Music
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Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera
Radvanovsky Offers a New and Satisfying Tosca
By: - Jan 15th, 2011Sondra Radvanovsky debuted as Tosca this week at the Met. If the production is still trying to find its legs, the singers are certainly ready to go and wonderful.
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Renee Fleming Stunning at Carnegie
Intimate Concert Performance by Opera Diva
By: - Jan 12th, 2011Renée Fleming swept onto the stage at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday January 11. Her long gold dress with pleated skirt and rhinestone shoulder caps dazzled as did her voice. At the end of the evening with a blizzard forecast, she exclaimed surprise that the house was packed, but no one who heard her sing thought it odd at all. "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stayed this audience…†(Herodotus, it turns out, not McKim, White’s etching on the US Post Office Building).
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Met HD La Fanciulla del West Jan. 8
Deborah Voight and Marcello Giordani Star
By: - Jan 06th, 2011The Mahaiwe, Beacon and Clark in the Berkshires will broadcast direct from the Metropolitan Opera this Saturday afternoon. This is the 100th anniversary of the premier of Puccini's opera. It is as exciting today as it was then.
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Wilco Returns to Mass MoCA June 24 to 26
Second Annual Solid Sound Festival
By: - Dec 22nd, 2010Mass MoCA can be such a tease. They have been so coy about admitting that the Wilco inspired Solid Sound Festival will return this year in June. It's still not official but mark your calendar for June 24 to 26. Better start making travel plans and hotel reservations asap. North Adams is sure to be swamped with Wilco fans.
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Lyric Opera of Chicago Snags Renee Fleming
Fleming Named first Creative Consultant
By: - Dec 10th, 2010Soprano Beverly Sills went on from a brilliant stage career to champion opera and music as a superior administrator. Earlier this year, Renee Fleming dismissed her long time public relations maven, a move which suggested that she was contemplating a change from a heavy duty performing schedule to other activities. The Lyric, a brilliant, consistent ensemble company, picked up on the signals and put together a package that will wrap Renee into Chicago. The Met missed out!
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The Metropolitan Opera's Don Carlo in HD
Broadcast Featuring Roberto Alagna Dec. 11
By: - Dec 08th, 2010Verdi's most ambitious opera is both wrenching personal and daring political. The composer worked on the opera for 20 years, and it is hard to imagine Aida, Otello and Falstaff without the insights he gained in his struggle to master the piece. The Met Live in HD broadcast will be seen Saturday at the Mahaiwe, Great Barringtion, Beacon Cinema, Pittsfield and the Clark in Williamstown.
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Tanglewood 2011
Full Schedule June 28 to September 4
By: - Nov 30th, 2010Once again James Taylor will be featured with four concerts at Tanglewood this summer. From an all-Italian Opening Night Boston Symphony Orchestra program under the direction of James Levine on July 8, four appearances by living legend Yo-Yo Ma, a Boston Pops Cole Porter tribute led by Keith Lockhart, and the incredibly popular Film Night with John Williams, to the welcome returns of Itzhak Perlman and Christoph Eschenbach and special appearances by favorite artists Joshua Bell, Stephanie Blythe, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Christoph von Dohnányi, Kurt Masur, and Peter Serkin to the closing BSO performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony under the direction of Lorin Maazel,
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Britten Enchants at Lyric Opera of Chicago
Midsummer Night's Dream Wafts By
By: - Nov 24th, 2010Britten and Peter Pears chose Midsummer Night's Dream to reopen their Festival in Aldeburgh. It camps up Shakespeare in a delicious, other-worldly musicscape. Britten’s music is neither tonal nor atonal, but a special musicscape designed for the dream world on stage, a dream within a dream, play within play. Rory Macdonald conducts this Lyric Opera of Chicago production.
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Dala Enchants at Natick Center for the Arts
A Standing O From a Sold-out House
By: - Nov 22nd, 2010If the Everly Brothers had been sisters... If the Andrews Sisters or the McGuire sisters had been a duo... Dala fulfills the speculation and rouses a full house at the Natick Center of the Arts to their feet.
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Verdi at Chicago's Lyric Opera
Megawattage Singing in The Masked Ball
By: - Nov 19th, 2010The Lyric Opera of Chicago has a way with casting. Like theater in Chicago, the company puts up a matchless ensemble that works together to bring life to operas old and new. This production of The Masked Ball (the Lyric prefers the English translation) is a bit of an exception, even though the mega wattage cast is superb throughout and alone worth hearing. Beware retired singers directing.
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In Durance Vital - Part I
Recent Recordings From Senior Folkies
By: - Nov 17th, 2010To experience artists in top form almost a half century after they first caught your attention is a marvel indeed. I can’t imagine the extent of the dedication and commitment to a craft that is required to be able to do that. The fact that I have at one time or another had personal contact, sometimes brief, sometimes extended, occasionally contentious with most of the principals of the releases listed below only increases my wonder at their durability. I have no bones to pick here and only praise to offer.
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Jim Kweskin & Geoff Muldaur
Jiving at Bull Run in Shirley, Ma.
By: - Nov 15th, 2010These two founding members of the Kweskin Jug Band are reunited and back on the circuit, sharing both their love for traditional American music and the joy of performing together. The badinage was engaging. Jim was the serious lecturer, Geoff the provocateur and congenial but learned clown
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Meg Hutchinson at Eagle Hill
A Berkshire Bard Stretches Out
By: - Nov 08th, 2010I’d like to sing you, a song without words A moment of pause It could all rush by in a day, years full of wanting Years full of waiting For your new life to begin Excerpt from “Something Else†by Meg Hutchinson
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Tosca at Boston Lyric Opera
Art and Politics
By: - Nov 07th, 2010Bostonians of a political mind â€" and who in Boston is not? â€" had the opportunity this fall to see two of the most forthrightly political operas in the repertoire, “Fidelio†and “Tosca,†in quick succession. In “Tosca,†which premiered in 1900, Puccini looked back at that heroic historical period from a century’s perspective.
