review / performance
Surely it was lightning in a bottle. The announcement that Steve Carell would appear at Lincoln Center’s Beaumont Theater playing the titular Uncle Vanya in Anton Chekhov’s classic play would, of course, be a box office windfall.
By David Fox
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Only connect! So sayeth E.M. Forster (via Margaret Wilcox) in Howard’s End.
By Eli Jacobson
I have a confession and you may need to sit down for it: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita was one of the gateway drugs to my eventual opera fandom.
By Patrick Mack
Mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack appeared at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater this past Thursday with pianist Keun-A Lee in a thoughtful and distinctly personal recital program presented by Vocal Arts DC.
By Alex Baker
When my press invite came for the Book of Mountains and Seas, the collaboration between Chinese born contemporary composer Huang Ruo, the vocal ensemble Ars Nova Copenhagen, and master puppeteer and production designer Basil Twist, I was in.
By Patrick Mack
Over the weekend, Opera Parallèle, San Francisco’s contemporary opera company, stayed true to their mission of “merging tradition and innovation to re-invent opera for a modern world” as they presented a world premiere double-bill cheekily titled Birds & Balls at SFJazz Center’s Miner Auditorium.
After a century of searching, the world has perhaps finally found a definitive Magda in ethereal soprano Ailyn Pérez.
By KJ Velz
Hailed as the first opera by an African-American composer performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones was a huge audience and box office hit in the Fall of 2021 when it reopened the Met after two seasons shut down by COVID-19.
By Eli Jacobson
Heartbeat Opera’s The Extinctionist — composed by Dan Schlosberg with a libretto by Amanda Quaid — is the first opera, as far as I know, to stage a pap smear.
By Max Keller
Oh, La traviata, how do I love thee? Let me count the recordings.
By Patrick Mack
I confess to being a “bad” dance fan: over the decades I’ve learned that if I don’t love (or at least like) the music, I won’t love the dance.
If it didn’t all work, it wouldn’t work at all.
Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot are, in their different ways, the final decadent flowering of a musical tradition at its twilight.
By Eli Jacobson
