staged at the Kennedy Center from March 5 to March 25. It will be a must-see production.
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Lynn Nottage Turns to Opera at Lincoln Center Theater Front Page
Intimate Apparel with Score by Ricky Ian Gordon
By: - Feb 06th, 2022Lynn Nottage’s brilliant play Intimate Apparel has been incubating as an opera since 2007 when Ricky Ian Gordon was commissioned to write the music by the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center Theater. Nottage speaks of development meetings with Peter Gelb of the Met and Andre Bishop of LTC, each tugging for their own interests.
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New York City Opera's World Premiere Front Page
Joins with National Yiddish Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage
By: - Jan 30th, 2022Garden of the Finzi-Continis, a novel and a movie, inspire Ricky Ian Gordo's new opera. A lush production at the Museum of Jewish Heritage shows us NYCO alive and well.
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Renee Fleming, Uma Thurman, Emerson Quartet at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Weaving Kevin Puts, Philip Glass, Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn
By: - Jan 23rd, 2022Tom Stoppard prefers rock and pop, but he contributes mightily to a musical monologue written with Andre Previn and sung and spoken by Renee Fleming and Uma Thurman with the splendid Emerson Quartet and Simone Dinnerstein.
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Literary Diagnoses Gay Front Page
Thomas Mann, Thomas Eakins and Henry James
By: - Jan 20th, 2022Colm Toibin's The Magician, his story aboutf Thomas Mann, portrays a man constantly glancing at other men. Does the embrace of celebrated artists as gay add anything to our understanding of great men?
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Igor Levit at Carnegie Hall Front Page
An Invitation to Listen
By: - Jan 14th, 2022Igor Levit performed Beethoven, Fred Hersch, Wagner and Liszt in a compelling musical evening at Carnegie Hall in New York. The Hall, vaccinated and boosted, was packed for the occasion.
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Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris Front Page
Production Transfers to Broadway
By: - Jan 09th, 2022Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris, directed by Robert O'Hara, brings us abruptly into sexual fantasies played out by three interracial couples in the ante-bellum South. This is not what might have happened in the South before or during Jim Crow. No, it is the processing of feelings which will re-invigorate the Black partner’s sexual desire. In the second Act, Processing, we get into the nitty grity of race feelings, which range wider and tougher than the first act’s insight that cantaloupe has white skin and no taste
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