Susan Hall
Bio:
Recent Articles:
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Art Bath's De Gustation Front Page
Making Multi Media Art for the Masses
By: - May 15th, 2023Elizabeth Yilmaz and Mara Driscoll, two dancers from the Metropolitan Opera troupe, have created a performance series that’s as wonderful as it is unique. The final performance of the spring season, and the 9th produced by this team with associate Cesar Abreu, was in the spirit of a happening.
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Boheme La La La at Opera Philadelphia Front Page
Helping Opera Live in the 21st Century
By: - May 11th, 2023Opera Philadelphia is ahead of the curve in keeping the operatic form alive and relevant. New operas and altered operas inevitably raise the question: What is opera? Music drives a story or an idea. That is at opera’s heart. La Boheme in Philadelphia meets the standard and then some.
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Champion at the Metropoitan Opera Front Page
Boxing, Gaydom, Blanchard all in the Mix
By: - May 09th, 2023The Metropolitan Opera’s heavily promoted Champion is concluding its run in New York. The first opera by Terrence Blanchard, which succeeds his Fire in My Bones at the Met, has a weaker score than its successor. One feels that Blanchard as composer of film scores (he is well-known as a colleague of Spike Lee), may have succumbed to the notion that music should lie under the visual track.
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New Federal Theatre Tells Tales Front Page
Underbellies of the Harlem Renaissance Directed by Woodie King, Jr.
By: - May 04th, 2023Four women writers of the Harlem Renaissance meet in "Telling Tales Out of School" by Wesley Brown, directed by Woodie King, Jr.
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John E. Lawrence Grooves in Ypsilanti Front Page
Music Goes Local
By: - May 01st, 2023The old Freighthouse has been converted into a nightclub in downtown Ypsilanti. A lifetime resident of Ypsilanti, guitarist and jazz composer John E. Lawrence has been in residence for a week. The final evening is a concert, sold out, with hopefuls hovering at the door.
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Boston Symphony Charms at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Something Old, Something New and Something very Flashy
By: - Apr 27th, 2023A decade ago, Andris Nelsons was conducting Tchaikovsky at the Metropolitan Opera, when the Boston Symphony arrived in town and their conductor, James Levine, fell ill. Nelsons stepped in and the rest is history. Shostakovich is the Russian composer Nelsons has adopted as his own. Rachmaninoff, whose Second Symphony was on the program on Monday night, may not be as close a soulmate for the young Latvian conductor, but new music is. He introduced Thierry Escaich's latest work.
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Minimalism at Town Hall Front Page
Bryce Dessner Gives the Form Its Full Richness
By: - Apr 26th, 2023Death of Classical, the brilliant music series conceived and curated by Andrew Ousley, was embedded in a Town Hall celebration of Minimalism. It was a spiritual lift of a special order, lighting the path to classical music’s future in neon reds and greens. The lush curtains draped at the back of the stage were bathed alternately in greens and blues and purples.
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Boston Modern Opera Project at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Case for Symphonic Sound Brilliantly Made
By: - Apr 17th, 2023BMOP continues its extended 25th Anniversary celebrations with a trip to Carnegie Hall. Featuring three works originally commissioned, premiered, and recorded by BMOP, "Play It Again" provides the capstone to the first 25 years of BMOP's mission. Andrew Norman's Play, Lei Liang's A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, and Lisa Bielawa's In medias res all receive their New York premieres on the historic Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage in Carnegie Hall.
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Endgame from the Irish Repertory Livestream Front Page
Bill Irwin and John Douglas Thompson Star
By: - Apr 14th, 2023Endgame livestreamed from the Irish Rep. Samuel Beckett’s Endgame enjoyed a must-see run at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Starring Bill Irwin, the clown and Beckett aficionado, as Clov and John Douglas Thompson as Hamm, here uncharacteristically for Thompson, the “insider.” He is bound to a wheelchair, blind and dependent on painkillers, yet the clear force of the moment. Clov lurches around him
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Boston Modern Opera Project to Carnegie Front Page
Gil Rose Celebrates 25th anniversary
By: - Apr 12th, 2023The Boston Modern Opera project is making its Carnegie Hall debut this weekend (April 15). Bostonians have had the privilege of hearing and seeing this company for many years. The program at Carnegie is enticing
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The Barnes Foundation Looks at South Africa Front Page
Sue Williamson and Lebohang Kganye Encourgae Remembrance
By: - Apr 11th, 2023In their respective practices, Sue Williamson (b. 1941) and Lebohang Kganye (b. 1990) incorporate oral histories into films, photographs, installations, and textiles to consider how the stories our elders tell us shape family narratives and personal identities. Implicitly and explicitly addressing legacies of racial violence and social injustice, their work offers a cross-generational dialogue on history, memory, and the power of self-narration.
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Der Rosenkavalier at the Metropolitan Opera Front Page
Great Singing Across the Boards
By: - Apr 08th, 2023Richard Strauss preferred to spell the title of his most popular opera: Der Rosencavalier. Although the opera began with conversations between librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Count Kessler, a diplomat, scholar and director of the Cranach-Presse in Weimar, the opera is very much Strauss’s. Kessler promised Hofmannsthal that he could pay for his children’s education with the proceeds from productions. That he did.
