By Robert Croan If you were to ask most people whether they know The Pearl Fishers (Les Pêcheurs de perles, in its original French), the answer would likely be no. Georges Bizet’s youthful work, composed 15 years before Carmen, has little name recognition outside opera circles, and even there, it’s something of a rarity. Many who attended Florida Grand Opera’s colorful … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2015
Seraphic Fire provides excellent view of young Mozart in context
Composers are not like Athena, who burst fully formed and armed for battle from the head of Zeus. Forging an individual style is in part a reflection of who the composer is, but also who that composer has studied and listened to. Even someone as miraculous as Mozart had plenty of models for his work, and the Miami concert choir Seraphic Fire goes in search of those musical … [Read more...]
Community theater: Strong cast keeps ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ wacky
By Dale King Lake Worth Playhouse is riding the crest of some first-class theatrical productions this season. The one that drops the final curtain on its three-week engagement Sunday is one of the best, a classic dark comedy from the 1930s that still packs lots of laughs today. Arsenic and Old Lace is one of a dozen plays by Joseph Kesselring — and easily his best. The 1941 … [Read more...]
At the Festival of the Arts Boca: ‘West Side Story,’ daughter celebrate Bernstein
By Dale King At the halfway point of the 2015 Festival of the Arts Boca, many audiences have already seen and heard a great deal about Leonard Bernstein. His elder daughter, Jamie Bernstein, kicked off the annual 10-day event March 4 with a lecture about her father’s legacy, offering backstories about the making of perhaps his most famous work, the musical and film versions of … [Read more...]
Moscow City Ballet makes mess of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan’
By Tara Mitton Catao You are all dressed up. You are going to Dreyfoos Hall to see Swan Lake, the most revered Russian story-ballet, which is being performed by the Moscow City Ballet, a “critically acclaimed” touring Russian ballet company. It is natural to have a certain set of expectations. After all, the house at the Kravis Center is sold out for the one-night show. Then … [Read more...]
Flagler series saves best for last with Auryn Quartet
After three decades of performing together in the world’s best venues, the Auryn Quartet was chosen to close the Flagler Museum Music Series on March 3. Intentional or not, John Blades, executive director of the Flagler, left the best to last. Perhaps I ought to say the very best to last, as this was a blue-ribbon performance from beginning to end. The Auryn, consisting of … [Read more...]
Lou Tyrrell stepping down from Theatre at Arts Garage
For the past three decades, Louis Tyrrell has been producing new, often American, plays at Florida Stage and more recently at its informal offspring, Theatre at Arts Garage in Delray Beach. On Monday, three days after he opened Allison Gregory’s world premiere, Uncertain Terms, the final play of the theater company within the performance venue’s fourth season, he unexpectedly … [Read more...]
Leaden slippers: Branagh’s boring ‘Cinderella’
Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella — that’s an authorship you never thought you’d hear, eh? — poses a fundamental question: Will today’s audiences, raised on Shrek and Enchanted and Tangled and, most recently, Into the Woods, respond to a straightforward rendering of a vintage fairy tale? Because this version of ‘Ella is nothing if not straightforward. It’s inescapably square, you … [Read more...]
At the Festival of the Arts Boca: Michael Grunwald on the unfinished business of the Everglades
Almost 10 years have passed since the publication of Michael Grunwald’s groundbreaking first book, The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise, which was greeted as the most important — and readable — book on the subject since Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s classic, River of Grass. But today Grunwald has one regret: Climate change. “There is climate change … [Read more...]
A splendid afternoon of rare quintets at Chameleon
By Robert Croan Most classical string quintets add a second viola to the standard string quartet combination of two violins, viola and cello. Several repertory works by Mozart and Brahms, for example, employ this combination. Less common are quintets with a cello as the fifth instrument, with the notable exception of a large number by Boccherini (remember the piece played in … [Read more...]