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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.
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.
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.
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.
Azizler is a slow burn; unfortunately, the payoff isn’t worth the wait.
Politics is not the filmmaker’s interest in this lovely, affecting documentation of non-bureaucratic, everyday life in Havana.
This is a very effective political drama, a relevant warning about what social critic Chris Hedges calls the formation of “corporate totalitarianism.”
The late Phil Spector once famously referred to his songs as “little symphonies for the kids.”

Book Review: Yang Jisheng’s “The World Turned Upside Down”
Those who admire Yang Jisheng’s distinguished career should pick up this book. Those searching for a solid, accessible history of Mao’s Cultural Revolution should look elsewhere.
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