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Art Bath Overflows in New York Front Page
Wildly Original Programming Delights
By: - Mar 28th, 2023The producers of Art Bath, who dance together at the Metropolitan Opera, are warm individuals who make inspired selections for programs that range from conventional songs accompanied by live, drawn art to wild Moroccan sintir music which inspires accompanying clapping and ululation in joy.
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Lawrence Brownlee at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Amplifying a Peoples' Voice
By: - Mar 24th, 2023Lawrence Brownlee came to Carnegie Hall to present a program he has developed called Rising. In the second part of his show, Jasmine Barnes, Branson Spencer, Damien Sneed, Shawn Okpebholo, and Joel Thompson, young up-and-coming composers, set poems to their music. Carlos Simon offered vocalese
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Lawrence Brownlee Comes to Carnegie Front Page
Rising, Poems by Harlem Renaissance Poets Set to Music
By: - Mar 17th, 2023Larence Brownlee tours with Rising, a program of songs based on poems of the Harlem Renaissance and music by composers of color. He is at Carnegie Hall on March 23rd.
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The Horse at Long Beach Opera Front Page
James Darrah, a Most Modern Opera Artist, Makes His Mark
By: - Mar 14th, 2023Long Beach Opera presented an intriguing new music and dance performance, The Horse. Created and performed by Chris Emile, Cody Perkins wrote the music and vocals are by Alexis Vaughn. When you arrive, you are impelled to look around Rancho Los Cerritos. The area is wooded, a lone rabbit makes its way to a tree, looks around and across the road. It bounds off into the woods.
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The Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall Front Page
A Prelude to Carnegie's Weimar
By: - Mar 08th, 2023The Vienna Philharmonic arrived at Carnegie Hall, a highly anticipated occasion that enticed the cast of Lohengrin at the Metropolitan Opera to come over for a busman’s holiday. Richard Strauss, who was featured in the first program, loved Lohengrin. His last tone poem, The Alpine Symphony was performed in a program with Arnold Schoenberg's Vertlarke Nacht.
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Kissing the Floor in New York Front Page
Ellen McLaughlin's Moving Take on Antigone
By: - Mar 02nd, 2023Kissing the Floor, a radical and strangely beautiful retelling of Antigone by Sophocles, is playing on Theatre Row in New York through March 12th. It is beautifully acted. The language, even as it describes ugly scenes, is lilting and lovely. Playwright Ellen McLaughlin often delves into Greek subjects.
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Lorraine Hansberry at BAM Front Page
The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window Revived
By: - Feb 28th, 2023The Brooklyn Academy of Music is mounting Lorraine Hansberry’s second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s window at the Harvey Theater. Anne Kauffman, who directed the work at the Goodman Theater in Chicago in 2016, directs Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan.
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Leo Reich Arrives in New York Front Page
Hot Comic in "Literally Who Cares"
By: - Feb 20th, 2023Leo Reich has arrived at the Greenwich House Theater in New York fresh from triumphs on the London stage and Edinburgh Fringe. Literally Who Cares? is a show about Reich. He is a Gen Zer, a graduate of Footlights at Cambridge where everyone who’s anyone begins their career.
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Havel's Audience at LaMama Front Page
Czech Marionette Theater Adds Puppets to Wild Brew
By: - Feb 14th, 2023Vaclav Havel’s Audience circulated widely in a sanitized form during the Soviet occupation of his country after the Second World War. During the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August, 1968, Havel provided a narrative of the invasion on Radio Free Czechoslovakia and was banned from his work in the theater. To survive, he took a job in the Kraknos brewery in Trufnov. This is the setting of Audience.
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New York Festival of Song Celebrates Steven Blier Front Page
Anniversary Presents Stellar Singers
By: - Feb 13th, 2023New York Festival of Song Presents Amor: A 50th Anniversary Celebration of Steven Blier's Professional Debut at Kaufman Music Center on February 15, 2023
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Endgame at the Irish Repertory Theatre Front Page
Bill Irwin and John Douglas Thompson Star in Beckett
By: - Feb 10th, 2023Samuel Beckett’s Endgame is enjoying a must-see run at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Starring Bill Irwin, the clown and Beckett aficionado, as Clov and John Douglas Thompson as Hamm, here uncharacteristically for Thompson, the “insider.” He is bound to a wheelchair, blind and dependent on painkillers, yet the clear force of the moment. Clov lurches around him.
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Berkshire Opera Announces Season Front Page
Exciting Prospects
By: - Feb 07th, 2023The "innovative, clever and thoroughly professional" BERKSHIRE OPERA FESTIVAL (BOF) announces its 2023 season in Great Barrington and Pittsfield, MA, and for the first time in New York City. The only company of its kind in the Berkshire region, BOF produces opera at the highest level under the vision of esteemed co-founders Brian Garman (Artistic Director) and Jonathon Loy (Director of Production). The festival has "destination" status. Others write: "No longer need we confine our opera-going to HD films—now we have the highest quality productions and performers in our own backyard."
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Opera Philadelphia Mounts Credos Front Page
Margaret Bonds and Carl Orff in One Performane
By: - Feb 06th, 2023In one smashing performance, Opera Philadelphia presented two Credos, statements of belief by composers who lived and worked at about the same time, in strikingly different circumstances. Carl Orff survived the Nazi regime in Germany by not protesting. Margaret Bonds grew up in a thriving Chicago art community.
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