Susan Hall
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Recent Articles:
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Falstaff at the Met Front Page
Verdi's Final Work
By: - Feb 28th, 2019"It's not going to be my favorite Verdi opera." This, from an attendee on the 1 train riding away from Lincoln Center after the Metropolitan Opera's Wednesday night performance of Falstaff, efficiently sums up the attitude of audiences toward the composer's final opera--and his only successful attempt at writing comedy. Falstaff is a masterwork, but one held in high regard not for its considerable qualities but for its place as Verdi's last musical utterance. On Wednesday night under the baton of Robert Carnes, the opera received a performance that just might change that gentleman's opinion.
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Theater for the New City's Catapult! Front Page
A Pithy Comedy by Matthew James Fitzgerald
By: - Feb 27th, 2019If you have ever walked into an art gallery and wondered why, or what, or whether about any particular piece – or the venue as a whole, be prepared to laugh! Fitzgerald's rapid-fire dialog and a versatile and well-cast cast make this visit to the gallery worthwhile. Mark Marcante, Mathew Thomas Burda, David Jones, Lytza Colon Kanako Nagayama and Quinn Therrault have set the scene; the stage becomes a most credible Gallery Zuzu replete with works of art. Director, Tony White knows his subject well. His characters walk out of the art gallery scene like pieces in the exhibition
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Irish Repertory Theatre Celebrates O'Casey Front Page
Shadow of a Gunman
By: - Feb 24th, 2019The Irish Repertory Theatre captures the quotidian of life in Dublin, 1920 as it plays out in Sean O’Casey’s The Shadow of a Gunman. We sit in the extension of a room in a tenement which a poet and a suspender salesman share. Above us, laundry hangs from a window. Charlie Corcoran’s set brings us completely into a day-in-the-life of a wouldn’t-be gunman.
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BMP's Next Generation at National Sawdust Front Page
Composers Michael Lanci and Emma O'Halloran
By: - Feb 21st, 2019National Sawdust, a leading venue for new music, mounted the work of two finalists in the BMP Next Generation Competition, Michael Lanci and Emma O'Halloran. Last March, their compositions were selected from a field of ten, winnowed down from 75 applications.
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Victoria Bond at the Cutting Edge Front Page
Barnes, Glass, and Enchants
By: - Feb 19th, 2019The program at Cutting Edge Concerts at Symphony Space opened with a delightful bird romp by Maria Newman. Hal Ott on the flute, Scott Hosfeld on viola and the composer on the violin created pictures of four different birds. Olivier Messiaen recorded birds in their native habitats, focusing on their identifying songs. Newman widens the frame to include pictures of the birds' movements and suggests purpose, like the melancholy watchfulness of a snowy owl and the ravenous detection of prey for the falcon.
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Salonen Conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra Front Page
Strauss and Bartok Featured
By: - Feb 19th, 2019In recent seasons, Esa-Pekka Salonen has shifted his emphasis from conducting to his first love, composition. However, Friday’s matinee program at the Philadelphia Orchestra at Verizon Hall featured none of Salonen’s own catalogue. Rather, the composer led a program consisting of workers by Béla Bartók and Richard Strauss, two very different composers who are each in their own way, touchstones of the twentieth century.
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Non Solus at BAM Front Page
Circus Dance from Hungary
By: - Feb 15th, 2019The Recirquel Company Budapest is presenting Non Solus at the Howard Gilman Opera House at BAM. The front of the stage is swathed in a glimmering material that reflects like plastic and moves like silk. Behind the curtain, misty lights of yellow and white are haloed like a desert mirage. The translucent curtain billows and then collapses in waves of light and texture.
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Bonnie's Last Flight by Eliza Bent Front Page
Next Door at New York Theater Workshop
By: - Feb 14th, 2019Buckle your seat belts; the plane is still on the tarmac and we the audience, seated in airplane style aisles, are already anticipating a turbulent trip. There are technical difficulties. Flight attendants are rushing up and down the aisles shutting the overhead compartments, allaying our fraying nerves with snacks.
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Opera Philadelphia's A Midsummer Night's Dream Front Page
Acclaimed Robert Carsen Production Makes US Debut
By: - Feb 12th, 2019Opera Philadelphia has mounted a delightful production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The company reminds us, as it does so often, that opera can be highly entertaining and occasionally hilariously funny. Created by Robert Carsen thirty years ago in Aix-en-Provence, the stage is full of royal blues and lime forest greens until all is resolved in white. A new moon hangs in the sky.
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Barbara Hannigan Conducts Juilliard Orchestra Front Page
A Soprano at the Helm
By: - Feb 09th, 2019Barbara Hannigan, one of the world’s leading sopranos, conducted the Juilliard Orchestra in a thrilling performance of Strauss, Haydn, Debussy, Sibelius and Bartok. The orchestra responded with music-making worthy of concert halls across the globe.
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Crypt Sessions' Quartet for the End of Time Front Page
Messiaen's Revelation
By: - Feb 05th, 2019Andrew Ousley’s remarkable concert cocktail evenings at The Crypt presented Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. This most famous of Messiaen’s works had a moving performance in a setting that resonated with crystal liturgy.
