Music
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Karita Mattila in Janacek's Makropulos Case
Metropolitan Opera Offers the Elixir of Life
By: - May 09th, 2012Janacek considered The Makropulos Case one of his finest operas. After fighting for the rights, composition went smoothly. With his 70th birthday approaching, he may well have been thinking about extended life. Surely in Europe after World War I, in which 6,000,000 young men had died, the subject of life was at the front of many minds. An elixir to add a few centuries?
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Boston Baroque Presents Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice
Lean Production Brings Out Opera's Beauties
By: - May 08th, 2012Gluck attempted to strip baroque opera of its excesses. His major effort, based on the Orpheus myth, remains a singular work today. Is Gluck’s classic “reform†opera the most perfect work in the operatic repertory?
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Monadnock Music Festival 2012
Opening Night July 6 Peterborough Town House
By: - May 07th, 2012As it closes in on a half century of presenting exceptional classical music to New England, the Monadnock Music Festival is already beginning a new era with the announcement of its 2012 season.
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A Conversation with Herb Gart - Part III
Establishing Credibility
By: - May 06th, 2012"The Earle Hotel was one of the few buildings in Manhattan still wired for DC current. I watched my tape recorder go up in smoke. " With the decision to move his base of operations permanently to NYC, Herb finds his path beset with unexpected pitfalls from the very start. Of course he is not alone in the struggle and it is not long before he finds others depending on him. He also finds himself going head to head with some of the most powerful people in the industry.
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Kioi Sinfonietta Tokyo at Alice Tully Hall
Thierry Fischer Leads a Celebration of Cherry Blossoms
By: - May 04th, 2012The Japanese group of fabulous musicians is debuting in the US as they raise money for the victims of the earthquake and tsunami.
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Tanglewood Ticket Deals
$75 Season Lawn Pass for Berkshire Residents
By: - May 03rd, 2012Tanglewood, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this season, June 22-September 2, is offering a number of ticket programs designed to give visitors and Berkshire residents a wide variety of options when planning their visit to the BSO’s summer home. Kripalu and the Clark Art Institute are each teaming up with the BSO this summer to offer three new ticket deals showcasing a variety of different Berkshire summer attractions.
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Cutting Edge Operas by Wiprud and Sirota
Robert Browning and Boccaccio Stories Featured
By: - May 02nd, 2012Victoria Bond concluded her lively and provocative Cutting Edge concerts with two one act operas about ladies who scan passions far from the marital bed. In The Last Dutchess, Lucrezia has her head cut off. Lessons are learned by the time the second opera opens. The Clever Mistress, solicting help in the confession booth and taking advantage of her tottering husband's business obligations, gets off scot free.
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Wagner Rings the Met
Live in HD Starts May 7
By: - May 02nd, 2012The mounting of Wagner's epic Ring Cycle by the Metropolitan Opera has provoked debate and controversy. Through global Live in HD broadcasts the controversial productions will be coming soon to a theatre near you. The cycle begins on May 7 with a screening of the Susan Froemke documentary Wagner's Dream.
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Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks at TCAN
Delightful 1960s Reset Thrills Natick Audience
By: - May 02nd, 2012Dan first came to our attention during the mid ‘60s as the drummer and then guitarist /vocalist for the under rewarded though widely acknowledged Charlatans. The Lickettes, Roberta Donnay and Daria, tarted up as floozies but unmistakably accomplished Jazz vocalists on their own, offered their backup vocals, instrumental percussion, hand gesture accompaniments, and playful body language commentary.
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Patrick Watson at Mass MoCA June 30
Canadian Pop Icon
By: - May 01st, 2012Canadian icon Patrick Watson brings his unique blend of cabaret-pop and classically influenced indie rock to the Berkshires when he performs as part of MASS MoCA's Alt Cabaret series this summer on Saturday, June 30, at 8 PM. Raised in Quebec and now residing in Montreal, Watson comes to North Adams as part of Oh, Canada, MASS MoCA's year-long celebration of Canadian contemporary art.
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Sandrine Piau Pearly Toned, Lyrical Nocturnes
Boston’s Jordan Hall Celebrity Series With Susan Manoff
By: - Apr 30th, 2012Soprano Sandrine Piau, appeared with pianist Susan Manoff in the intimate setting of Jordan Hall, part of the Celebrity Series, last Saturday. Ms. Piau is an internationally acclaimed, baroque and lyric soprano who has performed in most of the concert festivals in Europe, as well as at Carnegie Hall and Brooklyn Academy of Music, both in New York. More at ease in the French repertoire than the German lieder, she nevertheless achieved a near perfect functional tonality and genuine success with Ms. Manoff’s sensitive and precise accompaniments.
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Handel and Haydn Society: Jubilant Coronations!
Soprano Teresa Wakim’s Triumphant Debut at Symphony Hall
By: - Apr 30th, 2012The Handel and Haydn Society concluded their season with a program of King and Queen’s Coronations Music from Handel’s “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, from Salomon†and “Coronation Anthem No. 1, Zadok the Priest,†Hayden’s “Symphony No. 85 La reine,†“Exsultate, Jubilate, K. 165†and “Mass in C Major, K. 317, Coronation†by Mozart. Maestro Harry Christophers received accolades for an exceptional season of direction and the silver-voiced soprano, Ms. Teresa Wakim, enjoyed a triumphant debut.
