Share

Front Page

  • Jan Lewis Nelson's Book on Deborah Sampson

    Disguised as a Man She Fought in the American Revolution

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 06th, 2023

    To make money Deborah Sampson told her story to Hermann Mann who published The Female Review: Life of Deborah Sampson: The Female Soldier in the War of Revolution. To boost sales he played loose with the facts. Jan Lewis Nelson expresses Sampson’s anguish over fabrications. She saw action but did not fight in the Battle of Yorktown as Mann falsely claimed.

  • Connecticut Critics Circle Awards

    Best of the Best

    By: Karen Isaacs - Jul 08th, 2023

    A powerful production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at the Yale Repertory Theatre and an exuberant production of “42nd Street” at Goodspeed Musicals took top honors at the 31st annual Connecticut Critics Circle Awards (ctcritics.org).

  • Mark Morris at Jacob's Pillow

    Bacharach/ David The Look of Love

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 11th, 2023

    Jacob's Pillow launched its season with the Mark Morris Dance Group performing an hour long work Bacharach/ David's The Look of Love. During this soggy summer how apt that Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.

  • Provincetown's White Line Prints

    At the Museum of FIne Arts

    By: MFA - Jul 12th, 2023

    Drawing from the collection of the late Leslie and Johanna Garfield, this exhibition focuses on the work of six artists: Ada Gilmore Chaffee, Maud Hunt Squire, Ethel Mars, Mildred McMillen, Juliette Nichols, and B. J. O. Nordfeldt—the first pioneering group that came together in Provincetown to practice color woodblock printing.

  • Indigenous People of Cape Ann

    Separating Fact from Myth

    By: Mary Ellen Lepionka - Jul 12th, 2023

    In response to an article The Disappeared of Cape Ann, posted to the Giuliano book site, Mary Ellen Lepionka, an authority on the subject sent a lengthy response. During the occasion of Gloucester 400th Plus much scholarly information is coming to light. Her research is presented here as a letter to the editor.

  • The Rape of Lucretia

    The Act That Gave Rise to the Republic of Rome

    By: Victor Cordell - Jul 14th, 2023

    Roman officers, including Prince Tarquinius, who are in a military camp wager whether their wives have remained constant.  Investigations prove that the wives of all of the men in the discussion have had indiscretions, with one exception.  Lucretia has remained faithful.  Tarquinius is determined to corrupt her morals.  Returning to Rome, his amorous advances toward Lucretia are repelled, and he forces himself on her.  Although not dealt with in the opera, this incident was the crowning blow to the king’s reign, and his overthrow led to the period of the Republic of Rome.

  • Sound of Music

    At Ivoryton Playhouse

    By: Karen Isaacs - Jul 15th, 2023

    The production uses elements from the original script as well as elements from the movie and subsequent Broadway revivals. This means that the two songs Richard Rodgers wrote for the film – “I Have Confidence in Me” and “Something Good” are included and the original “An Ordinary Couple” is omitted.

  • Little Montgomery

    New City Players in South Florida

    By: Aaron Krause - Jul 18th, 2023

    "Little Montgomery" is a touching comic-drama with relevant themes. New City Players' production runs through this Sunday. Performances take place at Island City Stage near Ft. Lauderdale.

  • Jacob's Pillow Week Eight

    Martha Graham Dance Company

    By: Pillow - Jul 19th, 2023

    Jacob's Pillow is pleased to announce programming for the eighth week of the 2023 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, when the world-renowned Martha Graham Dance Company will perform Graham’s Cave of the Heart and Errand Into the Maze, and Hofesh Shechter’s CAVE, in the Ted Shawn Theatre from Aug. 16-20.

  • Barrington Stage Company's Black Voices Matter

    3rd Annual Celebration of Black Voices

    By: Barrington - Jul 19th, 2023

    Barrington Stage Company, as part of its Black Voices Matter initiative, is sponsoring the 3rd annual “Celebration of Black Voices” community festival.  For 2023, “Celebration of Black Voices” will take place over 4 days - from Thursday, August 10 through Sunday, August 13 on Pittsfield’s West Side.  The festival will feature six free events celebrating the local Black community through artistic engagement.

  • Tony Bennett at 96

    Performed at Tanglewood with Lady Gaga

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 21st, 2023

    Tony Bennett who won 20 Grammys has died at 96. With a raspy voice that defied description he was a master of phrasing, swing, and insightful interpretation. I saw him upclose in a 1980s pairing with pianist Dave McKenna for PBS. Then more recently at Tanglewood.

  • Marina Carr at the Abbey Theatre

    Dublin Looks at Girl on the Altar

    By: Susan Hall - Jul 23rd, 2023

    Marina Carr has joined Lady Augusta Gregory in the pantheon of playwrights pictured on the walls of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.  Her new play "Girl on the Altar" is playing now.

