Susan Hall
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Recent Articles:
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Mahabharata as Battlefield via Peter Brook at BAM Front Page
A Startling Message from the Distant Past
By: - Sep 30th, 2016Mahabharata is older and many times as long as the Bible. Its message of man's impulsive thrust to war and destruction is as fresh today as it must have been when it was first composed. Brook has tackled the piece before. This short form packs a powerful punch.
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Metropolitan Opera's Controversial Opening Front Page
Cast in Trenchcoats Shine in Tristan and Isolde
By: - Sep 27th, 2016Never has the disconnect between glorious singing and a production been so clear. To put Tristan and Isolde in trenchcoats isn't even a starter in a Wagner opera. Stuart Skelton, Nina Stemme, Rene Pape, Ekaterina Gubanova and Evgeny Nitikin are all superb in their roles. It is an insult to put such world class singers on this set. Do not be tempted by the HD. Listen on the radio where you can enjoy the opera's glories.
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Opera Philadelphia's Spiritually Lush Mazzoli Front Page
Exciting New Wave in Opera
By: - Sep 26th, 2016Opera Philadelphia is leading the way in America, as it presents adventuresome new operas by contemporary composers exploring subjects of interest. Breaking the Waves is the most ambitious in its complex subject matter. The director, composer and librettist have joined forces to present a wrenching work which is very much embedded in opera tradition, but stretches the form musically and dramatically.
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NY City Ballet Presents Fashion Front Page
Walker Joins Jason Wu and Thomas Kitko
By: - Sep 22nd, 2016Inspired by the presence of Fashion Week in Lincoln Center, the New York City Ballet inaugurated a Fall Fashion Gala. Fashion Week was kicked out of the arts center by the New York City Parks Department, complaining among other issues about the number of spike heels. Although the event left, the Fashion Gala continues. A wonderful case is made for the use of high fashion costumes in ballet.
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Berkshire's Fiorello Comes to New York Front Page
BTG Production Transfers With a Wallop
By: - Sep 21st, 2016I happened on the Berkshire Theatre Company production on East 13th Street in New York and was entranced. Packed into a small stage and directed to perfection by Bob Moss, the intimate setting works perfectly for this musical portrait of an oversized man.
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Roger Nierenberg Teaches Listening Music
Kodaly, Britten, Wagner and Ravel at DeMenna Center
By: - Sep 20th, 2016The conundrum of declining symphony audiences is being addressed with all sorts of efforts. The Roger Nierenberg proposal, mixing the audience in and with the orchestra, is a bold and helpful approach.
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Isabel Huppert is Phaedra(s) at BAM Front Page
Triple Queen Seduces at the Harvey Theater
By: - Sep 18th, 2016Phaedra is a character who has fascinated through time. Now the fascinating actress Isabel Huppert plays her. Racine best captured Phaedra's sense that neither lucidity nor sincerity is helpful in resolving emotional problems. Consciousness of failure is a noble human trait. Phaedra knows but her knowledge is useless.
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The Birds Updated for the Stage Front Page
Du Maurier to Hitchcock to McPherson
By: - Sep 15th, 2016The Birds comes to the stage via a Daphne Du Maurier story on which Alfred Hitchcock's classic film of the same title was based. Now it provides the basis for playwright Conor McPherson's innovative play at 59E59th Street Theatres. McPherson has moved his story into a setting that is more reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road than Du Maurier and Hitchcock.
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New York City Opera Opens in the Rose Theatre Front Page
Aleko and Pagliacci Double Bill
By: - Sep 12th, 2016Michael Capusso has breathed new life into the New York City Opera and honors its mission and traditions as well. The fall season opened with a double bill: Aleko by Serge Rachmaninoff and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.
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Hershey Felder's Maestro Front Page
Leonard Bernstein's Tanglewood and So Much More
By: - Sep 11th, 2016After an early triumphant conducting performance, the press crowded into the green room to speak to the young Maestro. They then turned to his father Sam and asked," Why did you block your son’s early career in music,?" To which Sam replied "How did I know he was Leonard Bernstein?"
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the loser by David Lang at BAM Front Page
Thomas Bernhard Novel an Opera
By: - Sep 09th, 2016David Lang was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music to compose an opera. The remarkable chamber opera 'the loser' is the result. Lang has lifted the author Thomas Bernhard's words, translated by Jack Dawson, intact. He can do this because the author composes with words very much as a musician composes with notes. The subject of the piece is Glenn Gould, whose uncanny ability to separate voices is the same as Bernhard's narrative schizophrenia.
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Tenor Johan Botha Dead at 51 Front Page
Memories of His Large Glorious Voice
By: - Sep 08th, 2016Johan Botha died today in Vienna at 51. He had suffered from liver cancer, but was scheduled to sing at the Wiener Staatsoper this fall. The September 10th performance of Turandot will be dedicated to him. He once said, “The biggest milestone for me is to make people happy and smile.”
