Music
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The Magic Flute at Opera San Jose
A Compelling Rendering of Mozart's Masterpiece
By: - Sep 16th, 2024Tamino falls in love with the daughter of the Queen of Night, Pamina, from her picture. To win her hand, he must conquer three trials to become an initiate into a religious order. This classic receives a sterling production from cast, creatives, and conductor, 19-year-old wonderkind Alma Deutscher.
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Maggie at Goodspeed
New Musical Launches Fall Season
By: - Sep 16th, 2024Maggie is a heartfelt musical that should appeal to a wide range of audiences. It is the antithesis in many ways of what some would expect of a Goodspeed musical – there is not a tap dance or big dance number in sight.
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Leah Hawkins Captivates at the Park Avenue Armory
Awards by the Richard Tucker Foundation
By: - Sep 16th, 2024Leah Hawkins performed in the Officers Room at the Park Avenue Armory. She mesmerizes for her moment as Strawberry Woman in Porgy and Bess. You perked up for her Masha in Queen of Spades. She has performed an off-stage prayer in Aida and graduates to the highly-anticipated title role of the opera in Arizona next spring. A singer who can stop a show in a minute in a 4,000 seat venue, filled the intimate Officers Room room to overflowing.
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Hell's Kitchen Musical on Broadway
Aiicia Keys Tells Her Story
By: - Sep 14th, 2024Alicia Key has created herself as “Ali” in the musical Hell’s Kitchen now playing on Broadway. Keys grew up in the Manhattan Plaza complex, a few blocks from Times Square. Built during one of New York’s deep downturns, the building was supposed to be an upper middle class apartment house. Discounted apartments did rent. It became one of New York’s most desirable residences for artists. It formed the artist Keys.
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Un Ballo in Maschera
San Franciso Opera's Outstanding Production
By: - Sep 13th, 2024In this opera drawn from history, Sweden's Gustavus III loves Amelia, the wife of his friend and ally Renato. When the husband finds out, he joins assassin conspirators from the disaffected nobility. This Verdi masterpiece, replete with dramatic music, is given the finest treatment by accomplished principals and creative staging designers.
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The Prom
Musical About Sexual Discrimination in High School
By: - Sep 10th, 2024Four New York theater performers hope to attract attention for what they purport to be the selfless act of inducing an Indiana high school to reverse the cancellation of its prom because a lesbian student planned to attend with a girlfriend as her date. Based on a true story, the visitors encounter unexpected headwinds. Despite notes of pathos and bitterness, a joyous tone prevails, and the play ends on a hopeful note.
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Young Frankenstein
Mel Brooks' Musical at Sonoma Arts Live
By: - Sep 08th, 2024Dr. Frederick Frankenstein returns to Transylvania and hopes to improve on his grandfather's flawed creation - "The Monster." He succeeds in producing a new and improved monster but must deal with many zany characters and complications along the way.
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Little Island Presents Marriage of FIgaro
Anthony Roth Costanzo is Gender Fluid
By: - Sep 07th, 2024The major event at New York’s Little Island this summer is an abbreviated version of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro with all seven roles sung by premier countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo. It will be performed through September 22. Zack Winokur produces.
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4 Guys Named Named José...and Una Mujer Named Maria
A Latin American Jukebox Musical at 6th Street Playhouse
By: - Sep 01st, 2024Four young men from different Latin American heritages meet in Omaha, Nebraska. When joined by a young woman, Maria, song breaks out. The plot is superficial, but the song and dance will arouse feelings of nostalgia for those familiar with the music of the region.
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Der Rosenkavalier
Santa Fe Opera's Delightful Strauss/von Hofmannsthal Comic Opera
By: - Aug 17th, 2024Impoverished Baron Ochs wishes to marry Sophie, from a nouveau riche family. Through Ochs' cousin The Marschallin, young noble Octavian agrees to present the customary silver rose to the intended bride. But alignments of romance and convenience shift in this thoughtful comedy that is Strauss's most endearing work.
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The Elixir of Love
Donizetti's Frothy Comedy at Santa Fe Opera
By: - Aug 15th, 2024Poor Nemorino loves rich Adina. We know how those stories go. Nemorino is aided by a placebo. Snake oil salesman Dulcamara has sold him a potion to make him irresistible to Adina. In the end, the hero inherits a fortune, which makes him irresistible to every girl on the planet.
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The Righteous
Outstanding World Premiere Commission from Santa Fe Opera
By: - Aug 14th, 2024David's life is traced from caring high school friend to pastor committed to good works to politician whose goal is to satisfy constituents rather than his soul and the people closest to him. Along the way, he compromises his own morality and ultimately questions the path he has taken. Many issues of evangelical Christianity and the 1980s surface in this compelling new opera.
