Just in time for this month’s theme of filth or dementia, a review of Terrence McNally‘s Master Class from Central City Opera.
The 25th anniversary revival of Dead Man Walking at San Francisco Opera is most moving in its quietest moments
Pride weekend events at San Francisco Opera and Festival Opera are fabulous starts to the Bay Area summer
Following a review by Christopher Corwin, figures from in and around the box react to Pablo Larraín‘s new film Maria
Christopher Corwin reviews Pablo Larraín‘s Maria
“None of that sentimental crap, okay?”
To opera denizens, Terrence McNally is probably best known for Master Class, a fictionalized account of Maria Callas’s 1970s Juilliard master classes, which was a surprise hit on Broadway in the 1990s.
Sunday’s matinee at Lyric Opera of Chicago was my first experience of Heggie and McNally’s 2000 opera Dead Man Walking. It certainly won’t be my last.
“Who are you? Who do you want to be?” The search for one’s identity is explored in American composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer’s brand new opera If I Were You.
The Mac-Haydn Theatre are giving Ragtime, a musical about turn-of-the-century race relations, unwelcome immigrants, labor revolts against brute force and the collapse of the traditional family.
In recent years, Opera Paralléle has established a reputation for creative programming of contemporary opera in San Francisco. Persuaded both by the promise of an unusual Bernstein-Heggie double bill, and the unusual venue of SF Jazz’s Miner Auditorium, I had the pleasure of attending an excellent production this past week.
The opera is relentlessly obvious, a work that repeatedly turns to tired tropes and canned characters to fill up its nearly three hour run time.
Hopefully the assignment of Herman Melville’s endless whaling opus Moby-Dick as compulsory reading for High School students is a thing of the past.
You may recall, cher public, that a few weeks ago La Cieca challenged you to identify the blurbs for that new picture book (James Levine: 40 Years at The Metropolitan Opera, and yes, it’s available on Amazon!) Where was I, oh, yes. Anyway, La Cieca supplied three of the back cover blurbs and you were…
Like the double or triple negative (where theoretically pairs of “nots” cancel each other out, but in practice you can’t be so sure) this tidbit of news La Cieca just read has her confused and uncertain. It seems that at a recital in Tulsa last night, Dame Kiri te Kanawa sang as an encore a…
La Cieca sat through Terrence McNally‘s latest effort, Dedication, Sunday afternoon, and the best thing she can think to say about it is that this play makes a whole lot of opera librettos look like masterpieces of literature. There’s this husband and wife children’s theater team who are trying to convince a dying grande dame…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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