Review

Opera Album Review: A First-Rate World-Premiere Recording of a Short Baroque Opera about the Young Aeneas

August 14, 2021
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I don’t recall encountering a recent Baroque recording that is sung with such a fine balance of smoothness and character.

Film Review: “Under the Volcano” — Island Music

August 14, 2021
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Sir George Martin’s AIR Studios in Montserrat gave birth to some great ’80s music, then succumbed to the elements.

Poetry Review: “Black Earth” — The Irresistible Appeal of Poet Osip Mandelstam

August 13, 2021
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Russian poet Osip Mandelstam’s “ancient language” is rendered into real contemporary poetry in English that succeeds in speaking eloquently to the inner eye and ear.

Book Review: “The Commune” — Don’t Iron While the Strike Is Hot

August 11, 2021
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As an example of historical revisionism, The Commune proffers a valuable representation of the cultural, political, and class dynamics that animated the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Opera Album Review: A Rossini “Semi-Serious” Opera That Works Like a Charm

August 11, 2021
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This new recording would be a great, and inexpensive, way to enter the sound world of Rossini’s mature operas.

August Short Fuses – Materia Critica

August 10, 2021
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Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

Opera Album Review: An Italian Comic Opera, or Is It a German One? You Decide

August 9, 2021
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Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s delightful 1906 comic opera, via the first recording of the version heard at the work’s premiere.

Film Review: “The Green Knight” – Of Vanity, and Verdigris

August 9, 2021
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Filmmaker David Lowery plumbs the depths of this ancient tale, discovering the places where the human and the otherworldly intersect, where the earthbound meets the ethereal.

Film Review: “The Green Knight” — An Art-House Medieval Drama

August 7, 2021
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Is what we see real or in the spirit world? Whatever, I cheer on filmmaker David Lowery’s luminous time-traveling. Pure cinema poetry.

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