In the elevator, Marvin David Levy didn’t even look over at the man standing close by. What he could feel from him – and it wasn’t nice – was all he needed to know. The other man was Samuel Barber, whose Antony and Cleopatra had opened the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in September 1966, and was one of the most colossal failures in the history of the house. … [Read more...]
A radiant evening of Renaissance music
As intriguing as the upcoming Seraphic Fire concerts with the Firebird Chamber Orchestra are likely to be, there’s still something so purely beautiful about unaccompanied Renaissance polyphony that the listener feels he is in the presence of a rare and endangered animal, one content to be radiant, beautiful and unexampled. The Miami chamber choir opened its 12th season last … [Read more...]
Pianist Licad to offer powerful program of rarities
There isn’t much precedent, except maybe on a college seminar evening somewhere, for the kind of program the Filipina pianist Cecile Licad is playing Sunday afternoon at Festival Miami. Here’s the lineup: Pieces by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Edward MacDowell, William Mason, Leo Ornstein, Ferruccio Busoni and Cecile Chaminade. No Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms or Chopin in sight. … [Read more...]
2013-14 arts preview: The season in opera
The two 200th-birthday boys of 2013, Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi, have been staples of the world’s opera houses since middle of the 19th century, and nothing’s changed today. Each of the three area opera companies will feature work by Verdi in the 2013-14 season, and one of them will offer Wagner: Sarasota Opera is mounting The Flying Dutchman. Florida Grand Opera, under … [Read more...]
2013-14 arts preview: The season in classical music
The 2013-14 classical season offers its usual overstuffed bounty for South Floridians, and this time there is a continuation of the new energy and innovation we saw last season, with a good deal of stress on new composition, orchestras widening their reach, and some of the leading performers of the newest generation making their area debuts. Here is a look, by genre, at the … [Read more...]
All-animated ‘virtual opera’ to premiere in Lake Worth
If getting an established opera off the production ground is difficult and enormously expensive, it’s even tougher when the work is brand-new. So what’s the aspiring Wagner of today to do? One answer, as Sabrina Peña Young will tell you, is to choose the early 21st-century default option and go online — to be Wagner 2.0, if you like. Peña Young, a bubbly, intensely energetic … [Read more...]
PB Chamber Fest makes a promising new beginning
When the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival got started back in July of 1992, its organizers were pleasantly surprised to see so many people in that first audience at the Duncan Theatre. Perhaps that will be the case when the festival looks back on its first fall series, which opened earlier this month at Lynn University and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Lake Worth. The … [Read more...]
2013-14 arts preview: The season in dance
The South Florida dance season for 2013-14 looks a good deal like it has been since the demise of Palm Beach County’s own Ballet Florida: One major company, a host of excellent touring out-of-towners, and many smaller troupes. The difference in the past couple years has been that some of the smaller companies are creating a lot of original dances, so fans of this athletic art … [Read more...]
After 21 years, Palm Beach chamber fest opens fall series
A musical series that began almost the same way a kids’ lemonade stand does —as an activity for friends to have some fun in the long days of summer — expands after 21 years this week into the fall season. Tomorrow night at the Wold Performing Arts Center at Lynn University in Boca Raton, and Friday night at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Lake Worth, the Palm Beach Chamber … [Read more...]
On record: Local classical discs in review (Part 1)
One sign of the growing maturity of the area’s classical music scene is the appearance of recordings by local artists. Up until relatively recently, only the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s six recordings on the Klavier label and the first discs by the Delray String Quartet could lay claim to representing a substantial segment of local art music activity, although there … [Read more...]