Susan Hall
Bio:
Recent Articles:
-
Dennis Lehane's Coronado in Denver Theatre
Mysterious Heartbreaks, Murder and Mayhem Lehane Style
By: - Feb 27th, 2012Dennis Lehane is a well-known Massachusetts novelist whose books are often made into movies like Mystic River. This is his first play and is based on several short stories. At the Firehouse Theater in Denver the play received its regional premier.
-
Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr. Sloane at the Germinal Theatre
Remembering the Days Before Stonewall
By: - Feb 25th, 2012Gary Oldman, nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, once played Joe Orton in the great film, Prick up Your Ears. Orton's partner and murderer had suggested the title for a film Orton was writing for the Beatles, but Orton thought the title too good. No question when you hear Orton done well, as it is in Denver, you prick up your ears.
-
Sneak Preview of the Met 2012-2013 Music
The Met Opera Announces the New Season
By: - Feb 21st, 2012While wonderful singing is planned some singers who haven't been popular at the Met are returning. Good news. Sondra Radvanovsky returns for seven performances as Elisabeth de Valois in Don Carlo. Marina Poplyskaya is gone. Ferruccio Furlanetto returns as Philip and Dmitri Hvorostovsky will sing Rodrigo. This is so promising.
-
Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross in Colorado Theatre
The Edge Theater Presents a Daring Take
By: - Feb 21st, 2012Glengarry Glen Ross is David Mamet's best known play. To make it fresh for audiences who know the dialogue by heart and who often hear it daily in the office where it has become young business people's way of talking, is not easy. Rick Yaconis and his young company succeed, of course, with a little help from the great playwright.
-
Nottage's Crumbs from the Table of Joy Theatre
Denver: An Early Play Rings True Today
By: - Feb 19th, 2012Theater is alive and well across the country. Perhaps because people simply are not satisfied by looking at canned images all day and communicating with others in tweets and Facebook postings, legitimate theater is thriving. In nooks and crannies surrounding the Denver Arts Performing Center, small companies with special missions are filling their houses.
-
Marriage of Figaro at Opera Colorado Music
Superb Staging by Comic Opera Expert David Gately
By: - Feb 16th, 2012Just because Marriage of Figaro is a great opera, with 14 of its 26 musical numbers ensembles does not mean that a production will succeed. In Denver attention has been paid to every aspect of this Mozart and the opera gleams. It's fun too.
-
Opera Notes from the Met Music
Ernani, Aida, and the Saga of the Ring Continues
By: - Feb 14th, 2012In support of their great young soprano, Angela Meade, the Met put three great voices on the stage for Ernani. Not your usual fare at the Met, but a thrilling performance, due locally in HD on February 25th.
-
Woyseck at Space on White in New York Theatre
Georg Buchner's Unfinished Masterpiece is Great Theater
By: - Feb 14th, 2012Buchner died at 25 but left behind an enduring legacy. Woyseck is more familiar as Alban Berg's opera, but the play is dynamite, particularly as presented by a small, young New York Company, Stasz/Pruitt.
-
New York City Opera Returns with La Traviata Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music a Hopeful Home
By: - Feb 13th, 2012After months of effort to restore an important opera company to the New York scene, the City Opera found a wonderful venue for La Traviata. Brooklyn Academy of Music is a hopeful venue for the homeless company.
-
Enron at the TimeLine in Chicago To April 15 Theatre
Lucy Prebble's London Hit Sizzles in the Windy City
By: - Feb 12th, 2012The sub-prime mortgage crisis was created just like Enron itself. Figuring out how to create financial instruments from 'air', by simply promoting them. A few make a ton of money. Most people suffer. This lively production in Chicago makes you wonder if we can stop the trend.
-
Lyric Opera of Chicago: Aida Music
Interwoven Grandeur and Intimacy
By: - Feb 09th, 2012Verdi's Aida is a wonderful opera warhorse. At the Lyric Opera of Chicago, it was the very best of its recent outings, featuring Sondra Radvanovsky, Marcello Giordani and Jill Grove. Conducted by Renato Palumbo and directed by Matthew Lata you could not ask for a better production.
-
The Collegiate Chorale Presents Bruckner and Tippett Music
Carnegie Hall is Home to A Child of Our Time
By: - Feb 05th, 2012One of the consequences of the demise of Opera Boston was the cancellation of an opera by Michael Tippett. The Collegiate Chorale keeps Tippett live in a stunning performance of A Child of Our Time.
-
Andris Nelsons and Boston Symphony Orchestra Music
Nelsons to Conduct at the 75th Anniversary Tanglewood Gala
By: - Feb 02nd, 2012We may be years away from the installation of a new Music Director at the BSO, but Nelsons presence at an important event, made me wonder.