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Intermezzo at the New York City Opera
Strauss Brilliantly Portrayed
By: - Nov 05th, 2010If only Strauss had had the confidence to fly solo more often, as both composer and librettist. He wanted to be modern and push the envelope. Strauss was often restrained by his partners. But not in Intermezzo, which his regular librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal refused to write because he found the subject matter unseemly. We are given a first rate production of the work at the City Opera until the end of November.
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Leonard Bernstein: New York City Opera
A Not So Quiet Place
By: - Nov 02nd, 2010A vibrant, new production of Leonard Bernstein's opera, A Quiet Place, has been mounted by the inventive New York City Opera. Written over decades, its subject matter, which once made people uncomfortable, now seems current, if disturbing. What goes on in people's bedrooms is often a subject in opera, but stories seldom arise from a composer's personal experience. Bernstein bravely faced his demons in this piece, and created a work of art in which the wide-ranging musical styles propel a matching staged drama. The City Opera's production is compelling.
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Filianoti, Antonenko, and Grigolo at the Metropolitan Opera
Tenor Treats and Tricks
By: - Oct 29th, 2010We have been treated to three unusually talented tenors in New York in the past weeks: Giuseppe Filianoti in Tales of Hoffmann, Aleksandrs Antonenko in Boris Gudonov, and Roberto Alagna in Cavalleria Rusticana and La Navarraise at Carnegie Hall. Billed higher than any of these, however, is the Met's new tenor phenom, Vittorio Grigolo, who has been heralded in the past in West Side Story, and marks the beginning on his own career singing with his voice-a-like, Luciano Pavarroti. Opera is made to be overdone, but in the case of Grigolo, the Met has hit a new high mark.
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The Opera Orchestra of New York Returns to Carnegie Hall
Debutant(e)s Abdrazakov, Alagna, Garanca and Guleghina
By: - Oct 27th, 2010The Opera Orchestra of New York put on two operas, Cavalleria Rustincana and La Navarraise, in a splendid double bill at Carnegie Hall. Many of the world's A list singers were represented. Roberto Alagna had ample opportunity to be a bad boy in two operas about jealousy. His solid, exciting performance bodes well for Don Carlo.
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Beethoven’s Fidelio by Opera Boston
Season Opens at Cutler Majestic Theatre
By: - Oct 23rd, 2010Recently art critic David Bonetti left St. Louis and his position as a critic at the Post Dispatch. He accepts a new challenge by offering to cover opera in Boston for Berkshire Fine Arts. We welcome David with this typically witty and insightful review of the new season for Boston Opera and its production of Beethoven's Fidelio.
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Boris Godunov: Met Live In HD
Stunning New Production
By: - Oct 20th, 2010We watched the dress rehearsal for the HD broadcast of Boris Godunov at the Metropolitan Opera House on Monday. Rene Pape is a great Boris, the tenor "the world has been waiting for" sang Dimitri, the chorus, magnificent throughout. A treat awaits theater goers. In the Berkshires the opera will be screened, on October 23, at the Mahaiwe, in Great Barrington, Beacon Cinema, in Pittsfield, and at the Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown.
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Young People's Chorus at Le Poisson Rouge
Kronos Quartet Welcomes VIsitors
By: - Oct 17th, 2010A trip to Le Poisson Rouge is sure to provide great music, new to the ear, but easy to hear and listen to. A wide range of performers and composers are presented here. One of the lynchpins of the place is the Kronos Quartet, which hardly sounds like its been around for thirty years -- except for the skill of its members. We visited recently to hear the Kronos and young visitors from one of New York's premier choruses.
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Boris Godunov October 23
Met Live in HD Continues
By: - Oct 15th, 2010The Met Live in HD series continues with Boris Godunov on Saturday, October 23 at noon. It will be shown in the Berkshires at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, Beacon Cinema, in Pittsfield, and at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown. The new production opened with rave reviews on October 11.
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The Collegiate Chorale at Carnegie Hall
James Bagwell, Stephanie Blythe, Erin Morley and Eric Owens Provide Heavy Duty Support
By: - Oct 14th, 2010Difficult Brahms' pieces, the Alto Rhapsody and the German Requiem, were beautifully performed by the Collegiate Chorale at Carnegie Hall. A chorus formed 69 years ago by Robert Shaw, seemed as fresh as tomorrow in these performances, immeasurably enhanced by soloists Stephanie Blythe, Erin Morley and Eric Owens.
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Das Rheingold Newly-Minted at the Metropolitan Opera
Live in HD October 9th
By: - Oct 05th, 2010For all the chatter about the ersatz Circque de Soleil sets now on display in the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Das Rheingold, it was more the ear than eyes that were pleased but this production The set's challenges may be overcome in the HD and may also be addressed by the Met as they tweak Wagner for the 21st century. The opera will be presented LIve in HD at a theatre near you on October 9. In the Berkshires it will be view at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, Beacon Theatre in Pittsfield, and the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown.
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Tom Paxton at the Center for the Arts Natick
Still Rambles with Joy
By: - Oct 05th, 2010"Tom 's songs have a way of sneaking up on you. You find yourself humming them, whistling them, and singing a verse to a friend. Like the songs of Woody Guthrie, they're becoming part of America." ---Pete Seeger
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