Dmitri Belosselskiy as Zaccaria in Palm Beach Opera’s Nabucco.Music: The Palm Beach Opera opens its 49th season tonight with Nabucco, the opera that made Giuseppe Verdi’s career back in 1842. It’s the first mounting of this opera by the company in 25 years, and they’ve secured a host of singers with experience at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. … [Read more...]
Music review: Piano trio’s Florida debut offers multi-style mastery
Emanuel Wehse, Catherine Klipfel and Stefan Hempel of the Morgenstern Trio.By Greg StepanichThe piano trio literature is perhaps richer than it might otherwise appear at first mental blush, and there are some great works in this genre that are too little-known to general audiences.That can surely be said of the Piano Trio (in G minor, Op. 15) composed in 1855 … [Read more...]
ArtsPreview 2010-11: The season in opera
Anthony Roth Costanzo,who will sing Orfeo for Palm Beach Opera.(Illustration by Pat Crowley) By Greg StepanichSouth Florida’s two chief opera companies mostly played it safe at the box office last season when it came to repertoire, with dueling productions of Bizet’s Carmen closing both companies’ offerings.But Palm Beach Opera and Florida Grand Opera also took some … [Read more...]
ArtsPreview 2010-11: The season in classical music
Conductor Ramón Tebar.(Illustration by Pat Crowley) By Greg StepanichWith the addition of a new performing arts center in southern Palm Beach County (and a major new hall on Miami Beach), the 2010-11 classical music season in South Florida looks a little stronger than it did last season, and that impression is fortified by the unusual fact of there being two … [Read more...]
Music review: Chee-Yun adds radiance, dazzle to strong South Florida Symphony show
Chee-Yun.By Greg StepanichThe South Florida Symphony, joined by the radiant playing of guest violinist Chee-Yun, opened the orchestral part of the new season with a concert of auspicious promise Thursday night in Fort Lauderdale.The orchestra, which until very recently was the Key West Symphony, turned out to be far better than would reasonably be expected for a … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Oct. 8-11
John Leonard Thompson and Kim Cozort in Candida.Theater: Palm Beach Dramaworks opens its new season by continuing to take the high road, giving its audience “theater to think about,” the triangular comedy Candida by the all-too-rarely produced in South Florida George Bernard Shaw. Kim Cozort stars in the title role, the wife of a “moralist and windbag” … [Read more...]
Music review: Seraphic Fire’s Rachmaninov ravishing, and a departure
By Greg StepanichThe music of faith may mean most to the worshippers for whose ears it ultimately is meant, but the sensual beauty of some composition in these traditions, especially when well-performed, has a way of suspending doubt.On Saturday night at All Saints Episcopal in Fort Lauderdale, the Miami-based concert choir Seraphic Fire continued its opening … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Oct.1-3
Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz in Let Me In.Film: I am no fan of vampire movies, particularly the Twilight series, with its two-dimensional, catatonic acting. But two years ago, a subdued, suspenseful Swedish film, Let the Right One In, put a new twist on the undead genre with its tale of a 12-year-old boy who is befriended by a seemingly young vampire … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 24-26
City Milk, by JoAnn Nava. Art: This weekend, the historic African-American neighborhood on Fort Lauderdale’s Sistrunk Boulevard is the site of the Midtown Urban Arts Show, part of a nonprofit effort to support revitalization of the Sistrunk corridor, named for the pioneering black physician who tended to its residents in the early 20th century. Restoration … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 10-14
Untitled 4, by Jessie Rebik.Art: Five female artists explore the human figure in an upcoming exhibition called the Figuratively Speaking Invitational at The Art Gallery on the Eissey Campus of Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens, and there’s much more to it than is first apparent. The artwork consists of classical-styled paintings, modeled and … [Read more...]