  • Berkshire Opera Festival Brings in Boheme

    Epic Love and Loss of Innocence Central to the Drama

    By: Susan Hall - Jul 28th, 2023

    Berkshire Opera Festival continues its 2023 summer season with a mainstage production of La Bohème on August 26, August 29, and September 1 at The Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, MA. One of the most beloved operatic love stories of all time, La Bohème is based on Henri Murger's 1851 novel, Scènes de la vie de Bohème, which follows the lives of young people living in the Latin Quarter of Paris

  • Katrin Hilbe at Berlin Opera Academy

    Acting Skills Now Fundamental

    By: Susan Hall - Jul 28th, 2023

    he advent of Freudianism somehow severed the mind from the body, but over the past decades, there has been a return to the wisdom of late 19th century philosopher William James who saw the body and mind as deeply interrelated.  

  • Annisquam Seafair

    Books Games and Cotton Candy

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 31st, 2023

    Noted for its Wax Works the Annisquam Seafair is now 178-years-old. We attended this past weekend.

  • Jazz in the Berkshires

    Bousquet Jazz Festival

    By: Jazz - Aug 01st, 2023

    A series of august jazz programming, is the upcoming month. With our friends at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute paying increased attention to jazz, two local dates by itinerant pianist Peggy Stern, and the second annual Bousquet Jazz Festival, there’s plenty to choose from.

  • Orfeo

    A Scintillating World Premiere Orchestration of This Oldest Opera

    By: Victor Cordell - Aug 03rd, 2023

    The uniqueness of Santa Fe Opera's facility and setting make for a stunning visualization of Monteverdi's early masterpiece. With the back stagewall initially open to nature, the scenario begins in literal and figurative brightness; followed by a threatening storm in the mesas behind; leading to brutal darkness on stage with deliciously harsh lighting effects. Modern orchestration smooths the Baroque edges of the music.

  • August Wilson's Masterpiece

    Fences at Shakespeare & Company

    By: Charles Giuliano - Aug 04th, 2023

    The power of Fences derives from the mastery with which August Wilson conflated the mojo of the blues with the paradigms of Greek tragedy. This play is as intricately structured as works by Sophocles and Aeschylus. While rooted in the African American culture of Pittsburgh, Wilson was at heart every bit a classicist.

  • Pelléas et Mélisande

    Santa Fe Opera's Take on a Brooding Tale from Debussy and Maeterlinck

    By: Victor Cordell - Aug 05th, 2023

    Claude Debussy sought a prospective opera libretto in which characters seemed out of place, out of time, and only half disclosed. For “Pelléas et Mélisande,” he found his soulmate in future Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck, whose opaqueness suited Debussy so well that he adapted the playwright’s work almost verbatim. The result was a turn-of-the-century landmark - Debussy’s only completed opera.

  • The Nightingale & Erwartung - A Double Bill

    West Edge Opera Offers a Dynamic Duo of Short, Atonal Operas

    By: Victor Cordell - Aug 08th, 2023

    Stravinsky's "The NIghtingale" sets a simple but thoughtful Hans Christian Anderson tale to music. Production values sizzle. With Schoenberg's "Erwartung," the setting of the psychologically-driven soliloquy is switched from forest to hospital. The use of dancers as mute characters adds depth and diversity to the narrative.

  • Summer Stock by Cheri Steinkellner

    World Premiere at Goodspeed

    By: Karen Isaacs - Aug 10th, 2023

    Summer Stock is a new old-fashioned musical bringing joy to audiences at Goodspeed. It is unabashedly old-fashioned.

  • Kicking the Can of Drawing

    Hegel and Other Matters

    By: Martin Mugar - Aug 15th, 2023

    Recently, Jason Travers an artist in the Providence area and a former student from AIB sent me an image of the kind of “drawing” he sees in the asphalt fillings that are ubiquitous on New England roads: an effort to fill in the cracks formed on roads due to frost heaves. The cracks left unattended only speed up the deterioration of the road.

  • On Cedar Street at Berkshire Theatre Group

    World Premiere Musical

    By: Charles Giuliano - Aug 20th, 2023

    On Cedar Street is an intimate, compact musical compressed into one long act on a busy, cluttered set. On Cedar Street which entails the late life romance of widow and widower in rural Colorado is having its world premiere at the Unicorn Theatre of Berkshire Theatre Group.

  • Jacob's Pillow On Site Residencies

    Year Round Programming

    By: Pillow - Aug 22nd, 2023

    Jacob’s Pillow today announced the artists who will participate in 10 onsite residencies this fall through next summer, as part of the Pillow Lab residency program. Artists participating in this series, in chronological order, are: Ilya Vidrin, Sekou McMiller, LaJuné McMillian, Minty Fresh Circus, Aakash Odedra, Kyle Marshall Choreography, CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater, Hari Krishnan/inDANCE, Theresa Ruth Howard, and Miguel Gutierrez.

  • Martha Graham Dance Company at Jacob’s Pillow

    The Oldest American Dance Group

    By: Astrid Hiemer - Aug 22nd, 2023

    The venerable and totally contemporary Martha Graham Dance Company was in residence from August 16 to August 20 at Jacob's Pillow. The dancers gave memorable and also frenzied performances.....

  • << Previous Next >>