Classical audacity at The Broad
There are three extraordinary opportunities to experience daring, innovative classical music at The Broad Stage this fall. First, the Isango Ensemble of South Africa re-imagines Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Then the local, stellar, Calder Quartet will perform twice, once with soprano Yulia Van Doran and then with film composer Bear Mcreary. The best Mozart operas ...
Great performances overcome ‘Otello’ racist legacy @ ENO 2
I find Shakepeare’s Othello problematic in the extreme, all the racist references in the text, the historic use of blackface, the desperate fragility of a black man so easily duped by a white conniver, the hysteria around strong and bestial black hands closing around the white neck of the blameless Desdemona, even more so when ...
Mozart @ 18 in Glyndbourne’s “La Finta”
Haven’t heard of La Finta? Not to worry, few people have. Written when the composer was but 18 years old and very (very) rarely performed, the anonymous text is primarily to blame: The Podesta (Mayor) is in love with his new gardener Sadrina, which is too bad for the servant Serpetta who more than fancies ...
Phoenix arisen: visiting Venice’s historic La Fenice opera house
So thrilling to tour Teatro La Fenice, the historic opera house that sits at the center of the Italian arts city … and then to attend a wonderful, rocking Baroque music concert by the Festival Baroque Orchestra, performing under vigorous direction by violin virtuoso, Stefano Montanari, in one of the theater’s lovely music salons. Group ...
Gilliam’s brilliant, bonkers Berlioz @ ENO
Bombastic imaginations, bonkers juxtapositions, no attention to rules of deportment, and energy without limit. It would seem that Hector Berlioz and Terry Gilliam are a match made.. well, somewhere .. but certainly for each other. Following the wild and wooly success of his Damnation of Faust in 2011, Gilliam has trained his most particular talents ...
ENO ‘Cosi’ conjured at Coney Island
How do you solve a problem like Cosi — Mozart’s Job-like musical glory of messing with the minds of two women on a bet, just to prove that they’re “like that”? In the words of Peter Sellars, prior to his revisionist diner production more than twenty years ago: “Is this the most offensive anti-feminist opera ...
Flirting with Fascism, Sinatra: ENO’s Rodelinda
I’d been away from London, in New York, for Rodelinda’s Coliseum premiere but heard such good things about it that I arranged for one of its last performances and am so glad I did. Beyond the grace of Handel’s music conducted by baroque specialist Christopher Curnyn and played with usual panache by a reduced English ...
‘The Magic Flute’ at English National Opera
Opera lovers in London have any numbers of possibilities. We can go mammoth: Aida in the Royal Albert Hall for an audience of 3500 with singers and orchestra miked to the max; or miniscule: the prizing-winning Opera Up Close at the Kings Head Theatre Pub in Islington for 110, its Prohibition-set Traviata currently running until ...
Opera occupies Union Station 1
The overture ended, a set of heavy double doors opened, and into Union Station spilled the opera audience. As the group dispersed, some displayed trepidation in their quest for the singers heard in their headsets. Others eschewed the life-sized version of Where’s Waldo: One couple made a beeline for the bar; ordering a bottle of ...
The perils of Pauline Schindler 1
In an early letter, Pauline Schindler wrote, “One of my dreams, Mother, is to have, someday, a little joy of a bungalow, on the edge of the woods and mountains near a crowded city, which shall be open just as some people’s hearts are open, to friends of all classes and types… Surely the mother ...