Month: June 2009
By Caldwell Titcomb The Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra (PACO), made up of the most talented high-school string players in California’s Bay Area, kicked off its first East Coast tour with an impressive June 27 concert in Harvard’s Sanders Theatre before a large audience that spilled over into the balcony.
Read MoreLet us hob-and-nob with Death — Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Duck Variations by David Mamet. Directed by Marcus Stern. Sexual Perversity in Chicago by David Mamet. Directed by Paul Stacey. Presented by the American Repertory Theatre at Zero Arrow Street, Cambridge, MA, through June 28. Reviewed by Bill Marx Death be not mentioned in David…
Read MoreBy Harvey Blume To play Xiangqi (Chinese chess) as earnestly as I have been lately is to revisit a familiar situation, one in which I am at the gateway of another culture, hungry for the experience, but positioned as a junior. That was the case with African drumming and with neurological difference, for example, especially…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb If you know a bit about opera, you will have heard of Verdi – but perhaps not of Monteverdi. Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) was the first major composer in the history of opera, and the biennial Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) is presenting his last opera, “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” (“The Coronation of Poppaea”)…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb Starting in 1769 serious questions have been raised as to whether William Shakespeare (1564–1616) of Stratford-upon-Avon actually wrote the plays and poems attributed to him. For some years the true author was claimed to be Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626). So far, at least 60 persons have been put forward as the rightful…
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