The coming season at the three regional opera companies has no milestones like last season did, with the wrap up of Sarasota Opera’s 28-year Verdi Cycle project or Florida Grand Opera’s staging of Mieczysaw Weinberg’s The Passenger, but the season has some very interesting events nonetheless, and savvy operagoers will find much to enjoy. Palm Beach Opera: The company enters … [Read more...]
‘Not In My Town’: New opera makes a strong impact
In a politically unsettled time, it’s helpful to have artworks that take on the issues of the day and give us something to think about. Not In My Town, a new opera by Wilton Manors-based composer Michael W. Ross, is nothing if not politically engaged. The story of the 1998 torture-killing of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student, was part of the impetus for a … [Read more...]
Shepard hate-crime opera set for world premiere
When a selection of scenes from South Florida composer Michael W. Ross’s new opera, Not In My Town, were performed in June at Fort Lauderdale’s Sunshine Cathedral, it came only days after the massacre of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando. Since the subject of the opera is the 1998 murder of gay Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard, it was an almost-instantaneous … [Read more...]
An agreeable Sunday with the Symphony of the Americas
For nearly 30 years, James Brooks-Bruzzese’s Symphony of the Americas has presented regular concert programs in South Florida, and for almost as long, he’s provided music during the offseason with his Summerfest events. This year’s Summerfest, the 25th edition thereof, wrapped up this week in Broward County after a July of concerts here and in Panama, and this past Sunday … [Read more...]
A lovely ‘Giselle’ at Boca Ballet
This has been a good year for 25th anniversaries of local arts groups, with the Kravis Center, the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, and Boca Ballet Theatre marking that milestone. The ballet company, which is run by Dan Guin and his wife Jane Tyree, can draw on many a connection in the dance world for their educational mission and for a little bit of celebrity dazzle for … [Read more...]
Women outclass the men in Miami Music Festival’s ‘Crucible’
The American composer Robert Ward lived a long, productive life, and by the time he died in 2013 at age 95, he had made at least one substantial contribution to the operatic repertoire. That work was his 1961 opera, The Crucible, based on the Arthur Miller play of the same name that allegorized the McCarthy “witch hunts” of the 1950s through the medium of the actual hunts … [Read more...]
PBCMF 3: A Dutch rarity, and chamber music from a film composer
The fascist darkness that covered the world of the 1930s and 1940s had well-documented effects on artistic life, and while we now celebrate the artists whose work either survived or reflected it, there were many other creators whose efforts are now shrouded in obscurity. Such a one was Rosalie Wertheim, a Dutchwoman whose gender worked against her as a composer and whose … [Read more...]
Soloists, new work provide mega-meal at Miami Music Festival
MIAMI BEACH — You can’t say Michael Rossi doesn’t give you enough to listen to. Saturday night at the New World Center, the head of the Miami Music Festival presented an orchestral concert dedicated to the eminent Polish-born violinist Ida Haendel that featured parts and wholes of five concertos, a massive tone poem and a world premiere. In addition, there was a presentation … [Read more...]
PB Chamber Fest 2: Rare Bruch and new McAlister
Over the past 30 years, the world of contemporary classical composition has moved, like so many things in our digital culture, into niches. There are hardcore atonalists, minimalists, New Romantics, and eclectics of every description vying for the ears of a busy audience. But in the United States, this flowering of different styles comes after the establishment in the … [Read more...]
This could be the start of something Wagner-big
It’s been more than 20 years since Miami’s opera company did any works by Richard Wagner, and it’s been even longer for Palm Beach Opera, so it was something of a truly special event Saturday night when the Miami Music Festival gave the first concert by its new Wagner Institute. Designed by festival founder Michael Rossi to develop voices for the demands of Wagner … [Read more...]