Helen Epstein

Book Review: “Fruitlands” — New England Utopia Gone Wrong

December 13, 2010
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You can understand why historian and novelist Richard Francis became attached to this quixotic piece of New England history. It’s got an amazing cast of colorful characters, and dramatic rivalries that involve contests over land, love, money, and sex. Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia by Richard Francis. Yale University Press, 344…

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Fuse Remembrance: Heda Kovaly

December 12, 2010
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Translating what became Under a Cruel Star was a labor of love as well as a work of feminism. There were few memoirs around of a life that spanned Nazism and Stalinism. None was written by a woman. By Helen Epstein. Readers of today’s New York Times found a remarkable story on the obituary page:…

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Culture Vulture in London: An Overcrowded Jewish Nest

November 8, 2010
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Tribes makes us privy to the dynamics of a twenty-first-century, secular, Jewish family in a series of fast-paced scenes that leave few holds barred. The parents—middle-class, middle-aged, hyper-verbal intellectuals—are trying to cope with the fact that their three adult children have returned to inhabit the nest. By Helen Epstein. When I first wrote London friends…

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Culture Vulture: Back at the Mall with Das Rheingold — What would Wagner think?

October 30, 2010
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The possibilities of the internet as well as the MET in HD pull Wagner’s dream of a total work of art into the context of 21st-century technology and culture, making possible new cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary references as never before. I think he would have loved it. By Helen Epstein. When I was a musicology student…

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Culture Vulture in Manhattan II

October 17, 2010
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Ever since the Guggenheim got its face-lift a couple of years ago at age 50, Frank Lloyd Wright’s once-controversial museum has become one of my favorite visual arts venues in the city. I like strolling up the spiraling ramp, looking at one picture after another placed in the order that the curator thought the exhibition…

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Culture Vulture: The Met in New York or The Met in HD?

October 16, 2010
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I’ve been ruined by the Met at the Mall. Despite the worn-out, industrial carpeting and the popcorn and the lack of glamor, there are great advantages in seeing opera at the movies these days with state-of-the-art technology, especially the sound. By Helen Epstein. After spending most of the last opera season at the Burlington Mall…

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Food Fuse: Culture Vulture Goes Manhattan

October 16, 2010
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By Helen Epstein. When I go back to New York (where I grew up as a city kid and worked as a cultural journalist many years ago), one of my first stops is a late breakfast at Cafe Sabarsky. Located in the Neue Galerie, the museum of Austrian and German art at 86th St and…

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Music Feature: Wagner’s Ring Cycle in HD — The MET at the Mall Goes Global

October 5, 2010
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The bottom line is that Opera in HD is a huge hit all over the United States and is transforming the art form as it succeeds. Via The Met: Live in HD, New Englanders can experience parts of Wagner’s Ring Cycle without going to New York beginning on October 9 at 1 p.m. with the…

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Theater Review: Milking Stoppard’s Whimsy

September 26, 2010
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The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard. Directed by Jonathan Croy. Presented by Shakespeare & Company at the Bernstein Theatre, Lenox, MA, through November 7. Reviewed by Helen Epstein. If you are looking for a light, literate, zany evening of entertainment, you can do no better than Shakespeare & Company’s current production of Tom Stoppard’s…

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Culture Vulture: Tanglewood Highlight Without Stars

August 29, 2010
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Every single player and singer seemed thrilled to be performing this music, absorbed in it, attentive to their masterful conductor and having a good time. It made me think how often that is not the case at symphony concerts. By Helen Epstein There were no star soloists or conductors around on Friday night and since…

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