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Opera Album Review: Before “Carmen,” There Was Massenet’s Spanish-Tinged “Don César de Bazan”

January 24, 2021
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World premiere recording of an utterly delicious 1872 comic opera, recorded without spoken dialogue, so you can just revel in the music and the singing.

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Shelter in Place Attractions: January 24 through February 9 — What Will Light Your Home Fires

January 24, 2021
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In the age of COVID-19, Arts Fuse critics have come up with a guide to film, dance, visual art, theater, and music — mostly available by streaming — for the coming weeks. More offerings will be added as they come in.

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Classical Album Review: Žibuoklė Martinaitytė’s “Saudade” — Engrossing and Accessible Recent Orchestral Music

January 22, 2021
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Taken together, these four pieces showcase a composer whose handling of the orchestra is expert and whose sense of form, in these works at least, feels unerringly right.

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Opera Feature: Should We Be Updating Operas So They Address Present-Day Issues?

January 22, 2021
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Philip Glass’s librettist Arthur Yorinks offers his thoughts on whether and how to update an opera as the Boston Lyric Opera releases its revamped and filmed version of The Fall of the House of Usher.

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Film Review: “Breaking Fast”– The Romantic Life, Among Gay Muslims

January 22, 2021
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Films like Breaking Fast introduce audiences to cultures that they may not be familiar with — that they may even be hostile to — but through conflicts and dreams that are universal, that revolve around family, love, and friendship.

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Film Review: “The White Tiger” — Class Warfare, Indian Style

January 21, 2021
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This is a wicked and entertaining satire on the dizzying class conflicts roiling Indian society, a neo-Marxist story of masters and servants, money and corruption — a Horatio Alger tale with a devilish twist.

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Listening During Covid, Part 4: Fascinating Vocal Adventures from Different Times and Places

January 21, 2021
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I may be in quarantine, but music can transport me back to the Middle Ages, or to the court of Catherine the Great of Russia, or, via Donizetti, to an imagined India.

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Film Review: “Azizler” (aka Stuck Apart) — Trapped Again

January 20, 2021
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Azizler is a slow burn; unfortunately, the payoff isn’t worth the wait.

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Film Review: “Epicentro” — An Affectionate View of Cuba

January 20, 2021
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Politics is not the filmmaker’s interest in this lovely, affecting documentation of non-bureaucratic, everyday life in Havana.

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Theater Review: “The Race” — Business as Unusual

January 19, 2021
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This is a very effective political drama, a relevant warning about what social critic Chris Hedges calls the formation of “corporate totalitarianism.”

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