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Mark Morris Dance at Mostly Mozart Front Page
Morris Paints Notes in Dance
By: - Aug 27th, 2016Mark Morris is billed as a musician, and has, in fact, been music director of the Ojai Festival. He is clearly a musicians’ musician and knows as much about music as most professionals. His main gig is choreography. He insists on using live ‘bands,’ in this case, the Mostly Mozart Orchestra. Morris channels Mozart's notes in surprising and apt movements.
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Naughton Twins Play Messiaen Front Page
Genetics Gives a New Dimension to Duo Piano at the Crypt
By: - Aug 26th, 2016Two pianos. Four hands. One heart. A spiritual beauty lurks in the origins of Messiaen's music. Certainly duo pianists Michelle and Christina Naughton seem spiritually bound to one another, although there a sparks of difference. This does not suggest conflict, but rather an opportunity to work to achieve unity, as Messiaen must have worked to embrace his God in the face of the Nazi occupation of France.
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Josephine Baker JB Julia Bullock Front Page
Hello Blackbird at Mostly Mozart
By: - Aug 25th, 2016Peter Sellars suggested that Julia Bullock interpret Josephine Baker. The young African American, who is more interested in creating musical moments than she is in taking on conventional opera roles, is riveting as Baker in a piece composed by Tyshawn Sorey.
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Opera Love in Santa Fe Front Page
Exploring a Theme
By: - Aug 25th, 2016Love is the theme connecting the five productions of the Santa Fe Opera 2016 Festival. Leading off one week of the season was Don Giovanni, where an attempted rape and then a murder jumpstart the opera. The Don is a questionable subject for the discussion of love, as the Don mows down woman after woman in his quest for the Guinness Book of Records first place position as the world’s best, or most effective, seducer. Yet love triumphs.
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Capriccio at Santa Fe Opera Front Page
Insider's Debate Gives Pleasure to All
By: - Aug 23rd, 2016Are words or music more important? In opera there is no debate. Both reign. Richard Strauss, trapped in Nazi Germany because beloved members of his family were Jewish and he wanted to save them, set his last opera as a debate. Unquestionably, in 1942 he was also making a plea for civilization. Santa Fe produces a delightful take on Capriccio.
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Don Giovanni Burns Up in Santa Fe Front Page
Superb Mozart
By: - Aug 22nd, 2016The production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni now running at the Santa Fe Opera is a perfect occasion for a celebration of the opera company’s sixtieth anniversary. Seating over 2200, it is a grand house in part because it is located on a mountain top with a view of the Jemez Mountains. Performances begin at 8pm as the sun sets and the backstage real sky is streaked orange, and red and burnt sienna.
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Inon Barnatan Plays A Little Night Music Front Page
Candlelit Suites at Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center
By: - Aug 14th, 2016Inon Barnatan is a premier pianist who is game to offer music in different venues. From Washington Irving High School to Poisson Rouge and every pocket of the Lincoln Center campus, he has engaged audiences in his art with a brilliant humility that stuns. His creation of a Baroque Suite with short dance pieces from Bach to Barber was a magical moment in the Stanley Kaplan Penthouse.
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Alice Austen, Photographer Portrayed Front Page
Robin Rice Conjures A Life
By: - Aug 08th, 2016Alice Austen is well-known to residents of Staten Island, where her family home, Clear Comfort was perched on a hill over looking the New York harbor. Like Vivien Maier her story attracts the attention now that it did not in her own lifetime.
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Paavo Jarvis Conducts Mostly Mozart Front Page
Pied Piper Martin Fröst Soars on Clarinet
By: - Aug 06th, 2016At Lincoln Center Paavo Järvi conducted the Mostly Mozart Orchestra softly yet he carried a big baton, from La Sidone which Arvo Part composed for the opening of the Olympics in Turin Italy. We are reminded that this year’s Olympics opened on the very day of this concert.
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Butler by Richard Strand in New York Front Page
How Fort Monroe Launched Emancipation
By: - Aug 04th, 2016Dusting off a proud fact of VIrginia's history, playwright Richard Strand provides a hugely entertaining evening of theatre on the dour subjects of the Civil War and slavery.
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Beethoven's Fidelio at Caramoor Front Page
Elza Van Den Heever Shows What the Voice Can Do
By: - Jul 31st, 2016Fidelio is a political opera, but not politics rooted in biography, which John Adams and Philip Glass have undertaken. Here is an ordinary political prisoner, starving to death for his principles. Edward Snowden might be the model for the role today if the big guys could catch him.
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Sound Worlds of So at Lincoln Center Front Page
Phasing from Reich to Lang to Dessner
By: - Jul 30th, 2016In the 19th century, no one musically-inclined would have imagined percussion as the central arbiter of musical taste two centuries later. Yet today no one could live without percussion and the So Percussion Quartet makes the case for striking objects of every imaginable variety, including flower pots and tea cups.
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1927's Golem at Lincoln Center Front Page
Modern, Modern Times Are Here
By: - Jul 27th, 2016Golem One looks part Botero in the lobby of the Time Warner building, where kids play with the tiny penis all day. Golem 2 is more like Chaplin in a St Exupery aviator outfit. Golem 3 is an amalgam of all the visuals we’ve seen. Intriguing. This enchanting theatrical drama uses every imaginable tool to achieve its ends.
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