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FAVORITE LIVE PERFORMANCES 2017-2018
Every year I note the favorite performances I have seen. Last year I noted productions themselves. This year I note individual acting performances which I found quite wonderful. (In alphabetical...
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CARMEN IN WILLIAMSBURG
Following a decade of teaching Biblical Hebrew to college students, one should welcome retirement as a time to catch one’s breathe and enjoy the easy things of life. Not so for Naama Zahavi-Ely....
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MET OPERA’S EUGENE ONEGIN: TCHAIKOVSKY’S MASTERPIECE
Tchaikovsky didn’t care if his new opera was any good. You may well be right in saying that my opera, [Eugene Onegin], will not be effective on the stage…I have no dramatic vein, and now I don’t worry...
View ArticleVA SYMPHONY HAS THEM DANCING IN THE STREETS
On an October evening, fifty-two years, ago a seventeen year old boy wandered into UVa’s Memorial Gymnasium in Charlottesville to hear his first pop concert, performed by a group called Matha and...
View ArticleTHE NT LIVE’S ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA : WHEN ONE CHOOSES LOVE
In Western Civilization’s foundational myth, the great Trojan warrior Aeneas chooses duty over love when he leaves the exotic Dido in Carthage to do his duty, to found Rome. William Shakespeare...
View ArticleTHE MET OPERA’S ADRIANA LECOUVREUR: NETREBKO IS MELPOMENE
At the end of Francesco Cilea’s 1902 opera Adriana Lecouvreuer librettist Arturo Colautti adds a passage not found in the original 1849 play Adrienne Lecouvreur by Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve. As...
View ArticleThe MET OPERA: CARMEN AS MORALITY PLAY
Each performance is custom-made. Unlike film, when stage actors meet before a new audience anything is possible. As the playwright Herb Gardner noted, There is a chance each time the curtain goes up...
View ArticleTHE MET’S DIE WALKURE: A SUBLIME RETURN TO THE HEART OF THE FIRST RING
With an opera production as overwhelming as Robert Lepage’s Die Walkure at the Metropolitan Opera, adjectives seem unable to capture the majesty and profundity of the experience. “Spectacular”?...
View ArticleVANYA ON THE PLAINS: A HYMN TO THE HUMAN HEART
On October 26, 1899, the day Anton Chekhov’s new play Uncle Vanya, debuted at the Moscow Art Theater, the audience heard the following exchange between two characters: Dr. Astrov: I wonder if...
View ArticleC.S. LEWIS DEFENDS THE LORD OF THE RING
CS Lewis’ Response to Critics of The Lord of the Rings: The Dethronement of Power Posted on January 6, 2018by Earthoak C. S. Lewis’ defence of Tolkien’s work gives insight into the types of criticism...
View ArticleTHE MET’S PORGY AND BESS: It’s Got Plenty of Vigor and Talent
The distinguished opera historian and critic Charles Osborne considers George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess to be “the most successful American contribution to twentieth century opera.”[i] Like all works...
View ArticleTHE COURT THEATRE’S THE MOUSETRAP: NEAR PERFECTION
In the late 1920s, mystery writer Ronald Knox published “Ten Commandments for Writing Detective Fiction.” With her monumental play The Mousetrap, Agatha Christie violated the central commandment. (to...
View ArticleWHY YOU SHOULD SEE SHAW’S MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION: PATERNITY
Despite the existence of DNA testing, and sites like Ancestry.com, genealogy can still offer major surprises and uproars in a person’s life. Just ask Oedipus Rex. Or Captain Adolph in Strindberg’s The...
View ArticleIN THE SEASON OF PARSIFAL
The coincidence of a world-wide pandemic and the liturgical season of Lent may prompt some people, stuck at home, to consider Richard Wagner’s masterpiece, PARSIFAL. Set in a mythological world in...
View ArticleWAR FILMS FOR MEMORIAL DAY
The heroic soldier evidences seven core values: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage. Filmmakers have sometimes captured the uniqueness of the soldier in...
View ArticleNEW WEBSITE: THE S YMBOLIC WORLD- Chesterton for the 21st Century
G.K. Chesterton called them fairy tales. They inspired C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. SOME solemn and superficial people (for nearly all very superficial people are solemn) have...
View ArticleA CHICAGO OPERA CENTENNIAL
With the approach of the 2020-2021 opera season, we commemorate the centenary of the Chicago Opera Association[i]’s world premiere of Sergei Prokofiev[ii]’s For the Love of Three Oranges, December 30,...
View ArticleA Macbeth to Celebrate
“This tragedy is one of the greatest creations of man!” thought Giuseppe Verdi as he began the long and often frustrating process of bringing his operatic version of Shakespeare’s classic to fruition....
View ArticleMUTI AND THE CSO RETURN
Classical music organizations have always looked for ways to expand their repertoire beyond the tried-and-true canon. New symphonies and operas have been commissioned almost from the beginning of the...
View ArticleLYRIC OPERA’S MAGIC FLUTE: SAD AND SOULLESS
Chicago’s first Magic Flute played on Tuesday evening, January 17, 1865. Carl Anschutz (1813-1870) conducted. In January 1864 Leonard Grover (1833-1926) brought to Chicago the first real German opera...
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