Front Page
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Arnold Trachtman at Galatea Fine Arts
More from a Concerned Artist
By: - Oct 29th, 2017Since the late 1960s I have curated and written about the work of the Cambridge based, activist and artist, Arhold Trachtman. A few of us- scholars, curators and critics- share a convicition that he is on the short list of most significant Boston artists of his generation. Given the highly charged and passionate focus of the work it has been in general too hot to handle for mainstream museums and curators. He has a staunch champion in Marjorie Kaye, the emeritus founder of Galatea Gallery, who co cuated the current exhiition with the artist's daughter Maxima Baudissin.
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Berlioz' Damnation of Faust at BSO
A Dramatic Legend Rides High
By: - Oct 29th, 2017Damnation of Faust turned out to be one of Berlioz' most popular compositions. It was the first work in which he wrote the libretto himself. Berlioz loved Virgil, Shakespeare, and Goethe above all. He could not entrust the words of these authors to anyone else. In Damnation, we have a great presentation of the Faust story. The Boston Symphony, Tanglewood chorus and thrilling soloists brought Berlioz safely to heaven and hell.
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Our Town Revised in Miami Beach
World Premiere of a Reborn Classic
By: - Oct 28th, 2017A new staging of Our Town emphasizes Miami's diversity. A mult-cultural, multi-racial cast speaks English, Spanish and Creole in new, different but faithful version of Thornton Wilder's classic Our Town. Talented cast ensures classic Wilder play remains touching, yet unsentimental
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Dolores Claiborne by Tobias Picker
New York City Opera Hits a Home Run, Again
By: - Oct 27th, 2017New York City Opera's production of Tobias Picker's latest opera, Dolores Claiborne, honors the composer in a riveting theatrical presentation. Oliver Sacks explored the musical brain in his Musicophilia. The connection between the two hemispheres of the brain is enlarged demonstrably in talented musicians. So too a section of the hippocampus. Picker, who began composing at four, was studied by Sacks. Whether or not his brain reflects musicality because he started playing and composing early, or because he was born with this ability, remains to be answered. What is clear in Dolores Claiborne, as produced by NYCO, is how great his talent for opera is.
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Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield Update
Shows Through April
By: - Oct 26th, 2017Upcoming events at the Colonial include, The Airplane Family & Friends with Live Dead ‘69 (10/27), $10 Music Garage: Subtleties (11/9), Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) Touring Company (11/11), $5 Comedy Garage: Rojo Perez (at the Garage in the Colonial Theatre lobby 11/16), Ain't Wastin' Time: A Berkshire Tribute to Gregg Allman with Rev Tor's Steal Your Peach Band & Friends (11/30) and A Christmas Carol (12/9 through 12/22).
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The Agitators by Mat Smart a World Premiere
The Story of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass in Rochester
By: - Oct 26th, 2017The civil rights pioneers Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass had roots in Rochester which is mounting a world premiere about them by Mat Smart. This is the best dramatic treatment thus far to deal with their achievements and close relationship.
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Cape Cod Museum of Art
Promoting Regional Visual Arts Since 1980
By: - Oct 24th, 2017During our visit to the Cape Cod Museum of Art we viewed several special exhibitions: Salvatore Del Deo: A Storied History, extended through October 28, Discovering Cape Cod’s Museum Treasures, through November 26, and Judith Shahn Selections: A Tribute to Thomas Linxweiler through November 12. We met with Dr. Edith Tonelli who has been director for the past four years. She provided an overview of the museum and plans moving forward. We also learned why the museum and adjacent Cape Playhouse prove to have been uniquely moving experiences.
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Salvatore Del Deo: A Storied History
Co Founder of Provincetown’s Ciro’s and Sal’s
By: - Oct 23rd, 2017Now 92, the first generation Italian born artist, Salvatore Del Deo, settled in Provincetown in the post war 1940s. To pay for paint he did all the usual odd jobs. On summer he shippied out on a scallop boat. That experience richly informs a poignant triptych “Homage to the Patricia Marie” which was a part of his retrospective Salvatore Del Deo: A Storied History at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis. Famously he teamed up with another starving artist, Ciro Cozzi, to co found the legendary restaurant Ciro's and Sals. He later started his own Sal's Place.
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Tarzan in Ft. Lauderdale
High-Flying Musical Adaptation by Slow Burn Theatre Co.
By: - Oct 23rd, 2017Lighting-heavy production of Tarzan still benefits from 'less-is-more' approach. South Florida theater company show marked by strong acting, singing, acrobatics . Musical's themes are illuminated by the director.
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A Tale of Two Cities in Pasadena
Play Adapted by Mike Poulton.
By: - Oct 22nd, 2017“A Tale of Two Cities”, published in 1859, was one of the finest novels of its day and now, 200 years later it appears on the stage of Pasadena’s classic theatre company, A Noise Within, as a bold, new, dramatic production from the pen of journeyman writer and play adaptor Mike Poulton.
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Shaw's Mrs. Warren’s Profession
At Pasadena's A Noise Within
By: - Oct 22nd, 2017Pasadena’s A Noise Within theatre company, is staging a provocative and spirited comedy production of Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession”, a witty play about the ‘world’s oldest profession’, or is it about something else that is masquerading for a more insidious subject matter discussion: the misogyny of men in a patriarchal society who harbor the fear of being exposed for their shortcomings.
