For decades, Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate has been remembered mostly as a monument to megalomania, rife with stories about its director hemorrhaging time, money and miles and miles of film to shoot his exacting vision. Heaven’s Gate went so over budget so much that it crippled its distributor, United Artists, and inspired an entire book – Final Cut – about its calamitous … [Read more...]
Archives for November 2012
Palm Beach Symphony reaches out to youth with Stravinsky
Time was, in the late 1950s, that a charismatic conductor could start a TV series in which he introduced young people to the world of classical music, and build himself a legend as well as permanently influence the lives of millions of those youths. But Leonard Bernstein is no longer with us, and neither is the middlebrow consensus that led to the televising of the Young … [Read more...]
Perez’s ideal Mimi renews appeal of ‘Boheme’ at FGO
The opera that Giacomo Puccini and his librettists concocted from Henri Murger’s La vie de Bohème has been one of the most beloved of all operas since its premiere in 1896, and in the century and more that’s followed, it’s become pretty much indestructible. The current production of La Bohème at Florida Grand Opera is as traditional a production as you could wish for visually, … [Read more...]
At the opera: In Orlando, a hit-and-miss ‘Figaro’
The Orlando Philharmonic’s production Nov. 9 of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro straddled a fine line that divides semi-staged from fully staged performances. These semi-staged productions of the Philharmonic either leave one feeling unsettled, as in this Figaro, or completely satisfied, as with last spring’s Rigoletto. It is a dilemma directors must wrestle with continually: Go … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Birds’ compels without avians; ‘Venus’ actress captivates
When Alfred Hitchcock turned Daphne du Maurier’s apocalyptic novella The Birds into a movie in 1963, it became a visually literal thriller of avian menace instead of a character-based psychological tale. Now comes Irish yarn-spinner Conor McPherson (The Seafarer, The Weir) to translate the story to the stage, suggesting that man may have less to fear from feathered creatures … [Read more...]
Violinist brings strong personality to familiar concerto
It has only become a commonplace of Tchaikovsky criticism in recent years to emphasize his work’s continuity with Russian folk tradition, but as a performance Tuesday night showed, it’s always been right there in plain view. The Canadian violinist Lara St. John, in an exceptional performance with the South Florida Symphony at the Crest Theatre in Delray Beach, dug deep into … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 23-25
Dance: The holidays are upon us, and that means so is The Nutcracker. When the Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky finished the score for the ballet in 1891, it was as part of a double-bill with his one-act opera, Iolanta. Tchaikovsky didn’t much like what he’d written, but Tsar Alexander III, who came to a dress rehearsal for the first performance in December 1892, loved it, … [Read more...]
Maltz’s ‘Music Man’ adds dance to Hill’s catalog of pizzazz
The Music Man, Meredith Willson’s valentine to America, small-town Midwest division, circa 1912, has captivated audiences since the 1956-57 Broadway season when it dominated the Tony Awards and beat out West Side Story. Known for Willson’s syncopated rhythms and trip-hammer lyrics, the show has never been considered a strong dance show. But, says choreographer Shea Sullivan … [Read more...]
Singer-songwriter Haas finds inspiration everywhere
Crazy Is, the independent debut CD by fledgling recording artist Anna Haas, might well have been called A Tale of Two Cities. That’s because the Nashville-born and raised vocalist and pianist has split time between her hometown of Music City and another music city, New York, over the past decade. Crazy Is was even recorded in various studios within each locale. “I’m back and … [Read more...]
‘Life of Pi’ a ravishing visual achievement
I could have watched the opening montage of Life of Pi for a full three hours and walked away satisfied. Not just satisfied but cleansed, reinvigorated and positively transported, to a paradisical time and place that probably never existed. Shot in 3-D, the movie opens with images of a tropical zoo, where verdant foliage flanks scores of exotic animals as they traipse across … [Read more...]