Opera
When the performance ended and I sat there, silent, reveling with the rest of the audience in the goose bumps that inevitably occur after such an experience, I knew, in my bones, that no movie, however good, could be as good as this.
Under the baton of its Artistic Director, Susan Davenny Wyner, Boston Midsummer Opera has become an annual highlight of Boston’s classical music line-up during the summer.
Orango is one of the tantalizing “what might have been’s” of musical history: a biting social commentary on Soviet society on the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution, written when Shostakovich was at the height of his musical powers and popularity.
Although there is room for improvement, the singers engage each other, as well as the orchestra, with vigor and skill, making for a satisfying “Snegurochka” in Russian.
Aside from the intrinsic entertainment value of these operas, they show Ravel in quite a different light than we are used to from his chamber and other orchestral music.
This is shorter, no-frills Opera as Cinema than the Met HD supplies: without long intermissions, star interviews and audience preludes and postludes from Lincoln Center, it’s almost an hour shorter.
The Boston Lyric Opera’s new production of “Macbeth,” with sets designed by John Conklin, is based on elements of a New York City Opera production and plays up the macabre elements of the story, which are many.
Many musicians know Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) as a somewhat dry composer who wrote a few operas as well as sonatas for every instrument and some half dozen for viola (he played both violin and viola extremely well). But real Hindemith has a cutting lyrical gift, much of it is on display in his kinky opera…
An exciting month, and that isn’t hyperbole. A couple of North American premieres: a futuristic opera from MIT’s Tod Machover and poet Robert Pinsky and a drama tweaking The New Testament from Howard Brenton. Toss in iconic director Peter Brook staging Beckett, F. Murray Abraham as Shylock, and Car Talk:The Musical and you are talking about taking out the smelling salts
Recent Comments