Susan Hall
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Phantom Limb Company at BAM Front Page
Next Wave Festival Presents A Different Wave
By: - Nov 10th, 2018The Phantom Limb Company presents Falling Out at BAM's Next Wave Festival. A decade after 9/11 in the US, an earthquake in Japan created a tsunami which swept over swept over Otsuchi, Japan. A terrorist attack and nature's own are comparable in the name dates by which they are remembered. The tsunami caused meltdowns at three nuclear reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant. Hundreds of thousand of residents were affected in what came to be called 3/11.
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Ivan Fischer at the New York Philharmonic Front Page
The Hall Configured for Mozart
By: - Nov 10th, 2018Wednesday night's concert at the New York Philharmonic felt more like Mostly Mozart. It wasn't just the program: a brief but satisfying blend of Beethoven and Schubert. It was the presence of frequent MM guest Iván Fischer, who, for a number of seasons has enlivened that summer festival by bringing his orchestra charges: the Budapest Festival Orchestra (an ensemble he founded and still currently leads) to play symphonies and operas at Lincoln Center. Here, Fischer found himself at the helm of the New York Philharmonic, but wasted no time in ensuring that this was a very different kind of concert.
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Waiting for Godot by the Druid Theatre Front Page
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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Hungarian State Opera Orchestra Front Page
Terrific Performances of UnusualFfare
By: - Nov 07th, 2018The Hungarian National Opera's arrival in New York for a two week stay has been among the more interesting events of this fall season. Unfamiliar operas, unique productions and some vocal discoveries have been made at Lincoln Center. On Monday night, the Opera's orchestra, under the leadership of music director Balász Kocsár came to Carnegie Hall for a marathon concert: its one chance to display a wide variety of orchestral wares.
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Hungarian State Opera Arrives in New York Front Page
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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St. Thomas Church Presents a New Organ Front Page
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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Satyagarha by Philip Glass at BAM Front Page
Folkoperan / Cirkus Cirkör Add to the Meditation
By: - Nov 01st, 2018The Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music is presenting Philip Glass' Satyagraha at the Harvey Theater in Brooklyn. Not every opera can be mounted by a circus troop, but the forms are complimentary. When they meld, as they do here, it is a thrilling evening of theater. Folkoperan / Cirkus Cirkör from Sweden brings a matching visual rhythm and pace to the classical forms of Glass and extend our sense of this meditation on pacifism
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Tughan Sokhiev at the New York Philharmonic Front Page
Formerly Relatively Unknown
By: - Oct 30th, 2018Prior to this week, the Russian conductor Tughan Sokhiev was an unknown quantity at the New York Philharmonic. Currently music director of the Bolshoi Theater and the Orchestre Nationale du Capitole de Toulouse, he made his debut on the podium at David Geffen Hall, armed with a triptych of works from his native land by Borodin, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky.
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Kurt Vonnegut at 59E59 Theaters Front Page
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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Charles Wuorinen's 80th at the Guggenheim Front Page
Goeyvaerts String Quartet Performs at Works & Process
By: - Oct 30th, 2018In celebration of his 80th birthday, Works & Process at the Guggenheim presented Charles Wuorinen's two String Trios, composed fifty years apart. In conversation before and between the superb performances of the Goeyvaerts String Trio, whose take on his work was praised by the composer, Wuorinen commented on his state of mind and ear at the time of the first composition. The Second String Trio is a world premiere commissioned by Works & Process.
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Marnie at the Metropolitan Opera Front Page
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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St. Thomas Church Presents a New Organ Front Page
Parry, Janacek, Poulenc, Bernstein and Barber Featured
By: - Oct 21st, 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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Gloria a Life by Emily Mann Front Page
Steinem as Hope-aholic, Directed by Diane Paulus
By: - Oct 19th, 2018Gloria, A Life, by Emily Mann is playing at the Daryl Roth Theater in Manhattan. The theater is configured as a circle of bleachers. Gloria Steinem, whose role as journalist and activist in the women’s movement is the subject of this event, has come to believe that people, women and men, sitting in circles and talking, is the answer to humanly rich and fulfilling lives.
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Joshua Bell and the New York Philharmonic Front Page
John Corigliano's Red Violin Comes to Life
By: - Oct 18th, 2018Is it worth it to create the greatest instrument in the history of Western music, even if it costs you everything? That is the question asked by the 1998 François Girard film The Red Violin, which tracks the creation, birth and long life of its titular object from a workshop in Cremona in the 16th century to an auction house in modern day Montreal.
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Aspect Foundation Presents Zemlinsky Quartet Front Page
Unrequited Love Explored
By: - Oct 17th, 2018The Aspect Foundation presented the Zemlinsky Quartet in New York. They performed works by their namesake, Dvo?ák, and Leos Janá?ek , in particular works inspired by their muses, women who left their love unrequited. The music's sadness and disappointment yielded was lovely. The group expressed comraderie and collaboration for a uniquely satisfying effect.
