From one Mister Snow to another, I salute him.
A starry (and potentially annual) Christmas gala lights up Carnegie Hall.
Pride weekend events at San Francisco Opera and Festival Opera are fabulous starts to the Bay Area summer
The nail-biting adventures of Voltaire’s titular hero Candide are hardly more circuitous than those faced by Leonard Bernstein’s 1956 Broadway musical adaptation.
Overall, this was a superb achievement and a thrilling season opener for the San Francisco Opera.
“What a day, what a day for an Auto-da-fe!” and it’s also always a good day for Candide, so Chris’s Cache presents a pirate recording of a 1971 staging starring Mary Costa, Frank Porretta, and William Lewis.
Ah, that Bernstein dichotomy.
On Saturday at Alice Tully Hall, Julliard 415, the school’s top-flight period-instrument ensemble, was joined by students from the Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts and Juilliard Drama for a rare semi-staging of King Arthur.
A quick survey of the Met website shows wide swaths of available seats for the upcoming performances of La traviata and L’elisir d’amore. Only new works like The Hours and Fire Shut Up in My Bones have been achieving sold-out houses.
The New York City Opera has become an elusive “now you see it, now you don’t” presence in the New York opera scene since the departure of main sponsor and chairman of the board Roy G. Niederhoffer in 2019.
Michael Spyres as Faust, despite a few flickers of indisposition, was nearly ideal.
With the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Candide, they saved the best (of all possible worlds) for last.
I’ve never liked the term “crossover.”
Logistically, a large-scale revival of the operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer is an unreasonable request, much less an expectation.
Sunny, lakeside Cooperstown presents a peppy, exuberant, winning production of West Side Story, the musical.
If you’ve ever wondered what the Lost Boys’ abode might look like lined with mermaids, shopping carts, and unpeeled potatoes, look no further than Christopher Alden’s new production of Peter Pan.
Well here we are, beloveds, still swathed in the warm glow of the Leonard Bernstein centennial. Box sets abound like bunnies in a hutch.
The Barber of Seville turned out to be the most overall solid production of the year and even a bit of old-fashioned fun.
I mean, how often does one get to hear Bernstein’s gorgeous, rollicking, and varied score nursed by a full orchestra and the artistic resources of an opera company?
Celebrating Lenny’s 100th this year has made Candide ubiquitous at opera houses worldwide.
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.
I fucking love Renée Fleming.
Tack on a little symphonic Beethoven and some particularly zany hosting patter from Bernadette Peters, and you start to lose focus, or at least some sense of, um, what matters mostly.
Douglas Moore’s score for The Ballad of Baby Doe has everything that could please and little that could offend.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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