Cameron Kelsall
Mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron showed herself unafraid to move the expectations of classical music forward, linguistically, thematically, and culturally.
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The Vienna Philharmonic brought along no star soloist for their three-night residency at Carnegie Hall this past weekend. Their programs didn’t include any commissions or flashy new works. The repertoire choices hewed closely to the core Austro-German corpus for which they are justly famous, including multiple works they had given in their world premieres.
Cotton, a world-premiere song cycle commissioned by Philadelphia’s Lyric Fest, takes its audience on a journey through Black American history that extends from the Deep South to the contemporary urban landscape.
A main theme in Becky Nurse of Salem is how history is distorted by those who get to tell it.
Perhaps the quirkiest of Mahler’s nine symphonies, the Fourth fits nicely with Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s somewhat idiosyncratic style.
As the focal point of the The Far Country, Eric Yang anchors the production with a cool steadiness that only occasionally betrays a sense of urgency beneath his patient countenance.
Sondra Radvanovsky eschewed the customary stuffiness of the recital format, often speaking directly to the audience and putting her selections in a highly personal context.
Trouble was afoot from the first selection onward.
Countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen‘s star is surely on the rise.
Cost of Living, the Pulitzer Prize–winning play by Martyna Majok now on Broadway, overflows with complexity. It begins with the title.
People turn up at a cancer hospital on the worst day of their lives. In I’m Revolting, a moving and often unsettling world premiere from Atlantic Theatre Company, playwright Gracie Gardner dissects the fears and motivations of patients and their caregivers with surgical precision.
The smile for the fools is especially broad this summer in the Berkshires, where a charming revival of A Little Night Music opened recently at Barrington Stage Company.
A trip to Mediterranean climes came through musically, as the Boston Symphony Orchestra presented a largely satisfying concert performance of Don Giovanni on July 16.
People’s Light deserves commendation for resurfacing The Vinegar Tree, and there’s satisfaction in seeing a fine old play handled with care.
Zachary James builds on his early career experience as a musical theater performer to deliver a thoughtfully crafted, blessedly restrained Quixote/Cervantes.
Plucked from obscurity by Howard Hughes and sold to the public as a buxom, brunette heir apparent to his former protégé, Jean Harlow, Jane Russell became a household name before she ever shot a single reel of film.
If you missed Amour during its Broadway premiere 19 years ago, you’re not alone.
All in all, Mahler’s ethereal evocation of the natural world, and the world beyond our own, is becoming old hat.
Over the course of 700 pages, Alex Ross exhaustively—and sometimes exhaustingly—examines an impact that began in the Wagner’s own lifetime and continues unbroken today, with references cropping up in contemporary works as different as The Matrix and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
The success of Porgy and Bess at the Met forced bass-baritone Eric Owens, the newly installed director of vocal studies at the Curtis Institute, to cancel a long-planned afternoon recital at the school on February 16.
Each year, when I take in a performance of Messiah by the Philadelphia Orchestra as part of my own holiday tradition, I hope it will spark some new and exciting feeling inside of me, or offer a new way of looking at the musical drama as a whole.
Greater Clements provokes more genuine poignancy than the whole of The Inheritance in half the running time. There’s hardly a moment that isn’t painfully true to life.
Little Shop of Horrors loses its necessary edge when it’s wrested from the gritty world of its creation.
