Dance: This is normally the time of year when we'd expect to see Ballet Florida's Nutcracker in Marie Hale's indelible, lovely production. Ballet Florida, sadly, is no more, but there is still a Nutcracker at the Kravis over Christmas. The Moscow Classical Ballet's version of Tchaikovsky's immortal 1892 ballet opened Christmas Eve, and continues tonight and Saturday. The … [Read more...]
PB County gets new dance company; FAU gets cache of rare recorded Judaica
Ex-Ballet Florida workshop chief founds dance company Palm Beach County has a new dance company, and it will make its debut in early February at the Duncan Theatre, on the Lake Worth campus of what will soon be Palm Beach State College. O Dance was founded by and is named after Jerry Opdenaker, most recently director of the now-defunct Ballet Florida’s STEP Ahead … [Read more...]
New chamber music group shows heart, nerve in Boca debut
Starting a chamber music collective isn’t necessarily the easiest thing in the world to do, but in their debut concert Saturday at the Steinway Gallery in Boca Raton, the members of Vivre Musicale showed they have a good sense of what it will take for long-term success. Founded by tenor Jorge Toro and clarinetist Berginald Rash, this five-member iteration of the group offered … [Read more...]
Fresh Mendelssohn, new violinist shine at Boca Symphonia
BOCA RATON – It’s not every day that you hear a world premiere of a Mendelssohn symphony, and if that sounds like a too-eager acceptance of a publicist's line, let this also be said: It works. The first concert Sunday afternoon of the Boca Raton Symphonia’s fifth season was noteworthy for the cantata-less arrangement of Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony its conductor put … [Read more...]
Mancini legacy has new home in South Florida
Location, location, location. It's the well-known rule of real estate, but it also applies to musical institutions of higher learning. Witness the case of the Henry Mancini Institute. Founded by composer/conductor Jack Elliot in 1997 to honor its namesake Grammy-and-Oscar-winning composer (who died in 1994 of pancreatic cancer at age 70), the institute provided fully … [Read more...]
Larsen’s new ‘Encircling Skies’ engaging, effective
I haven't seen many full houses at FAU's University Theatre over the years, but Saturday night's concert there was exceptional, and not just in that respect. The overflow crowd had come to hear the world premiere of a new piece by Libby Larsen, one of the country's best-known composers, whose official Website claims more than 200 works. Larsen, 58, wrapped up the second year … [Read more...]
Affectionate documentary revives legacy of Gertrude Berg
Long before there was e-mail there were tenement windows, an almost-as-effective communications vehicle for ethnic housewives to yell “Yoo-hoo” to each other. That was the catchphrase that kicked off each episode of a pioneering radio and, later, TV show called The Goldbergs. Written by and starring Gertrude Berg as an upbeat, wisdom-dispensing Bronx matriarch, Molly … [Read more...]
New season shows ‘Curb’ at top of its game
Claims that Curb Your Enthusiasm has jumped the shark have been circulating around the Internet from snarky bloggers since at least Season Five, when its ill-advised mortality plot thread saw Larry David die and receive a second chance at life. Murmurs that the show had lost its luster continued into Season Six, when Larry’s wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) separated from him, … [Read more...]
New Vista’s ‘Enter Laughing’ worth a few giggles
Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008 In 1976, Carl Reiner’s affectionate memoir of his earliest efforts to break into show business, Enter Laughing, was turned into a Broadway musical, redubbed So Long, 174th Street. Perennially boyish Robert Morse, then in his mid-40s, was miscast as teenage David Kolowitz — the Reiner character — and he became the scapegoat when the show closed two weeks … [Read more...]