Music
-
Young Frankenstein at the Colonial
Smash Hit Mel Brooks Musical in Pittsfield
By: - Jun 30th, 2024Gerry McIntyre has directed and choreographed a flawless production of Mel Brooks’ hilarious musical Young Frankenstein. On opening night, it rocked a full house at the Colonial Theatre, where it will be fun, fun, fun until July 21.
-
Ulysses Quartet in Greenwood Cemetery
Angel's Share Presents
By: - Jun 25th, 2024The Ulysses Quartet performed Beethoven’s final work, his string quartet in A minor, in the Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. The classical spirit of Leonard Bernstein, who is buried here atop Battle Hill, pervades the place. Programs are various and always tasteful. The setting enhances the experience
-
La Jolla Playhouse Ballad of Johnny and June
Wonderful Cash Musical in San Diego
By: - Jun 17th, 2024The La Jolla Playhouse presents The Ballad of Johnny and June, a musical about the lives of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. Narrated by John Carter Cash, played by Von Hughes, the play begins with John trying to decide if he wants to get married. John Carter Cash was the only child of the union of Johnny and June. As John contemplates marriage, he tells the love story of his famous parents and their challenges with fame and addiction.
-
Houston Symphony Performs Strauss' Salome
A Perfect Concert Evening
By: - Jun 13th, 2024The Houston Symphony presented Richard Strauss’ Salome. It was a perfect concert opera production. All the singers were not only off book, but costumed to perfection (or unveiled when that critical moment arrives).
-
Being Alive - A Sondheim Celebration
TheatreWorks Bright World Premiere Revue of Sondheim Love Songs
By: - Jun 11th, 2024Now that Stephen Sondheim has passed, this poignant collection of 36 songs is the first revue to span his whole life of works, from towering anthems to obscure hidden gems. Performed by an ensemble of six as a run through followed by a dress rehearsal with little additional commentary, it lets the songs do the telling.
-
Innocence
San Francisco Opera's Chilling Modern Masterpiece
By: - Jun 09th, 2024Kaija Saariaho's last opera leaves a lasting impression. An ominous score supports a nerve-wracking story told in two time frames. A teenage shooter in Finland murders a number of his schoolmates. Ten years on, the perpetrator's brother is marrying a bride from Romania who does not know the connection. However, the waitress at the wedding reception dinner, whose daughter was a victim, recognizes the groom.
-
ACT-CT Production of Kinky Boots
Dragnet on Stage
By: - Jun 02nd, 2024It is a high-energy, feel-good romp about people reconciling with their past and gaining acceptance for who they are.
-
The Magic Flute at San Francisco Opera
A Fairy Tale About Love and Aspiration
By: - May 31st, 2024Tamino falls in love with Pamina's picture and runs the gauntlet in order to meet and marry her. His sidekick Papageno also seeks marriage but lacks the courage to confront the challenges before him. Both will succeed, but one more than the other.
-
An American Soldier Perelman Performing Arts Center
Huang Ruo and David Henry Wang Join Forces Again
By: - May 30th, 2024An American Soldier, an opera by Huang Ruo and David Henry Wang, has been developing for a decade. The 2024 version is co-commissioned by PAC NYC and Boston Lyric Opera. Audiences at the new Perelman Performing Arts Center in lower Manhattan, are the beneficiaries of deep thought and a moving musical response to a seemingly uncomplicated subject: the wish of a young man, born in the USA of Asian immigrants, to be considered ‘American.’
-
Cabaret at Lesher Center for the Arts
Hedonism and Persecution in Between the Wars Germany
By: - May 29th, 2024English nightclub entertainer Sally Bowles lives on the edges of society in the hedonism of Berlin during the Weimar years. Aspiring novelist Cliff Bradshaw alights from America and becomes both Sally's lover and her mark. This dark musical also explores the rise of Naziism through a young convert and the relationship of an elderly couple, one of whom is Jewish.
-
Matthew Polenzani Sings at Park Avenue Armory
Ken Nodo Accompnies in intimate Officer's Room
By: - May 28th, 2024To hear great singers in the Officer's Room of the Park Avenue Armory is a special privilege. One of the largest rooms in the Armory, today it feels like a salon room in an elegant apartment. A lost world is very present for the audience up close and personal. The cherished tenor, Matthew Polenzani, a regular star at the Metropolitan Opera, gives us his special textures and dynamics.
-
Bernadette Peters at Barrington Stage
Tony Winner Perfoms One Nighter
By: - May 17th, 2024As part of its 30th Anniversary Celebration, Barrington Stage Company announces Tony Award-winner Bernadette Peters in Concert on Tuesday, August 27 at 8:00 p.m. on the Boyd-Quinson Stage (30 Union Street).
-
Opera Lafayette’s Les Fetes de Thalie
At Museo del Barrio
By: - May 14th, 2024Under the baton of Christophe Rousset, Opera Lafayette’s production of the charmingly absurd Thalie was a triumph of artistry and innovation. With its contemporary flair, vibrant choreography, stellar performers, and infectious energy, the evening proved a delightful theatrical experience.
