Music
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Anne Bogart To Direct Carousel
Boston Lyric Opera
By: - Feb 18th, 2025Through a contemporary lens, Anne Bogart says the show’s depictions of domestic violence, cycles of poverty and crime, suicide, and toxic masculinity still resonate strongly. “The treatment of these issues in Carousel may seem outdated by modern standards, but its artistic merits – and willingness to tackle complex human actions – make it a thought-provoking work within the classical music theater canon."
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Bluebeard's Castle
Opera San Jose Excels in Production of Bartok's Gem
By: - Feb 17th, 2025Count Bluebeard's new wife, Judith, arrives at his castle to find seven doors that lead from the great room. Opening each door reveals something about Bluebeard's character and history. The findings are not all that she had hoped for.
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La Sonnambula
Bellini's Bel Canto Masterpiece About a Sleepwalker
By: - Feb 16th, 2025Amina's sleepwalking incident creates a scandal when she's seen at the lodgings of a visiting Count. Fiance Elvino cancels his planned nuptials with Amina, but will truth and love win out? Hint: this opera is not a tragedy.
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Komische Oper, Berlin - Pferd Frisst Hut
Horse Eats Hat, a Comic Opera Extravaganza
By: - Feb 13th, 2025On February 8, 2025 was opening night for "Pferd Frisst Hut" (Horse Eats Hat), the hilarious and wildly entertaining comic opera extravaganza written and composed by Herbert Groenemeyer for the Komische Oper, Berlin. Sold out and enjoyed by the audience, this musical work, coproduced by the Theater Basel, allowed the entire ensemble to go wild on stage.
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Phil Kline Surprises with a Song Cycle
Meet the Ghost of Isabella Stewart Gardner
By: - Feb 12th, 2025On Sunday, February 23 at 1:30 p.m., the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum presents the world premiere of ghost story, a song cycle commissioned from composer/lyricist Phil Kline. It’s inspired by the life and times of Isabella Stewart Gardner.
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Seong-Jin Cho Records Ravel
Released by Deutsche Grammophon
By: - Feb 04th, 2025Ravel: The Piano Concertos, in which the pianist is joined by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director Andris Nelsons, comes out digitally and on CD on February 21. A deluxe edition presenting the complete recordings will be issued digitally and as a 3-CD box set on May 2. Vinyl versions of the two individual albums will be released later this year. The Piano Concerto in G’s central Adagio assai is available to stream/download beginning February 7, while the Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn will be released in advance of the deluxe edition, on March 7, the exact anniversary of Ravel’s birth.
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Tanglewood 2025
Best of the Berkshires
By: - Jan 30th, 2025In July, BSO Music Director and Head of Conducting at Tanglewood Andris Nelsons leads ten programs and two TLI/TMC Art of Conducting master classes in a schedule that shines a spotlight on a wide spectrum of musical guests and the festival’s rich tradition of presenting summertime concerts at their best since 1937.
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Conrad Tao Alights in Carnegie Hall
Premier Keyboard Artist Performs Debussy and His Own Works
By: - Jan 30th, 2025Conrad Tao takes our inner ear on new journeys in a program at Carnegie Hall on January 31. The first notes we’ll hear are often said to be Claude Debussy making fun of Carl Czerny. Czerny’s exercises are of course where most of us begin our piano journeys. Thumping away at scales, we don’t learn to appreciate the sounds that can emerge from the instrument. We don’t coax. We hammer. Tao will coax sound from piano keys and Lumatone hexagons.
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Komische Oper, Berlin
Robinson Crusoe
By: - Jan 15th, 2025The concert version of the light opera by Jacques Offenbach of the Komische Oper, Berlin left wishes open for a full fledged opera performance. The stage setting, at their temporary house located at the Schiller Theater in the Bismarckstrasse in Berlin, seemed at bit crowded. Nevertheless.....
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Igor Levit Performs at Carnegie Hall
Bach Brahms and Beethoven
By: - Jan 13th, 2025Igor Levit, a deeply thoughtful musician, gave voice to Bach, Brahms and Beethoven at Carnegie Hall. Each of these composers was represented by a seemingly uncharacteristic work that revealed unfamiliar approaches.
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Prototype Festival to Begin New Year
New York's Most Adventuresome Program Music
By: - Dec 28th, 2024The Prototype Festival produced by Beth Morrison starts the avant-garde music world off from January 9 to 19. One work has been around the city in various forms for a while. Black Lodge dives into William Burroughs’ life. Queer, the film starring Daniel Craig, has brought Burroughs mainstream attention. The film with music by David T. Little, wrestles with movies as canned opera.
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Former Ladies of The Supremes
A Nostalgic Concert at Marin Jazz
By: - Dec 21st, 2024Since 1986, this group has revived the music of the most successful girl group of all time. Memorable songs written by the great team of Holland, Dozier, and Holland and sung by this charming group take us back to 1964 and the years following.
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A Thousand Ships
Oakland Theater Project World Premiere
By: - Dec 20th, 2024Distinguished playwright Marcus Gardley creates an homage to the Black community in Oakland that he grew up in, and particularly to strong women and their contributions. Adeline and Laney are transplants from the South, and their beauty salon is an institution for decades before the women face economic and personal challenges.
