A world-premiere recording of Siroe, King of Persia makes it clear that Leonardo Vinci (1690-1730) was as fine a craftsman as the painter with a similar name.
Review
Theater Review: “The Cake” — Thoughtfully Baked
Dramatist Bekah Brunstetter sidesteps easy answers and pat revelations to produce a nuanced comedy about people coming to terms with who they are and where they are from.
Rock CD Review: The First Punk Rockers? The Damned Release “Black Is The Night”
Melody is one of the things that keeps a song from floundering, no matter how in-your-face its rhythm and chord structure might be, which is something a lot of spunky punk bands tend to forget. The Damned always kept that well in mind.
Country Music CD Review: Marcus King’s “El Dorado” — An Inspired Detour
In this disc, Marcus King takes a step back from the big, hard-charging sound he has been pursuing to great effect with his namesake band over the past few years.
Opera CD Review: The Greatest Spanish Opera? — A New Recording of Enrique Granados’s “Goyescas”
Imagine the excitement of experiencing, for the first time, an opera by one of the greatest composers to have come out of the Spanish-speaking world!
Film Review: Alice Guy-Blaché — One of the First, if not the First, Makers of Narrative Cinema
A fuller accounting of the creative contributions of women to the film industry in its early decades is still fighting for a place in mainstream awareness. The documentary Be Natural is a valuable battering ram in that fight.
Book Review: The Holocaust’s Jewish Calendars — Protecting the Sacred Value of Time
Alan Rosen’s book thoughtfully illuminates the perilous calendrical devotion of Jews during the Holocaust, seeing it as a form of resistance.
Film Review: “Just Mercy” — The Tragedy of Justice Deferred
Artful films like Just Mercy remain necessary — these are the kind of stories our troubled nation needs to hear if we are to move forward.
Book Commentary: “La patria y la muerte” — Exposing Mexican “Greatness”
José Luis Trueba Lara’s anti-popularist history is the truest kind of people’s history.
Opera CD Review: Carl Maria von Weber’s Wildly Assorted Candy Box — A Spiffy New Recording
The rarely staged Oberon is easy to love and will fascinate admirers of early nineteenth-century music.