-
Berkshire Music School Gala at Ventfort Hall
Flutist Brandon Patrick George To Perform
By: - May 13th, 2024On June 1, 2024 the Berkshire Music School, in partnership with Ventfort Hall, welcomes Brandon Patrick George, flute, for Berkshire Music School's Annual Gala to raise funds for BMS’ Community Engagement programs, including pay-what-you-wish group classes, need-based private lesson scholarships, and outreach assemblies and workshops in public schools.
-
American Soldier Comes to PAC in New York
Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang Unite in Splendid Opera
By: - May 09th, 2024Huang Ruo’s opera, An American Soldier, opens May 12 at the new Perelman Performing Arts Center in lower Manhattan. This flexible theater is built for chamber opera, often the form new operas take.
-
Miro Quartet Performs at The Crypt
Death of Classical Presents Home
By: - May 07th, 2024The Miro Quartet performed works centered around the theme of “Home” for the Death of Classical series in New York. In the crypt of a church in Harlem, reverberating in the acoustics of its stone arches, the Quartet sang. This program felt like a homecoming, immediate and warm.
-
Madame Butterfly at Opera Philadelphia
xxx
By: - May 01st, 2024Opera Philadelphia is bringing us Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini with a twist one imagines the composer would have liked. The title role of Cio-Cio-San is a two-hander, performed both by soprano Karen Chia-Ling Ho and a puppet created by Hua Hua Zhang. In Anthony Minghella’s production, the puppet is Cio-Cio-San’s son. Now she is the exterior, public version of Butterfly, the one Lieutenant Pinkerton falls for and seduces and abandons. The director Ethan Heard and designer Yuki Izumihara came up with this notion.
-
Something Rotten
Hillbarn Theatre's Riotous Romp
By: - Apr 28th, 2024In the 1590s, wannabe playwrights Nick and Nigel Bottom fail to compete with theatrical powerhouse Will Shakespeare. Nick consults with soothsayer Nostradamus who tells him that musicals are the coming thing. The outcome is the world's first musical "Omelet." Hmmm.
-
Lempicka Bombs on Broadway
An interesting Artist but Muddled Production
By: - Apr 26th, 2024Lempicka was dud when it workshopped in 2018 at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Now. with a thud, it has landed on Broadway
-
A Strange Loop
ACT-SF's Outstanding Production Of A Daring Musical
By: - Apr 26th, 2024Usher is an overly introspective wannabe playwright who obsesses over his weight, color, and sexual orientation. In this audacious musical, the central character is surrounded by his thoughts. That is, the other characters are designated as Thought 1 through Thought 6. His internal conflicts and clashes with his parents prompt existential questions that may never be answered.
-
Anthony Roth Costanzo to Head Opera Philadelphia
Cutting Edge Company Makes the Best Choice
By: - Apr 25th, 2024The Opera Philadelphia Board of Directors has unanimously approved the appointment of Anthony Roth Costanzo as General Director and President effective June 1, 2024. A grammy-winning countertenor and creative producer who ”exists to transform opera” Costanzo will shape the future of a company known as “a hotbed of operatic innovation”, overseeing fundraising and business strategies, audience development, community initiatives, and artistic planning.
-
Forever Plaid
42nd Street Moon's Take On This Revue of Male Pop Quartets
By: - Apr 23rd, 2024This oft revived piece celebrates the smooth sound and close vocal harmonies of male ensembles in the pop era. An unsuccessful pop foursome returns from the dead for one last concert. Along with many songs for multiple voices, the guys sing solos to strut their stuff and pull off comic gags to add to the fun.
-
Florencia en el Amazonas
Magical Realism Receives Exquisite Treatment By Opera San Jose
By: - Apr 22nd, 2024This 1996 work was a breakthrough for Spanish language operas. Florencia, an opera singer, is returning to Manaus in the Amazon by boat and to great anticipation. In addition to performing there, she hopes to find her lost lover, a butterfly hunter, who disappeared into the jungle 20 years previous. Traveling incognito, she finds a passenger who has been collecting information for her biography and, unbeknownst to her, a spirit person who bridges the worlds of reality and magic.
-
Tiergarten, a New York Carbaret
Carnegie Hall on the Lower East Side
By: - Apr 21st, 2024Tiergarten, a cabaret, opened for three nights in the Grand Hall of St Mary’s Church on the lower East Side of Manhattan. A participant in Carnegie Hall’s deep gaze at the music of the Weimar Republic, hot impresario Andrew Ousley gathered together a group of top-notch performers and a talented design crew to create an ageless event. When the doors close, a mad spirit is unleashed in Willkommen.
-
Lempicka: The Bi-Sexual Baroness with a Brush
At New York’s Longacre Theater
By: - Apr 17th, 2024While the authors tell us that the play is “inspired” by the artist’s personal and political life, unfortunately, all of the “real-life” characters are so hastily established and sketchily drawn, that what we’re left with is a lack of realism and emotional vulnerability. All the characters in this play are like wooden sticks, there is no depth to any of them.
<< Previous Next >>