Lewis WhittingtonPhiladelphia,
Opera Philadelphia closed their 2015-16 season with a new production of Donizetti’s "The Elixir of Love," an unwavering favorite with audiences, despite its more vaporous musical merits. Conductor Corrado Rovaris commented in the program notes that musically, the ...
Suzanne WeissSan Francisco,
Most operas begin with an overture. Peter Maxwell Davies’ “The Lighthouse” opens with an interrogation, a police investigation surrounding the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse-keepers stuck for months on a lonely rock in the middle of a stormy ...
A musician from the 70's looks at the music industry today.
L.E. KalikowNew York,
To cope with internet overload, we allow algorithms to sift through and feed us bits and pieces to match our tastes or cosmetically enhanced anchormen (and anchorwomen) to spoon up headlines to the tune of tone-deaf sponsors. All this through ...
Frances WilsonLondon,
Olivier Messiaen’s monumental work Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus (Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus) surely ranks amongst the “greats” of the piano repertoire, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas in terms of its scale, ...
The Final Sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert
Frances WilsonLondon,
Sir András Schiff is traversing the final three piano sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in concerts across America and Europe. Twelve sonatas in total are spread across three concerts which celebrate the sonata form, "one ...
Karen WeinsteinLos Angeles,
What more is there to say about “Madame Butterfly?” You know the music is glorious; it sticks in your head for days, just as Puccini peppers his themes through the score. What is more, modern audiences ...
Lewis WhittingtonPhiladelphia,
In 1926, German director Fritz Lang stunned international audiences with his masterpiece Metropolis and its depiction of a false utopia that hovered over futuristic slums housing an enslaved underclass whose only function was to keep the ...
David E. MorenoSan Francisco,
For the final concert of the 21st Other Minds Festival, Meredith Monk Vocal Ensemble delivered a bare bones retrospective of a handful of Monk’s abundant and mesmerizing repertoire. It’s an oxymoron to say that this life long minimalist presented ...
Mary NguyenLondon,
The English National Opera (ENO) first performed Bellini’s 1831 bel canto opera, Norma this month. Christopher Alden's production was first performed by Opera North in 2012, which is a co-production with Die Theatre Chemnitz and has toured to ...
LAOpera repeats their animation-meets-Mozart spectacle.
Karen WeinsteinLos Angeles,
I figure, turn-about is fair play. LAOpera is, once again, mounting the startling production of Komische Opera’s Magic Flute. I raved about it in December 2015, and stick by my opinions, many of which are re-iterated below. My ...
