The finale of Don Pasquale, at Florida Grand Opera. (Photo by Lorne Grandison) Two of this area’s opera companies bookended the season with Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, with the Palm Beach Opera doing a 17th-century take on the early 19th-century setting in which this 1842 opera was initially set. The production of Don Pasquale now showing at Florida Grand Opera in … [Read more...]
Boca Ballet Theatre to mark 25th with stars they fostered
By Dale King Boca Ballet’s executive director, Dan Guin, feverishly pulled together copies of Dance Magazine covers from the past several years that were strewn across his desk. “He performed here,” he said, poking his finger at the photo of a familiar dance artist. “She did, too,” he said, pointing at another. Guin repeated this action again and again until he singled 27 … [Read more...]
The war that never ends: Historian Winter to discuss WWI at Festival of the Arts Boca
French soldiers in the trenches during World War I. Imagine a world in which Great Britain and Germany are the major powers, and the United States and Russia are only minor players on the global scene. It’s a world of relatively conservative politics, where there was no World War II, no Holocaust, and no one but their families had ever heard of Adolf Hitler or Vladimir … [Read more...]
Kravis to welcome its newest resident: A digital organ
The George W. Mergens Memorial Organ. If you happened to be driving by the Kravis Center early Saturday morning, you might have felt something unfamiliar: A tremor, a rumbling, a distant shaking. That was no earthquake you heard — at least not in the terrestrial sense. What you heard was a sonic quake, an electron-wave tsunami, the shuddering of a subwoofer temblor. It was … [Read more...]
FAU students bring the bawdy to ‘Country Wife’
By Dale King Oh, you rascally Restorationists. You aristocratic, anti-Puritan tricksters of late 17th-century England. You sure know how to show a lady a good time — sexually, that is — even if it’s at the expense of their unsuspecting, seemingly dimwitted husbands. That’s essentially the plot of William Wycherley’s 1675 play, The Country Wife, now being presented by … [Read more...]
PB Opera’s ‘Carmen,’ second cast: A subdued heroine, brilliant Young Artists
Nora Sourouzian. Bizet’s collection of melodies in his opera Carmen continue to buzz around in the recesses of the brain long after the performance has ended. His music is immortal. The production I saw at Palm Beach Opera on Jan. 23 had all the elements of a successful evening with some minor flaws. But it’s the music that lives on. Also, on this occasion, is the memory of … [Read more...]