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Meister Debuts at the Metropolitan Opera Front Page
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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SongStudio at Carnegie Front Page
Nico Muhly and Piotr Beczala as Master Teachers
By: - Jan 29th, 2019Communication is the theme of SongStudio. Renee Fleming has gone for the jugular in addressing the problem of song’s survival. How do singers communicate with an audience so people want to come and hear them? Master classes with Nico Muhly and Piotr Beczala provided assurances for the future of the song.
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Carnegie Hall Presents Song Studio Front Page
Renee Fleming Gives Us The Song
By: - Jan 27th, 2019Renee Fleming has gone for the jugular in addressing the problem of song’s survival. How do singers communicate with an audience so people want to come and hear them? Her SongStudio took place in the Resnick Education Wing of Carnegie Hall.
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Maestro at the Duke Theater Front Page
Toscanini in All His Glory
By: - Jan 23rd, 2019Toscanini is the subject of Maestro, now playing at the Duke Theater in New York through February 6. Eve Wolf has staged Toscanini’s late life, mixing in live music that he often performed, now played by a quartet and pianist on stage. Director Donald T. Sanders has woven these elements together to provide the texture of Toscanini’s life.
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Awake at the Barrow Group Front Page
K. Lorrel Manning's Delicious Look at America Today
By: - Jan 21st, 2019In Awake, K. Lorrel Manning has created a triumphant piece which shakes sensibilities, upturns stereotypes and makes us smile at the sheer conundrum of being human. This is an entertaining , smoothly written and directed script . Nine skits with fifteen players are like leaves in the book of everyday America's s social and political issues as they inhabit our lives.
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Julia Bullock at Metropolitan Museum of Art Front Page
A Gorgeous Voice for Justice
By: - Jan 21st, 2019Julia Bullock is a young soprano who is designing a career to her personal specifications. Peter Sellars was attracted to her voice and performance after a Julliard college appearance as the young Vixen in Leoš Janá?ek’s Cunning Little Vixen. He lured her to Teatro Real in Madrid to perform in Henry Purcell’s “The Indian Queen.” She has performed in his work in San Francisco, and this summer took on the role of Kitty in “Dr. Atomic” at the Santa Fe Opera. She is now Artist in Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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Debussy at the Metropolitan Opera Front Page
Nezet-Seguin Makes His Mark
By: - Jan 16th, 2019Claude Debussy only wrote one opera. Pélleas et Mélisande (based on a symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck) succeeds by destroying many of the conventions of the genre to which it belongs. On Tuesday night, the Met unveiled its revival of Pélleas, another acid test for its new music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and a younger generation of singers wandering through the hazy, maze-y woods of the mythical kingdom of Allemonde.
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The Infinite Hotel at Irondale Front Page
New Music/Theater Captures Audiences
By: - Jan 12th, 2019Death hangs over the exuberant music/drama The Infinite Hotel. Jib sings of the pain of loss from beginning to end. Her music is lifeful, as is the music of Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley who gave new work to this production.
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Prism in Rolling World Premiere at Prototype Front Page
Ellen Reid's Powerful Opera
By: - Jan 11th, 2019Ellen Reid has an unusual knack for drawing the colors of emotion from an orchestral ensemble and the human voice. Aware of this talent, the composer chooses to present a story with an emotional rather than a narrative arc. The rolling premiere of her new opera, Prism, is presented at LaMama in New York.
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The Infinite Hotel at Prototype Festival Front Page
Michal McQuilken's Rollicking Celebration of Community
By: - Jan 10th, 2019The Prototype Festival rolls on with a big production at Irondale, a Brooklyn venue which offers a large space and unusual opportunities for audience viewing. The Infinite Hotel by Michael Joseph McQuilken is having its world premiere. This is a rollicking, joyful and often touching production. It is full of surprises.
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THISTREE with Leah Coloff at Prototype Front Page
World premiere at HERE
By: - Jan 08th, 2019A mysterious figure hidden in a huge poke bonnet parades onto the rear of the Mainstage Theater at HERE. She is trailed by figures bearing jeans, an icon of the American West. These are dropped to form a trail, like Hansel and Gretel's candies, leading to the pioneer, Leah Coloff's, seat on stage. Coloff with Ellie Heyman has created a lament modeled on a traditional cowboy ballad.
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Ismael Reed's The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda Front Page
Rome Neal Directs Sold-Out Readings at the Nyorican Cafe
By: - Jan 08th, 2019Audience response to The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, a new entertaining, witty and historically incisive play was unusually enthusiastic. Ismael Reed's work was still in street clothes with scripts in hand. The actors, despite the trappings, delivered their lines with pathos and conviction, and Reed's vision shown through the bare-bones milieu.
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Tao and Teicher at the Guggenheim Museum Front Page
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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4:48 Psychosis at the Prototype Festival Front Page
Philip Venables' Remarkable Opera Arrives in the US
By: - Jan 06th, 20194:48 Psychosis, an opera by Philip Venables, had its North American premier as part of the Prototype Festival in New York. It feels like exploding moments of Ophelia’s descent into madness. Based on a play by Sarah Kane, and often called her suicide note, musical moments of both beauty and anguish depict emotions leading to death by hanging.
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