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Orchestra dell' Accademia Nationale at Carnegie
Barbara Hannigan Sings Sciarrino
By: - Oct 22nd, 2017Sir Antonio Pappano has made his mark at Royal Covent Garden over the past decade and a half. He is also the music director of the Orchestra dell' Accademia Nationale di Santa Cecilia (Rome). They return to Carnegie Hall after an almost half century absence. Pappano presented a work composer Salvatore Sciarrino wrote especially for the great and adventuresome soprano (and conductor) Barbara Hannigan. Mahler's Sixth Symphony followed.
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L’Orchestre Symphonique at Carnegie
The Idea of North
By: - Oct 21st, 2017L’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal is one of the finest symphonic ensembles in North America. They are a stellar symphonic ensemble with a long history and a sound all their own, combining precise European string playing with the lusty, leather-lunged brass one associated with this continent.
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Strange Ladies by Susan Sobeloff
Central Works and plays at Berkeley City Club
By: - Oct 21st, 2017Strange Ladies greatest strength is its informativeness about the history of the movement, and additionally about the Occoquan Workhouse Prison, where public officials contrived to imprison and abuse some of the suffrage women.
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Prince of Egypt World Premiere
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and Book by Philip LaZebnik
By: - Oct 21st, 2017This is a musical entertainment for the many, not a Sunday School lesson for the few.
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Exploring Annapoilis Maryland
Three Hundred Years of History
By: - Oct 21st, 2017The state of Maryland was named after Henrietta Maria of France, the queen consort of England, Scotland, and Ireland as the wife of King Charles I. Maryland is the only state in the United States whose judges wear red robes.
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The Drowsy Chaperone in Boca Raton
Send Up of 1920s Musicals in South Florida
By: - Oct 20th, 2017The Drowsy Chaperone offers good ole' escapist fare. Musical lovingly parodies shows from the Prohibition era. The Wick Theatre's production features high-octane, physical comedy and robust singing.
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Boston Lyric Opera Tosca
Fine Cast but a Misguided Production
By: - Oct 20th, 2017Puccini's "Tosca" remains one of the most popular operas in the world 117 years after its debut. Today with its portrait of fascist tyrants taking women forcibly for their own pleasure, it has renewed relevance. In her American debut Russian soprano Elena Stikhina made the role her own.
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Gordon Getty Unearths Ghosts
A Pair of Seasonal Operas
By: - Oct 20th, 2017The Center for Contemporary Opera is presenting the premier of a pair of operas by Gordon Getty. One is based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The House of Usher. The other, on Oscar Wilde’s sympathetic take on a ghost who cannot die, poor guy.
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Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera
James Morris' 1000th performance at the Met
By: - Oct 18th, 2017Turandot is Giacomo Puccini’s final, unfinished work. It is a a grand fantasy of legendary China as reimagined through the lens of Italian romanticism. It is a farm tale, the story of an ice-hearted princess and the fearless Prince who wins her hand. It is seen (wrongly) as the end point of the genre of Italian opera. It is also, along with La bohème, the last of the Metropolitan Opera’s giant Franco Zeffirelli productions, crowded extravaganzas that evoke the opulence of a bygone era. (In this case, we’re talking about the 1980s.)
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Barnatan and Weilerstein at Carnegie
Woo Too with Mendelssohn and a New Steven Mackay
By: - Oct 18th, 2017Listening to two great artists performing cello sonatas at Zankel Hall, you are let in on a secret that should be widely broadcast. In intimate chamber music, performed with only two instruments, you enter the deep, developed world of great composers whose work is the subject of conversation. Chorale to recitative, pluck to bowed, arpeggios to long, sweet lines. Never a moment to rest as we are pulled closer and closer to the essence of a composer.
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Musical America Announces Awardees
Andris Nelsons, Sondra Radvanovsky, Mason Bates Honored
By: - Oct 17th, 2017The prestigious Musical America annual awards have been announced. The BSO musical director Andris Nelsons is artist of the year. Sondra Radvanovsky is vocalist. We interviewed Nelsons in 2011 before his first concert with the BSO at Carnegie Hall. Radvanofvsky has been on our radar since Peter Gelb tried to oust her and Placido Dominago stormed into his office and told him he could not remove an important artist from the Met roster.
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Thomas Ades and Friends at Carnegie Hall
Warm up for The Exterminating Angel
By: - Oct 16th, 2017Thomas Adès will be Artistic Partner to the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the next three years, helping to fill their Maestro's wish for abundant new music. Adès' gifts as a composer were on display in Zankel Hall. Principals from the cast of his third opera, about to have its North American premier, sang. The music, his own, and that of Schubert, Britten and Purcell among others, could count as the music of his friends, from long ago and now. As a pianist, Adès has a special touch.
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The Home Place at Irish Repertory Theatre
Brian Friel's Play Directed by Charlotte Moore
By: - Oct 14th, 2017The Last Rose of Summer and Minstrel Boy were written by Irish poet and lyricist Thomas Moore and are at the heart of the Irish soul. Satisfying direction by Charlotte Moore, undoubtedly a descendant, brings the poetry and music home in Brian Friel's "The Home Place."
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American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Doing What's Right
By: - Oct 13th, 2017A peculiar sense of existential dread hung over Wednesday night’s concert at Carnegie Hall, the first of the young season featuring the American Symphony Orchestra under the baton of its long time music director Leon Botstein. For this concert, titled “The Sounds of Democracy”, Botstein chose 20th century music by Leonard Bernstein, Roger Sessions and Aaron Copland, leading lights of American music in the last century but now largely ignored by the fast-food reality-television culture of the 21st.
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