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Juilliard Presents Don Giovanni
Stephen Wadsworth at the Helm
By: - Apr 29th, 2012The opera of all operas Don Giovanni is among other things the perfect vehicle to display up and coming talent. Stephen Wadsworth, a man of many hats who directed this production as the head of the Opera Studies department at the Juilliard School of Music.
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A Conversation With Herb Gart – Part II
Back and Forth Twixt Philadelphia and NYC
By: - Apr 28th, 2012This continues the conversation started in Part I. Folk recordings are still a minor component of the recording industry, but that is on the verge of change as more established companies in the music industry begin to view it for its profit potential.
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John Corigliano's Ghost of Versailles
Manhattan School of Music Brings the Ghosts to Life
By: - Apr 27th, 2012An opera mounted too seldom is everything you could want in the Manhattan School's production. This subversive opera pricks our understanding of history, of stories and of opera itself. Early on, the audience knowingly laughed when it was suggested on stage that opera was boring. There was nothing boring about the proceedings in uptown Manhattan.
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For The Love of the Music : The Club 47 Folk Revival
A film by Todd Kwait & Rob Stegman
By: - Apr 25th, 2012For The Love of the Music attempts to tell the story of the legendary Harvard Square coffeehouse and folk performance venue, Club 47, and its eventual successor, Club Passim over a ten plus year period from 1958 to 1968.
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Boston Lyric Opera's The Inspector
John Musto Sets Action in Mussolini-era Sicily
By: - Apr 22nd, 2012The audience laughed throughout and I laughed a few times as well, but tame comedy could have been more if composer had taken more risks. “The Inspector,†given here for the first time since its creative team tweaked it after its 2011 premiere at the Wolf Trap Opera in Virginia, is an amusing comedy in the Italian opera buffa tradition.
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Bernadette Peters Opens Pops May 9
Visions of America Inspires a season
By: - Apr 19th, 2012The Boston Pops 2012 “Visions of America†season under the direction of Keith Lockhart, opens in style on May 9 at 8 p.m. with Broadway sensation Bernadette Peters performing showstoppers such as There Is Nothing Like a Dame and Being Alive as well as her signature Not a Day Goes By and other tunes that have made the diva one of this country’s legendary stars of the stage and screen.
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A Conversation With Herb Gart - Part I
The Early Days
By: - Apr 19th, 2012Herb Gart had a hand in the careers of many entertainment icons including Bill Cosby, Janis Ian, The Youngbloods, Charlie Daniels, Don McLean and Ed Begly, Jr. Here he chats about how it all started.
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Cutting Edge Music at Manhattan's Symphony Space
Victoria Bond Presents Contemporary Composers
By: - Apr 18th, 2012Victoria Bond makes a case for the accessibility of contemporary music as the Great Noise Ensemble interprets. Her delightful short chamber piece, Coqui, concluded the first part of the program.
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Gotham Chamber Opera Presents Mozart
Il Sogno di Scipione Staged by Christopher Alden
By: - Apr 12th, 2012A lively production and great singing make early Mozart come to life in this revived production by the Gotham Chamber Opera.
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Ear Say II - Bearfoot and Joy Kills Sorrow
Ongoing Thoughts About Appealing CDs
By: - Apr 12th, 2012Bluegrass, Old timey, Mountain Music, Hillbilly, all cloaked these days as Roots or Americana. Here are two superb examples
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The Collegiate Chorale at Carnegie Hall
His Imperial Majesty Arrives in the Mikado
By: - Apr 11th, 2012Not a minute passes over the whole world in which The Mikado is not being produced. Gilbert and Sullivan's arguably best but inarguably fun operetta was created quickly in the shadow of a Japanese executioner's sword.
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Christoph von Dohnanyi Conducts Brahms
BSO's German Requiem Performed Annually Since 1926
By: - Apr 11th, 2012Brahms composed The German Requiem, “Ein Deutsches Requiem,†at a time of bereavement and personal, piercing associations. The plunge in the Rhine of his mentor and spiritual father, Robert Shumann, as well as the death of his mother, Christiane, who died before he could reach her, are the inspiration for this memorial piece. “Ein Deutsches Requiem†is not a generic requiem; it differs from the standard, as it is neither a mass nor oratorio, and nowhere in the libretto is there a reference to the son of God. The score is composed of seven movements that use German texts from the Old Testament, New Testament and Apocrypha. The libretto is selected to spread blessings, rather than sadness and despair, to the living and to the dead.
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Anna Caterina Antonacci at Lincoln Center
A Great Singer at Alice Tully Hall
By: - Apr 10th, 2012Hearing Antonacci sing is like winning the lotto. She is not often in the US and catching her when she is reveals why her reputation as one of the world's great soprano-mezzos is so well-deserved.
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