-
News from the Metropolitan Opera Music
Firing the Imagination, or Not.
By: - Feb 01st, 2012Tosca is now terrific, thanks to Tomer Zvulun, Angela Meade is more firmly planted in the wings and on stage, but the Ring ends up in the beheading of bobble-headed statues, a bore and a visual insult.
-
Rienzi Takes Avery Fisher Hall Under Eve Queler Music
Opera Orchestra of New York Demolishes Rome
By: - Jan 30th, 2012Rienzi, Wagner's third opera, was scheduled for an OONY concert performance in 2009, but the economic crisis cut it. Now Eve Queler returns with one of her signature pieces, and the staging was wonderful indeed.
-
La Dame Pique Peaks at the Paris Opera Bastille Music
Vladimir Galouzine, a Great Hermann
By: - Jan 25th, 2012Singer after singer, in role upon role, hits a home run at the Opera Bastille. You might think this is the way Opera should be delivered, but we don't get it at the Metropolitan Opera, so consistent performance is a thrill in Paris.
-
Opera Bastille's Smashing Manon by Massanet Music
Natalie Dessay and Giuseppe Filianoti Enchant
By: - Jan 19th, 2012Let us hope that there will always be Paris, because at the Opera Bastille, there will always be opera as it is meant to be: big, thrilling, musically completely in step and in tune. Even punk and Emo seem just right on stage with the descending staircases of Kings.
-
Le Comte d'Ory Seduces Our Gal in Zurich Music
Camareno, Bartoli and Olvera Scintillate at the Opernhaus
By: - Jan 13th, 2012Zurich proves that opera can be live and freshly-minted in apt productions, beautifully sung and acted and true to the composer and the form without twisting itself out of shape to satisfy. When it first opened in Paris almost two hundred years ago critics said Le Comte d’Ory was a mess, too vaudeville, and too much of a pastiche of Rossini’s previous work.
-
Otello at the Zurich Opera House Music
Thomas Hampson, Barbara Frittoli and Jose Cura
By: - Jan 09th, 2012Americans turn up their noses at Reggie Theater and Eurotrash, but certainly in Zurich, the directors understand what the implied deconstruction means. The setting may be changed, and the costumes made to match stage time, but the heart of a wonderful story remains the same. Intelligent opera designers understand that jealousy, temptation and the impact of missing handkerchiefs don't change over time. The Zurich Otello mounted by noted British stage director Graham Vick is wonderful.
-
Rufus Wainwright's Prima Donna Music
Urgent Plea For New York City Opera
By: - Jan 04th, 2012Parts of this opera are available in a terrific documentary, Rufus Wainwright, Prima Donna, the Making of an Opera. City Opera plans to give the US premier at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, but they have not resolved problems with unions. Rufus's letter tells you all about it.
-
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Channels Bach Music
All the Brandenburg Concertos Presented with Aplomb
By: - Jan 03rd, 2012The Chamber Music Society knows what it is doing. Under the artistic direction of Wu Han and David Finkley, they have become the go to group of the heavy-duty institutions of Lincoln Center. But while three big houses often paper to get a plausibly filled hall, the CMS is packed. We learned some of the reasons why in their Baroque December.
-
The Amore Opera Presents The Barber of Seville Music
A Delightful Production of Rossini's Legendary Opera
By: - Jan 02nd, 2012Although the Metropolitan Opera is committed to driving audience from live performances in the House by mounting rehearsals for HD broadcasts, where singers often call in performances, opera is live and thriving in America, even though Opera Boston closed. The Amore Opera in New York is heir to the Amato Opera, famous for giving an opportunity to talented young performers and also for mounting unusual fare. The Amore is terrific, under the helm of Nathan Hull.
-
The Enchanted Island Live in HD January 21 Music
Joyce DiDonato and David Daniels Shine
By: - Dec 29th, 2011This is first opera Met General Manager Peter Gelb has conceived from stem to stern. The music is not original. Instead it is a mash up of composers from the Baroque period, put together to sound one like the other and provide continuity for a mash up of two Shakespeare plays. The set and costume designers deliver as do the singers.
-
Christmas at Carnegie Hall with Bella Hristova Music
Jaime Laredo Leads the New York String Orchestra
By: - Dec 26th, 2011What better way to end the old year and start the new than a concert led by veteran violinist and conductor Jaime Laredo at Carnegie Hall. In his hands, the young solo violinist and the entire orchestra of the best students in the US shone.
-
The Pearl Theatre Does Richard II Proud Theatre
An Apt Play for Our Times
By: - Dec 19th, 2011Ambition, greed and corruption stalk our lands. But we are not really different from most historical periods. Is this the necessary condition of man? The Pearl production provokes this question in a lively staging.
<< Previous Next >>