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Berlin Philharmonic Rocks Carnegie Hall
Kirill Petrenko Brings Fresh Ear to Music
By: - Nov 20th, 2024The Berlin Philharmonic completed a three-day visit to Carnegie Hall in New York. The world’s greatest orchestra and its greatest conductor, Kirill Petrenko, did not disappoint. The programming combined an anniversary (the 200th birthday of Anton Bruckner), with fresh visits to favorites like Anton Dvorak’s 7th Symphony and a Violin Concerto by the film composer Erich Korngold.
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David Lang's Little Match Girl Returns
Annual Holiday Event at the Crypt
By: - Nov 16th, 2024David Lang's Pulitzer Prize-winning Passion opera The Little Match Girl will be performed in its original form with four artists both singing and playing instruments at the Crypt in New York.
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Ghost Quartet
A Spooky Look into the Afterlife Through Song
By: - Nov 05th, 2024Oakland Theater Project presents Dave Malloy's 23 dramatic vignettes about love, loss, whiskey, and the afterlife built into a song cycle. Calling on all manner of musical idioms, but with the constant of a mournful cello, it engages both musically and dramatically.
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The Matchbook Magic Flute
Mary Zimmerman's Adaptation of Mozart's Masterpiece
By: - Nov 03rd, 2024Aided by bird catcher Papageno, Prince Tamino sets out to rescue abducted Pamina, whom he has fallen in love with based only on a portrait. His quest faces the challenge of three trials and the threat of the Queen of the Night, mother of Pamina.
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Jersey Boys
ACT-CT in Ridgefield,
By: - Oct 29th, 2024The book – the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons – by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice is one of the things that sets it above many jukebox shows. Each of the original members of the group narrates a part of the story. This allows for different perspectives on the group’s history and personalities.
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Frederick Douglass Comes to Hudson Hall
Anthony Knight Jr. Combines Negro Spirituals with Douglass' Text
By: - Oct 25th, 2024Hudson Hall in the Hudson Hall Opera House will present No Cowards in Our Band, an intertwined stage piece that combines nine spirituals with the reciting of original text by Frederick Douglass. In this drama, an aging and contemplative Frederick Douglass (1818-1895). considers the social, economic, and political ramifications of slavery and the Civil War and their impact on the future of the United States.
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Tristan & Isolde
San Francisco Opera's Fine Production of Wagner
By: - Oct 25th, 2024When composing this opera, Richard Wagner was obsessed with love fanned by his infatuation for the married poet Mathilde Wesendonck and death driven by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. The two existential forces are melded in the opera's thematic thrust "liebestod" (love-death), which is also the dominant leitmotif in the music. While the orchestral score soars, the dramatic action is grounded, yet it remains a pioneer of modern music.
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Henze's Prince of Homburg in Frankfurt
Important Composer Gets a Perfect Production
By: - Oct 22nd, 2024Contemporary composers scramble for relevant subject matter. Opera companies overlook repertoire which is excellent and seldom staged. As the 100th anniversary of Hans Werner Hene's birth approaches in 2026, his work, produced in timeless fashion, offers fresh opportunities. Frankfurt Oper shows the way.
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No Love Songs
Goodspeed’s Terris Theatre in Chester
By: - Oct 19th, 2024During the 80 minutes or so, we hear 11 songs. Most are duets between the two characters – Jessie and Lana. Jessie and Lana are fictionalized versions of Falconer and Wilde and their story. From the first meeting, when Lana goes to a bar and meets the older Jessie through a courtship of sorts, the birth of their son, and Jessie’s departure on a US tour with a band, where they are the backup/opening act.
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The Daughter of the Regiment
Livermore Valley Opera's Comic Charmer
By: - Sep 30th, 2024An orphan Marie was adopted by a French army regiment as an infant. She promised to marry only a member of the regiment but falls in love with an outsider. Complications ensue as she learns that she was born to a marquise and is spirited away to live a noble life and have an arranged marriage within her new station. But this is a comedy. Do you really think that's going to happen?
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Jazz in the Berkshires
Fall Schedule
By: - Sep 27th, 2024The annual Fall Jazz Sprawl is a week of free and ticketed jazz events throughout Berkshire County. The series includes some events that were organized by Berkshires Jazz, as well as others that were planned and sponsored by the venues presenting the artists. The series concludes with a headline concert featuring the Grace Kelly Quartet plus a string section augmented by the Kids 4 Harmony advanced ensemble.
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Opera Philadelphia Opens a New Season
Missy Mazzoli's New Opera Asks: Do You Hear a Hum
By: - Sep 22nd, 2024Opera Philadelphia is a company that has done everything right for the past decade and yet continues to struggle to reach an audience. On April 25 it was announced that Anthony Roth Costanzo, a Princeton-educated counter tenor who not only attracts audiences as a singing artist but also has successfully experimented with programming, would begin his term as general director and president on June 1. His first public act as head of the company was to offer tickets at $11 and then pay-what-you-want or can on top of that.
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