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Arendt/Heidegger by Douglass Lackey Front Page
A Love Story in Ideas at Theater for the New CIty
By: - Oct 15th, 2018Arendt/Heidegger is a love story which has happened countless times, and yet his betrayal of his beloved mirrors the profundity of the Heidegger's political, spiritual and intellectual betrayals. It is a most extraordinary love story. The realities of the times are ever present in the lives.
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David Robertson Conducts New York Philharmonic Front Page
Morning Matinees at David Geffen Hall
By: - Oct 15th, 2018NY Phil morning matinees open with conductor David Robertson in a performance of another major work by contemporary composer Louis Andriessen, the Dutch composer whose receipt of the 2016 Kravis Prize for new music has led to an in-depth Philharmonic exploration of his catalogue. Andriessen, in a program note, commented that " I have made no attempt to relate to what is known as "music from the Far East" or, even worse, 'world music.'"
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Place Premieres at the Harvey Theater Front Page
BAM's Next Wave Festival Featured Ted Hearne
By: - Oct 13th, 2018Place by Ted Hearne has its world premier as part of BAM’s New Wave Festival. Like Giuseppe Verdi whose music became the anthem of Italian unification, Hearne is a voice for the big issues before our country. His new oratorio addresses ‘gentrification.’ It is deeply personal and deeply moving.
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The Tell Tale Heart at Angel's Share Front Page
Green-Wood Cemetery Hosts Gregg Kallor
By: - Oct 12th, 2018The Angel's Share at Green-Wood cemetery concluded is season with a double bill of horror operas. In Tell-Tale Heart, Jennifer Johnson Cano charted her devolution into violence and self-incrimination with gusto, her final outcry answered only by that thumping two-note figure from Gregg Kallor's keyboard. Was she mad? Had she committed murder? Was there ever an old man to be killed in the first place? All these questions swirled and squirmed in one's mind, and the only answer follows.
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My Parsifal Conductor by Allan Leicht Front Page
Cosima Wagner Redeemed, A Comedy
By: - Oct 11th, 2018My Parsifal Conductor, Allan Leicht's hilarious and touching comedy on the late domestic life of Richard Wagner, which extends into immortality, is playing at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater through November 3. At the center of the curtainless stage is a big double bed over which a heavenly canopy hangs. We are somewhere between heaven and earth where Cosima Liszt Bulow Wagner is taking her last gasps. She is ninety and married Richard Wagner 60 years ago, after the birth of their three children, Isolde, Eva and Siegfried. Wagner died after 13 years of marriage.
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Girl of the Golden West at Metropolitan Opera Front Page
Blazing Saddles
By: - Oct 10th, 2018The Girl of the Golden West returned to the Met this month with a good cast. On Monday night, a performance featuring tenor Yusif Eyvazov and soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek provided a much needed shot of red blood to an anemic fall season.
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Final Follies at The Cherry Lane Theater Front Page
A.J. Gurney Lives On
By: - Oct 09th, 2018Final Follies, an evening of one act plays by A.J.Gurney is playing at The Cherry Lane Theater home of Primary Stages, Gurney's primary producers over the past decade. The first play, titled Final Follies was delivered to Gurney's agent a week before he died last year. It is a juicy send off for a haute Wasp author, who sees acting in porn movies as a job solution for waning WASPs looking for a way to earn a living.
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Montserrat Caballé, La Superba Front Page
Star Soprano of the 20th Century
By: - Oct 07th, 2018One would argue that in opera singers of a vanished age, it was the voice and only the voice that mattered. These words would be fitting as a eulogy for Montserrat Caballé. The soprano, who passed away at the age of 85, possessed one of the largest and most flexible instruments of her age, succeeding in everything from Rossini to dramatic operas by Puccini and Strauss.
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Mile Long Opera at The High Line Front Page
Co-Created by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro and David Lang
By: - Oct 06th, 2018The High Line is a big idea writ large, just like operas. It forms a perfect set for Mile Long Opera. Elizabeth Diller gets a director’s credit for an opera written specially for this location by David Lang. Anne Carson is librettist and Claudia Rankine, essayist. Mile Long Opera is subtitled, a biography of 7 pm, a time of transition from work to home.
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Bill Irwin On Beckett Front Page
The Irish Repertory Theater's Delightful Production
By: - Oct 03rd, 2018Bill Irwin, with his mastery of the physical, clownish gesture and the musical lines of language presents a moving portrait of selections from Samuel Beckett’s work at the Irish Repertory Theater through November 4. Interspersing his own commentary with performance, we are taken in and out of the playwright’s work, as Irwin explains clowning and physical theater, an important part of Beckett, and also productions past in which he has enjoyed the company of Steve Martin and the late Robin Williams whose body sailed into a Godot scene. In Beckett you laugh through pain.
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