Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca is, with the exception of the one-act Il Tabarro, the most veristic of the Italian composer’s works, and it needs a lot of good red blood to make it work. I don’t mean literal blood, of course, though there could have been some in several spots in the opera Saturday night at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, but the figurative kind: A … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2014
DuoSF musically dazzling, but needs more show biz
Christopher Mallett and Robert Miller, who call themselves DuoSF, are no ordinary self-taught hotshot young guitar players. Appearing in the Young Artists Series at the Rinker Playhouse of Kravis Center on April 7, they brought their gentlemanly and highly cultured approach to this string strumming art we all associate with Spain. Andres Segovia was the leader, Miller and … [Read more...]
Sundays: Being and un-being
By Myles Ludwig The untimely passing of Peaches Geldof was the big news in Britain this week. It was the top-trending topic on the staid BBC and banner fodder for the tabloid-obsessed country in which Murdochian journalism has ensnared its own perpetrator in a messy matrimonial scandal. You may be forgiven for not knowing that Ms. Geldof was one of the three whimsically named … [Read more...]
PB Symphony finale shows Tebar’s orchestra-building success
Ramón Tebar must be exhausted. Twinning conductorships of Palm Beach Symphony and Florida Grand Opera in Miami would sap the energy of another man. Not so the 35-year-old Tebar. He must have the strength of Hercules. Drawing on reserves of a champion soccer player last Sunday afternoon, April 6, he conducted a superb concert at the Kravis Center with the Palm Beach Symphony. … [Read more...]
At the Four Arts, pages of faith, pages of light
If Hollywood can bring us a Noah with special effects, monks should be able to bring us a radiantly abstract Bible. And that’s exactly what they have done. After 15 years, elegantly crafted pages of gigantic size and glowing imagery are spreading the light. As far as the message goes, time will tell. The Saint John’s Bible is the first illuminated handwritten Bible to be … [Read more...]
The View From Home 59: Hawking’s history, a gruesome morality tale, coming of age in the South, and more
A Brief History of Time: For years, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time has been sitting on my shelf, its spine ashamedly uncracked, waiting for the hypothetical day when I have hours of time on my hands and the irrepressible desire to read sentences six times before possibly comprehending them. Forgive me if I’d gallop a bit quicker toward completing an 84-minute movie … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: April 11-13
Film: OK, it’s not a great weekend for film releases, but if you are still going through withdrawal after the football season, you can get a fictional look at the Cleveland Browns’ front office in Draft Day, opening wide this weekend. Kevin Costner gets his best role in years as the team’s general manager, Sonny Weaver Jr., wheeling and dealing in preparation for the crucial … [Read more...]
Manasse, Schwarz bring standout Mozart to Symphonia
It’s always a good day at a concert when you can hear something new in a pillar of the repertoire like Mozart. And so it was Sunday afternoon at the Roberts Theater for the season-closing concert by The Symphonia Boca Raton (though they’ll appear later this month as the orchestra for the Master Chorale of South Florida), which brought the eminent conductor Gerard Schwarz to … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Dividing the Estate’ and ‘Evita’
Take economic bad times, add a land-rich but cash-poor clan brimming with selfish money-grubbers and you have a recipe for a dysfunctional family play like Dividing the Estate, which landed on Broadway for 50 performances in late 2008 and early 2009, just before its author, the prolific Horton Foote, passed away. He again takes us to fictional Harrison, Texas, the site of so … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Steel Magnolias,’ ‘Chess,’ Dirty Blonde,’ and ‘Mr. Marmalade’
April may not be the cruelest month, as T.S. Eliot once declared, but it has brought us some disappointing theater. Steel Magnolias — Boca Raton’s Wick Theatre has filled its inaugural season with mainstream commercial musicals. So you would think its only divergence from that menu would have to be a pretty sure-fire, high-quality, audience-friendly play. Well, no. Sandwiched … [Read more...]