David Fox
It’s difficult to reconcile what Schlather writes with what we see onstage, which is a jumble not only of pianos, but of periods and concepts.
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Così fan tutte, Mozart’s final Italian comedy with Lorenzo Da Ponte, is this season’s heaviest lift for Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA).
The Day Before Spring , while not exactly experimental, shows a young and adventurous team thinking both traditionally and out-of-the-box.
It may have taken 28 years to see Robert Carsen’s production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the U. S., but it was worth waiting for.
Director Casey Hushion attempts to spice up Call Me Madam in ways that make it feel more than ever like an out-of-touch relic.
Academy of Vocal Arts’ Rusalka—surprisingly, only their second venture in many years into the Slavic repertoire—left a divided impression.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s “Music of Faith” with the Philadelphia Orchestra was a sensational concert, perhaps the best I’ve heard in more than a season.
Russian repertoire figures very centrally in AVA’s mission.
Philadelphia is a city famous for its musical institutions—so, of course, at this time of year Messiah performances abound.
In the Academy of Vocal Arts’s (AVA) clever pairing of two Puccini works, there was every reason to expect the fix was in.
It’s high time we see Funny Girl through a different lens.
Although Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti is always categorized as an opera, the piece certainly has one foot planted firmly in his jazzy musical-theater style.
Opera Philadelphia’s O18 Festival continues through the weekend, but Friday represented a finale of sorts with the last two premieres.
Imagine you are at Disneyland, and there’s an Anthony Roth Costanzo ride.
Those who want a rethought Lucia to allow the heroine more sense of agency will be especially confounded at Laurent Pelly’s reading.
Soprano Patricia Racette is superb in La Voix Humaine, a work that she makes absolutely her own.
Soprano Ashley Marie Robillard and mezzo Siena Licht Miller evoke a journey to Paris, Venice, Berlin, and London.
It would be hard to imagine a more apt and poignant metaphor for the ambitious O18 Festival than the world premiere of Lembit Beecher and Hannah Moscovitch’s Sky on Swings.
Warmth, humor, and joyful out-and-proud-ness dominate the mood, yet there is considerable darkness in Taylor Mac’s view of both past and present.
A very particular tension—between angry political resistance and gloriously sex-positive, buoyantly confidant celebration of queerness—fuels the immense energy of Taylor Mac’s A 24-Hour Decade History of Popular Music.
Though orchestrally lavish, this “semi-staging” delivers less theater than no staging at all.
Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts, a top-tier advanced training program for singers launching professional careers, always sends off their artists in style.
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