Choreographer Mark Godden created his ballet Minor Threat, set to the first two movements of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20, some 20 years ago for Canada’s Alberta Ballet, but in a performance May 28 in Boca Raton, this allegory of courtship, love and birth came off with newly minted freshness. This well-designed modern ballet with a clever and moving punchline was the … [Read more...]
Core Ensemble explores gender, mystery of ‘Mona Lisa’
Write about the Mona Lisa, and chances are some variation of the word “enigma” will be pulled out of your authorial toolbox. Although Leonardo da Vinci probably didn’t mean to make Lisa del Giocondo (née Gherardini) mysterious when he painted the cloth merchant’s wife in 1503, it has always struck viewers that way, and no doubt that has helped encourage speculation about who … [Read more...]
10-piano tribute to Rand impressive but underwhelming
Interpreting a piece of writing through music without going through the medium of the theater is a tricky thing to do: How do you get across what the book said to you? And maybe it’s even trickier if you try to express it with 10 pianos. Then again, maybe not. At the New World Center on May 13, pianist and entrepreneur Mia Vassilev and nine of her fellow Miami Piano … [Read more...]
Violinist Gourdjia opens Mainly Mozart Festival with high style, elegance
One of the joys associated with the Mainly Mozart Festival, now in its 24th season in Coral Gables, is that it introduces audiences to rising players they are unlikely to have heard before. This past Sunday, for the festival’s opening, it was the young Russian-born violinist Liana Gourdjia, who studied in Moscow, the Cleveland Institute and Indiana University, and now lives … [Read more...]
Fine singing makes for strong ‘Ballo’ at FGO
A production of a favorite opera can seem even better than ever if it allows you to appreciate the genius of its composer. And Florida Grand Opera’s current production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) does just that, with some exceptional singing that underlines the composer’s dramatic power and shows why this opera is one of his mid-career … [Read more...]
Soprano Wilson returns to ‘Un Ballo in Maschera’ for FGO
When Tamara Wilson packed her things to head to Miami for rehearsals of the Florida Grand Opera production of Un Ballo in Maschera, she forgot one important item: Her copy of the score. Her assistant later mailed it to her, but having it at hand again perhaps was more akin to having a good-luck charm nearby. This is Wilson’s fifth appearance as Amelia in Giuseppe Verdi’s … [Read more...]
Figueroa’s Bartók, Robertson’s Elgar end Lynn Phil season in strong fashion
During the current concert season, Guillermo Figueroa has made two big statements about repertoire for the student orchestra at Lynn University that he directs. In February, he presented the Roméo et Juliette of Hector Berlioz, his favorite composer, and a work almost never encountered in full in area concert halls (to say nothing of any of its constituent parts). And this … [Read more...]
‘La Sylphide’ proves ideal fit for Boca Ballet Theatre
Smaller dance companies that don’t shy away from the big classical ballets usually have to make some compromises in order to get that shows up on the boards, be it a smaller number of swans or a tiny mouse king’s army, But there are other shows besides The Nutcracker that work well for smaller educational troupes like Boca Ballet Theatre, and in Bournonville’s La Sylphide, … [Read more...]
‘Pirates’ brings PB Opera season to smart, funny close
The operettas of William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan might not be the kind of touchstone they once were in American culture, but that fact gives professional opera companies room to do the works as they should be done: With thorough fealty to scripts and their often underrated scores. This past weekend, Palm Beach Opera closed its season by fulfilling that mission, … [Read more...]
Pianist Biegel clowns, shines in P.D.Q. Bach at SoFla Symphony
The American composer Peter Schickele has had a remarkable career in which he has managed to have his own compositional triumphs and an entirely separate career in musical parody, in which his compositional triumphs have been much more dubious. But that’s the sort of thing you’d expect me to say when we’re talking about Schickele’s creation, P.D.Q. Bach, whose scattered … [Read more...]