For two centuries or more, the string quartet has been the favored medium for a composer’s most intimate, profound thoughts. In his series of quartets, the American composer Richard Danielpour has explored themes of the Holocaust (No. 3, Psalms of Sorrow) and farewell (No. 6, Addio), and for his Quartet No. 7, which received its world premiere May 31 in Coral Gables at the … [Read more...]
Danielpour’s new quartet outlines search for inner divinity
In 1995, the composer Richard Danielpour marked the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps in a string quartet he subtitled Psalms of Sorrow. That quartet, his third, featured a baritone singing texts from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of some of the Psalms. Last year, Danielpour returned to the string quartet for a seventh essay in that form, and also … [Read more...]
Godden, Fredmann works to be featured on Harid spring show
In a room on the Harid Conservatory campus off Potomac Road in western Boca Raton, aspirant young professional dancers were working late last week to bring a contemporary ballet to life. As faculty members Victoria Schneider and Meelis Pakri, music coordinator Michael Lazzaro and the dance school’s director, Gordon Wright, watched intently, the Harid students ran though the … [Read more...]
FGO’s ‘Consul’ revives worthy 20th-century work expertly
Gian-Carlo Menotti’s The Consul was a Broadway sensation in 1950, but in the decades since it’s dropped below the operatic radar. The current production by Florida Grand Opera of this Cold War work is as good an argument as can be made that the opera deserves to be restored to the mainstream, if not so much for the greatness of its score as its sheer effectiveness as theater. … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire, Piffaro offer absorbing evening of’ ‘Vespers’
The merging of a Renaissance wind band with 21st-century American choral music is an idea that may sound odd on the surface, but composer Kile Smith showed it could work, and work beautifully, when he composed his Vespers in 2007. The original-instrument band that commissioned the work, Philadelphia-based Piffaro, joined Patrick Dupré Quigley and his Seraphic Fire concert … [Read more...]
Zehr brings standout Aurora to Boca Ballet
A leading Florida-born, Boca Raton-trained ballerina made a three-show stop at Boca Ballet Theatre for the company’s mounting of The Sleeping Beauty this past weekend, and demonstrated how to put the “prima” in prima ballerina. But even though Bridgett Zehr’s performance as Aurora in Tchaikovsky’s beloved ballet was nothing short of sensational Sunday afternoon, there were … [Read more...]
FGO takes on Menotti’s ‘Consul’ to close season
Victoria Livengood first discovered the power of Gian-Carlo Menotti’s opera The Consul as an 18-year-old student at the University of North Carolina. Having received a full vocal scholarship after auditioning for the choir to fill an hour elective in what was supposed to be a pre-law curriculum, she came home to Thomasville one weekend to show her parents the first song she’d … [Read more...]
Master Chorale ends season with engaging concert of Bach, colleagues
Choosing unusual repertoire is something that many listeners and critics desperately want the performing organizations they follow to try now and again, but it sometimes comes with a price. Often, things seem to be chosen because they are particular favorites of a conductor or soloist, or perhaps something less well-known than a composer’s other, really famous work. But … [Read more...]
Leading dancers to star in Boca Ballet’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’
Two major ballet dancers will be starring with the Boca Ballet Theatre this month in the company’s production of The Sleeping Beauty, Tchaikovsky and Petipa’s 1890 classic drawn from Charles Perrault’s Mother Goose tales. Dancing the lead role of Aurora will be Bridgett Zehr, a Sarasota-born, Harid-trained dancer who has been a principal dancer with the National Ballet of … [Read more...]
Mainly Mozart Festival launches 22nd season splendidly
It is a maxim of South Florida life that when it begins to rain, all residents are commanded to forget everything they ever knew about driving in it. And so Saturday afternoon as I made my way south to Gusman Hall at the University of Miami, a rainstorm in Broward County caused me to spend an hour making my way down a bumper-to-bumper interstate as hapless auto pilots around … [Read more...]