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 The world premiere at Milan’s La Scala Opera, on Feb. 7, 1904, was met with hissing and boos, and had to be withdrawn after a single performance.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...]
Ying Quartet brings powerful Schubert to Flagler
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...]
Grace Potter tears up Revolution Live, for old fans and new
Singer, songwriter, guitarist and keyboardist Grace Potter gracefully prowled the stage during her sold-out show at Revolution Live in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday, displaying the soaring vocal range and instrumental prowess necessary to bear comparisons to female-fueled pop/rock forebearers like Heart, the Pretenders, and Fleetwood Mac. Potter’s band included two female … [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...]
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...]
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...]