By Márcio Bezerra Acclaimed pianist Emanuel Ax was the feature of a sold-out recital Jan. 8 at The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach. Playing a mostly Schubert program with some touches of Liszt, the venerable artist displayed a total commitment to serving the composers’ intentions, with little space for personal eccentricities. Following Arthur Rubinstein’s … [Read more...]
Archives for January 2023
The View From Home: Rivette’s subtle, rewarding ‘Gang of Four’
What would a Hitchcock thriller look like if it were stripped of all of its suspense — its capital-E entertainment? As a director of mainstream, if fussily curated, studio pictures, the maestro himself arguably never attempted such a gnomic exercise, the male gaze-y avenues of Vertigo notwithstanding. I believe such a thought experiment would resemble Jacques Rivette’s … [Read more...]
In Palm Beach, mature work from a grown-up child art star
By Sandra Schulman As an art star from an extremely young age, Alexandra Nechita has matured into a thoughtful, forceful, sophisticated artist. Born in Romania, Alexandra immigrated to the United States before she turned two. She began drawing as a toddler, and by seven had her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. At 11 she had already sold over $1.5 million of her art, … [Read more...]
‘Sweet Charity’ a sparkling must-see at the Maltz
Sweet Charity, the tale of three-named Charity Hope Valentine, the dance hall hostess with a heart of gold and terrible luck with men, requires a triple-threat performer who can sing, dance and act, seemingly without effort. After all, the show’s original director-choreographer, Bob Fosse, created the show in 1966 for his wife and muse, Gwen Verdon, the reigning female star of … [Read more...]
New Palm Beach Film Festival looks to be inclusive
Live film festivals are back, and a new one, The Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Film Festival, makes its debut Jan. 26 with the opening night film, the U.S. premiere of the French comedy Two Tickets to Greece at the Kravis Center Cohen Pavilion. Directed by Marc Fitoussi, who is scheduled to attend the screening, the film stars Laure Calamy, Olivia Côte and Kristin … [Read more...]
PB Opera takes on cultural clash in ‘Madama Butterfly’
The opening of Japan to Western trade in the 1850s engendered a flurry of exotic-themed art in Europe and the United States. Painters and interior designers, dramatists and musicians created numerous works that evoked the mysteries of the land of the Chrysanthemum Throne. Many of these works examined the clash of East and West, including a French novel, an American short … [Read more...]
Grim energy of ‘Hadestown’ brings Kravis audience to its feet
By Dale King Hadestown, the grim, garishly compelling musical that fuses characters from Greek mythology with imagery from a hellishly demonic industrial underworld, continues through Sunday at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach. On opening night Tuesday, a full-house audience rewarded the starkly entertaining performance with a sustained … [Read more...]
The View from Home: Three French noirs from the 1950s
By the late 1950s, American cinema had summited peak noir. As color would soon eclipse black-and-white as the dominant form of visual expression, and as prosperous suburban sprawl replaced hardscrabble city life, the genre of shadows, crime, sex and skewed morality would ease, gradually giving way to neo-noir in the decades to come. But in ’50s France, the genre still found … [Read more...]