By Dennis D. Rooney Wrocław in Poland was the German city of Breslau until 1945, when it and the entire German Province of Lower Silesia were transferred to Poland at the Potsdam Conference. Located in Poland’s Southwest, Wrocław is today a city of 600,000. Its orchestra, the Wrocław Philharmonic, was established in 1945 and their 13-city U. S. tour this season included … [Read more...]
ACO, soloist solid in 30th season debut
By Dennis D. Rooney With a nod toward the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra opened the first concert of its 30th season on Jan. 8 at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens with the composer’s Symphony No. 1 (in C, Op. 21). Conductor David Amado, in his fourth season as music director, preceded the performance … [Read more...]
Soprano returns to familiar turmoil for FGO’s ‘Butterfly’
By Robert Croan Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is one of the most popular operas in today’s repertory. It wasn’t always. The world premiere at Milan’s La Scala Opera, on Feb. 7, 1904, was met with hissing and boos, and had to be withdrawn after a single performance. In May of that year, for a production in Brescia, Puccini made some alterations, dividing the 90-minute Act 2 … [Read more...]
Poetry Festival salutes the art of saying the unsayable
By Christina Wood Angela Narciso Torres admits she wrote some pretty bad poetry when she was a kid. Unlike countless other teens pouring out their hearts or communing with their angst in late night writing sessions, however, Torres returned to poetry later in life. She was living in New York with a husband and kids of her own, when she decided to sign up for a creative … [Read more...]
Second Elmar Oliveira Violin Competition gets underway
By Dale King Elmar Oliveira says he feels “incredibly fortunate to have had a really terrific career” as a master of the violin, performing with talented individuals and orchestras and capturing awards around the globe. To this day, he remains the only American to win the Gold Medal at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky International Competition, which he did in 1978. “As part of … [Read more...]
At Modern + Contemporary, looking for subtlety amid the anger
By Myles Ludwig If you’re looking for art that fits the temper of the times, you’d find it under the tent at the Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary Art Fair in West Palm Beach. The collection of some 70 galleries there are, for the most part, are presenting work that is angry, confrontational, prickly, howling, assaulting, bristling with non-directional outrage to the point … [Read more...]
Cultural Council changes name, widens mission, debuts logo
Palm Beach County’s arts council is rebranding itself, embarking on a new mission, adopting a redrawn logo and slightly changing its name. Formerly known as the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County, the arts-oriented organization is now called the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County, and “is evolving to better meet the needs of Palm Beach County’s growing cultural … [Read more...]
Miami Art Week 3: Proof of city’s growth as hub for art
By Sandra Schulman If you were feeling some fair-tigue earlier this month during Miami Art Week, the shows at the city’s museums give breathing room and stellar installations to their artists. Miami saw three new museums open in December, and new exhibits at longtime spaces dug deep. The Rubell family, Mera, Don, and son Jason, have been at the forefront of art collecting … [Read more...]
PB Symphony’s opening Beethoven concert a mixed bag
By Dennis D. Rooney The year 2020 is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven, so we’re going to hear lots of his music this season. The Palm Beach Symphony and Music Director Gerard Schwarz chose to inaugurate its 46th season with an all-Beethoven program Dec. 8 at the Kravis Center. Horacio Gutiérrez was soloist in the opening Piano Concerto No. 4 … [Read more...]
PB Opera’s ‘Hansel’ makes deft use of small Crest surroundings
By Dennis D. Rooney Those of us who as children read the Grimm Fairy Tales, or better yet, had them read to us, know all about creepy castles, evil forests, wicked stepmothers, wily foxes and sanguinary wolves, ungrateful kings, scheming dwarfs, and other bad actors we came to know from the folk tales collected by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm in the early 19th century. There … [Read more...]