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WOW at Carnegie Hall
Youth Orchestras from Around the World
By: - Aug 10th, 2024The series of WOW (World Orchestra Week) concerts at Carnegie opened with Teddy Abrams, maestro of the Louisville Orchestra and winner of Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year award. He conducted the NYO2 Orchestra.
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Pipe Dream at Unicorn Theatre
Rarely Produced Rodgers and Hammerstein Musical
By: - Aug 08th, 2024Pipe Dream is an obscure, rarely produced musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II based on novels by John Steinbeck. Berkshire Theatre Group is making a strong and risky case for why we should take another look at a musical with a flawed book but richly compelling music.
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The Prom
At Sharon Playhouse
By: - Aug 08th, 2024The Prom is not a great musical, but it is an entertaining show that goes way above what is sometimes created.
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Legend of the Ring
West Edge Opera Produces Wagner's Condensed Ring Cycle for a Third Time
By: - Aug 06th, 2024In four operas and over 15 hours of running time, Richard Wagner's epic Ring Cycle spins historic Germanic legends embellished by the composer's own fancy. David Seaman edited the compendium into a 3 1/2hour condensation. The flavor of Wagner's rich romantic music is retained, but while the general plotline is honored, it is jumpy and loses some continuity. Nonetheless, this piece gives a strong flavor of the highly respected yet controversial body of work.
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Bulrusher - The Opera
World Premiere Pulitzer Finalist Play by West Edge Opera
By: - Aug 05th, 2024A black female foundling with a gift for telepathy is becoming a woman. Her world of isolation in a white, northern California town is pierced by the arrival of another young black woman from Alabama. Multiple conflicts ensue among the diverse characters. The lush music appeals and performances are first rate.
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Victor Hugo's Masterpiece Works Well as a Stage Musical
By: - Jul 29th, 2024The deformed hunchback Quasimodo has suffered a life of abuse and isolation as the cathedral bell ringer. When he has the chance to interact with other people, he endures scorn from many, but the beautiful Roma girl Esméralda is kind. Quasimodo's cruel guardian Frollo, the Deacon of the Cathedral, who despises the Roma but is smitten by Esméralda, intercedes with unhappy consequences.
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The Great American Mousical
The Legacy Theatre
By: - Jul 24th, 2024The plot is simple; a Broadway theater is about to be demolished while in the basement, a company of mice rehearses their own “musical.”
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La Voix Humaine and Dido & Aeneas
Festival Opera Fine Production of Divergent Works
By: - Jul 14th, 2024Carrie Hennessey gives a sterling performance in the Francis Poulenc work, "La Voix Humaine," as a woman who talks to her lover on the phone while learning that she is losing him. Henry Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas" is given a fine treatment as well, led by the chorus and orchestra.
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South Pacific at Goodspeed Musicals
An Audience Favorite
By: - Jul 11th, 2024South Pacific is a show for romantics. It is one of my favorite shows and the audience’s cheers on opening night showed that they, too, loved it.
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Mystic Pizza
Ivoryton Playhouse
By: - Jul 10th, 2024You will recognize the tunes that are well integrated into the plot – “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Addicted to Love,” “I’m the Only One,” “Into the Mystic,” “Lost in Your Eyes,” “Smalltown” and “Never Gonna Give You Up,” among others.
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Experiments in Opera at HERE
New York Gets Four Delicious Mini Operas
By: - Jul 05th, 2024The world premiere of “Five Ways to Die” took place at HERE in New York. If the subject is “death,” it must be an opera. Tosa jumps to her death from the walls of Castel Sant'Angelo. Aida and her lover die in an airless Egyptian tomb. La Traviata coughs herself to death in a Parisian garret. Defying death, all these women sing marvelously. We suspend disbelief, carried away by gorgeous tunes. Experiments in Opera, a successful and innovative company, takes a different approach.
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Evita
Rags to Riches and Glamor Foreshortened
By: - Jul 04th, 2024In this Weber/Rice musical biography, the charismatic and adulated Eva Peron insinuates herself into the highest level of Argentinian politics while in her 20s. Deploying an unusual device, an activist narrator, Che, skulks about and cynically undermines the public face of the title character.
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Ted Rosenthal Trio returns to the Berkshires
Jazz at Tangldewood Institute
By: - Jul 02nd, 2024Our friends at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute in Lenox are coming out of the holiday weekend with continued fireworks: Ted Rosenthal Trio returns to the Berkshires to perform on July 9, at 7pm.
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