The finale of Don Pasquale, at Florida Grand Opera. (Photo by Lorne Grandison) Two of this area’s opera companies bookended the season with Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, with the Palm Beach Opera doing a 17th-century take on the early 19th-century setting in which this 1842 opera was initially set. The production of Don Pasquale now showing at Florida Grand Opera in … [Read more...]
Strong choral work, fine soloists make Master Chorale’s Haydn one to remember
Horatio, Lord Nelson (1758-1805), by Lemuel Abbott. The Master Chorale of South Florida closed its current season with a remarkably energetic and gritty Haydn mass that said positive things about the chorus and augured good things for its future. Joined by a chamber orchestra from the Lynn Philharmonia in its concert May 1 at Lynn’s Wold Center for the Performing Arts, … [Read more...]
Three world premieres make for fascinating New World outing
Michael Tilson Thomas conducts Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind at the New World Center on Saturday. (Photo by Gregory Reed) When the music had finished and the audience in the New World Center had risen to its collective feet, Michael Tilson Thomas knelt down on one knee and kissed the garment of his soloist, soprano Measha Brueggergosman. And well he might: … [Read more...]
Weak Handel, strong Rimsky at Lynn Phil’s final season concert
The current season of the Lynn Philharmonia, which ended April 17 with a concert at the Wold Performing Arts Center, has been largely triumphant. Continuing on its path of notable improvement under the direction of conductor Guillermo Figueroa, the students of the Lynn Conservatory have displayed impressive chops and discipline in their concerts this year, which have been … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire, New World bring major Reich score to vivid life
Patrick Dupre Quigley rehearses the New World Symphony and Seraphic Fire in Steve Reich's The Desert Music. (from Facebook) The season now in its final weeks has been a particularly good one for Beethoven, but performances of contemporary music have been relatively rare. Which is why it was great fun Saturday night to be at the New World Center in Miami Beach, where … [Read more...]
Brilliant, absorbing ‘The Passenger’ marks FGO milestone
A scene from The Passenger. (Photo by Brittany Mazzurco-Muscato) Florida Grand Opera’s current production of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Holocaust opera The Passenger is more than just a show that opera devotees and fans of the arts in general should make sure to see in its brief run this week at the Ziff Ballet Opera House. The Passenger is a milestone for FGO’s 75th season in … [Read more...]
Dichter’s Beethoven sparkles at last Symphonia concert
It says something important about the connections our area arts leaders have in that for the last concerts of the season for the Symphonia Boca Raton, the orchestra was able to feature one of the leading pianists of the older generation and an encore appearance by one of the country’s most intriguing conductors. The final Symphonia Boca Raton concert of its Connoisseur Series … [Read more...]
Cellist Parnas shows she’s one to watch
The young cellist Cicely Parnas grew up listening to recordings of her celebrated cellist grandfather Leslie, and there’s little doubt that aural education has paid off. Cicely Parnas, now 23, gave a recital Thursday night at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens, and in everything she played on her program, which consisted of sonatas by Barber, Brahms and Ravel, she … [Read more...]
PBO’s ‘Ariadne’; ‘A’ cast: Top-to-bottom vocal strength lifts Strauss confection
Wendy Bryn Harmer and Brian Jagde in Ariadne auf Naxos. The audience response Sunday afternoon to Palm Beach Opera’s final presentation of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos wasn’t the kind of enthusiastic ovation a more familiar opera from the Italian repertory would have won. But if they weren’t crazy about the opera itself, the troupe deserved all the warm approbation … [Read more...]
Impressive Berlioz, Ravel at Lynn Philharmonia’s fifth
Guillermo Figueroa directed the largest bicentenary celebration in the United States of the work of Hector Berlioz back in 2003 when he was director of the New Mexico Symphony. Saturday night, he brought his regard for his favorite composer to a concert by his current charges, the Lynn Philharmonia Orchestra, which he led in an all-French program at the Wold Center for the … [Read more...]