The music of Franz Schubert is not an unknown quantity (except for the operas), but a good group of musicians can always bring something special to it that we might not have encountered before. Tuesday night at the Flagler Museum, the Ying Quartet, a veteran string foursome founded in Chicago more than 30 years ago, programmed two of Schubert’s late quartets on the first … [Read more...]
PB Opera’s ‘Hansel’ explores world of play, menace on a set made of paper
In the Palm Beach Opera’s upcoming trip to the land of make-believe, everything is made of paper and grommets are our friend. If that sounds odd, how about this: For its December production, which in past years has amounted to such things as outdoor concerts and presentations of huge symphonic works including Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Verdi’s Requiem, the company is … [Read more...]
‘Giovanni’ opens FGO’s 79th season in distinctive style
Although Lorenzo Da Ponte’s reading of the character best known as Don Juan is that he is an unrepentant rake who deserves perdition with a capital P, today’s opera directors have a dilemma on their hands: How exactly are we to understand Don Giovanni? As the focus of one of Mozart’s finest operas, it’s a crucial question. I’ve seen him depicted as a Las Vegas crime lord in … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire gives 12th-century mystic the respect she deserves
Posthumous fame came very late for the German abbess Hildegard of Bingen, but her rediscovery in the late 20th century some 800 years after she died has been a salutary achievement for the appreciation of early music and the music of women composers. That isn’t to say that Hildegard’s idiom, which consists of her own special style of plainchant, blends smoothly into the … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2019-20: Birthday boy Beethoven will be a big presence in 2019-20 season
The shade of Ludwig van Beethoven looms large over this season, as he will the next, because the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth falls in 2020. No fewer than five performances of the Ninth Symphony are coming our way this season, but there’s also plenty of the master’s chamber music to be had this time around, too (including several readings of his late string … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2019-20: Opera companies playing it mostly safe for coming season
The three major opera companies in the South Florida region are sticking to the mostly tried-and-true this season, but there are enough surprises to make it a good few months for the opera veteran, too. Palm Beach Opera: Over the summer, General Director Daniel Biaggi stepped down from his post in search of new challenges, but will stick around for a little while to allow … [Read more...]
Something for everyone as PB Chamber Music Fest opens 28th season
In this summer’s version of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, the music ranges widely from canonical string and piano quartets to rarities for unusual combinations of instruments, as well as major utterances from overlooked composers of the past. In short, it contains all the elements listeners have come to expect from this festival, whose 28th anniversary season begins … [Read more...]
FGO ends season with beautifully sung, handsome ‘Werther’
Florida Grand Opera closed its 78th season on May 11 with a beautifully sung, attractively presented mounting of Jules Massenet’s Werther, which many scholars of French opera consider to be the composer’s masterpiece. The opera, based on Goethe’s breakthrough novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, tells the story of a young poet who falls desperately in love with a woman he … [Read more...]
Classical music: The 2019 Summer Season
Although the wave of national tours that sweep South Florida during the regular season are over by April, there are several classical festivals that are regular features of the hot months afterward, when we’re all in need of some relief. Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival (July 5-28; West Palm Beach, North Palm Beach, Delray Beach) In the long-distant year of 1992, when … [Read more...]
At PB Opera, a fun ‘Fledermaus’ with an aria surprise
A little Italian magic came as the most unexpected surprise Saturday night during the Palm Beach Opera’s presentation of Johann Strauss II’s operetta Die Fledermaus. Playing Prince Orlofsky en travesti was the celebrated mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, resplendent in Russian battle dress and a white beard. Pressed in Act II to sing something (itself an interpolation into the … [Read more...]