Review

Theater Review: “The Cake” — Thoughtfully Baked

January 15, 2020
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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”

January 15, 2020
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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

January 15, 2020
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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”

January 14, 2020
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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

January 13, 2020
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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

January 12, 2020
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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

January 10, 2020
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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”

January 10, 2020
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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

January 9, 2020
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The rarely staged Oberon is easy to love and will fascinate admirers of early nineteenth-century music.

Opera CD Review: A Young, Immensely Assured Joan Sutherland in Weber’s “Euryanthe”

January 8, 2020
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The oft-neglected “other” great opera by Carl Maria von Weber, splendidly performed in 1955 and in remarkably clear and vivid sound. I hope this opera’s day will yet come.

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