The two big questions for the new American work now in its world premiere at Palm Beach Opera are these: Does it succeed as a compelling piece of theater? And does it have a future? The answer to both of these questions is Yes, but for the second question, it may take some more work for the opera to have the kind of legs its producers and well-wishing audiences would dearly … [Read more...]
Classic ‘Our Town’ beautifully realized at Dramaworks
By Dale King True to its promise to provide “theater to think about,” Palm Beach Dramaworks opened its 2014-2015 season this past weekend with Thornton Wilder’s unadorned but hauntingly personal play, Our Town. The play, written in 1938, is a delight to the ears and eyes, even though Wilder decreed there be no sets or props. A fine 20-member cast of veteran players and … [Read more...]
Music roundup: Cuarteto Latinoamericano at Flagler; PB Symphony brings out brass
I first heard the Cuarteto Latinoamericano in 1984 making their New York City debut. They were managed by a friend I’d met years before at Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. My friend asked for a report and I was honestly able to say they had great promise, and that all their black shocks of Brylcreemed hair would certainly win over the ladies. Fast … [Read more...]
A compelling American quintet in chamber fest’s Week 2
It is one of the great mysteries of American musical life: Why, in a country that has produced so many fine classical composers, does the average person know nothing of their music? There are any number of reasons that are usually trotted out to explain this phenomenon, from the overwhelming dominance of American popular music worldwide to the lack of arts education in the … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: Terrific ‘Millie’; sensational ‘In the Heights’
The musical theater, that uniquely American invention, has come a long way in the past 90 years. But if you yearn for the good old days when musicals made little sense and their cartoonish plots were little more than excuses to get from one production number to the next, then, boy, has the Maltz Jupiter Theatre got a show for you. It is Thoroughly Modern Millie, based on the … [Read more...]
Song of destiny? Seraphic Fire awaits Grammy results
By the time the last notes of J.S. Bach’s great B minor Mass have sounded at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton on Sunday afternoon, the audience will know whether it has been listening to a Grammy-winning ensemble. Seraphic Fire, a concert choir founded 10 years ago in South Miami, is one of the few local classical ensembles to have been honored with Grammy nods. … [Read more...]
The 2011-12 season in Miami-Broward art: A widely varied menu
The visual arts season in Broward and Miami-Dade counties offers its usual host of dichotomies, plus some surprises. There are trippy, hallucinatory drawings and religious icons; Baroque paintings and contemporary female-centric photographs; sculptures both austere and intricate and installations inspired by the American palate, vinyl records, Beethoven and the Beats. If we … [Read more...]
Recent American brass trio proves smart switch at chamber fest
The second concert of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s 20th season underwent a programming change, but its tried-and-true finale, which didn’t change, worked its customary magic. A large audience at the Crest Theatre on Sunday afternoon warmly applauded that last work, the Death and the Maiden Quartet (String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D. 810) of Franz Schubert. In one … [Read more...]
Exhibit shows Rockwell’s art a gift in difficult times
By Gretel Sarmiento Little girls with ribbons. Smiles hidden behind melting ice cream. Summer trips. Family quality time. Nobody remembers an America like this, devoid of sadness, depression and poverty. Whose America is this? Without hesitation, some would say Norman Rockwell's. They wouldn't have been wrong, but they would have missed a large part of what this singular … [Read more...]
‘Cannibal’ provides silly, gory fun at Promethean
The opening announcement at The Promethean Theatre is a sprightly caution that the following show will contain “blood, puke and pus.” Eeew. Well, they didn’t need to warn us about the blood: The back wall of the stage is already splattered with the stuff before we even enter the Wild West world of the black-box playing space at Nova Southeastern University. Still, the … [Read more...]