CLASSICAL MUSIC THEATER REVIEWS

I defy anybody to listen to the music of Spain without experiencing a noticeable lifting of their spirits....

This was a marvellous start to the 2016 Festival....

Not many conductors have the privilege to be mentored by a living composer. Seattle Symphony Music Director Ludovic Morlot counts himself a part of that echelon...

South African soprano Elza van den Heever has long had a 'date' with Beethoven's Leonore, in his only completed opera FIDELIO. It wasn't exactly a blind date—she has known for years that, eventually, she would take it on, she told me—but it was a roaring success in her role debut, at the Veneti...

The Union Avenue Opera just keeps presenting wonders! Their current production, Puccini's 'Tosca', is among the very best of their best-musically, vocally and in production values....

The witching hour was brought forward by a margin over the weekend when four of Australia's most wicked and wonderful took the stage backed by the magical Sydney Symphony Orchestra for a most spellbinding concert full of passion, humour and sonic sorcery. OK that's all the magic puns I swear!...

This was a very well crafted performance of two relatively familiar works by JS Bach and Mozart....

We've all felt the sensation where we talk fondly about artistic legends from our time only to discover someone younger or of another genre having no idea and genuinely concerning you that your icons might be lost someday entirely, and what a sad day that would be. That's where absolute miracle arti...

If you're a fan of Puccini-esque music and the “magic realism” of the great Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Daniel Catan's FLORENCIA EN EL AMAZONAS may be for you. Others might find the opera--which had its New York premiere at New York City Opera's home at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose...

The weather, the stars and “the stars” aligned the other night in Central Park, when the Metropolitan Opera performed its annual recital at SummerStage. Usually home to more pop culture performers, it turned out to be the perfect venue for introductions to some unfamiliar yet striking performers...

“Bride's side or groom's? I'm Count Almaviva,” said the elegant actor as we entered what, we are told, is the Count's summer palace. “Bride's side or groom's?” says the seductive brunette in a bath towel, stepping out of the tub. She introduces herself as the Countess, Rosina. Upstairs, down...

Audience is enthralled with BSO again featuring the musical HAIRSPRAY...

Recently honored as a Lower East Side Community Hero, pianist Mimi Stern-Wolfe walked onstage on the evening of May 25th 2016 at the Center for Jewish History in NYC. She is the founder and artistic director of Downtown Chamber Players and the recipient of the 2015 Clara Lemlich Award. And she did ...

Salman Rushdie's tale of love and vengeance becomes a powerful opera in this commissioned work at Opera Theatre of St. Louis....

For a director known as opera's bad boy, Calixto Bieito turned to something awfully familiar in CARMEN for his US debut. Then again, he didn't actually show up for it, tied up with a new production of Aribert Reimann's LEAR in Paris and dispatching one of his top collabortors, Joan Anton Rechi, to p...

I was delighted but not surprised by the polished professionalism of the teenage musicians and dancers from Michigan's Interlochen Center for the Arts who performed on the afternoon of June 5th 2016 at David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center as part of the New York Philharmonic's Biennial celebration. I...

One century ago, 200,000 New Yorkers mourned in the streets, representing the best-attended funeral procession in the history of the city to date. This May, the global Jewish community remembered Sholem Aleichem, for his centenarian yortsayt (Yiddish for "death anniversary")....

“There is no sense in which [the play] THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST needs to be an opera.” Those words aren't mine, but come directly from an article by Paul Kilbey in the program at last week's U.S. stage premiere of Irish composer/lyricist Gerald Barry's 2010 opera THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING E...

Early in May, Gustavo Dudamel—the brilliant music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic—was booed at the opening of TURANDOT at the Vienna State Opera purportedly for playing too loud. There were no such complaints when he returned to Disney Hall in Los Angeles on May 20, with a grand, finely...

The Park Avenue Chamber Symphony under the guidance of musical director and conductor, David Bernard, presented yet another in a series of superb concerts this past weekend at the All Saints Church in NYC. The program included Mozart's Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major (K. 313), The Elgar Cello Concer...

It was quite a performance at the National Technical Museum....

On May 11, 2016, The Cutting Room on East 32nd Street housed Polly Ferman's Glamour Tango. In befitting cabaret style, wining and dining were part of this evening's performance. A four-piece band would allow our ears to hear live music, which is something quite rare if not at the opera or the ballet...

Music Director Rohan Smith has certainly taken this fine community orchestra to a new level of excellence. This past weekend, joining forces with the Oratorio Chorale, directed by Emily Isaacson, the Vox Nova Chamber Orchestra, directed by Shannon M. Chase, and four guest soloists, the huge ensemble...

As part of the New York Opera Fest, Brooklyn's scrappy Vertical Player Repertory ventured into Manhattan's Christ and St. Stephen's Church near Lincoln Center, bringing with it a true rarity: Giovanni Pacini's bel canto-ish MALVINA DI SCOZIA, which dates from 1851. And while it was good to hear a wo...

Those of us with long enough memories can recall some exciting nights at Opera Orchestra of New York's concerts at Carnegie Hall, with Eve Queler at the helm. It's reputed that Donizetti's PARISINA D'ESTE made quite a stir with Montserrat Caballe in the spotlight in 1974--but anyone expecting histor...