Last day of theatergoing in New York for me this trip, and another doubleheader. In 1990, during the height of the AIDS epidemic, Terrence McNally expanded a brief play into a made-for-public-television movie, Andre's Mother, about an intractable woman grieving over the death of her gay son. It has now been expanded further, updated and produced on Broadway with the new title, … [Read more...]
MCB’s ‘Don Quixote’ falls a little short of satisfying
By Tara Mitton Catao Of all the full-length classical ballets, it is Don Quixote that continually delights audiences, and Miami City Ballet’s production was selected to be a crowd-pleaser as well as a natural fit for the largely Hispanic company. The popular ballet has all the ingredients that make it easy for audiences to enjoy. The lavish costumes and sets by Santo Loquasto, … [Read more...]
Violinist Pine astonishes at PBAU
It’s been more than 10 years, Rachel Barton Pine said, since she’s played South Florida, the last time being in an appearance with the Florida Philharmonic. In the meantime, her hero status in her native Chicago has only grown, and in that city, she’s one of the leading lights of classical music (and thrash metal, too, but that’s another story). The full house at Palm Beach … [Read more...]
Historian Goodwin takes audience back to Progressive Era
By Dale King Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin doesn’t just talk about history. She takes her audience on a word picture journey through time, giving wings to funny facts and deep insight into many of this nation’s presidents. Her lecture Thursday night at the Mizner Park Amphitheater in Boca Raton, part of Festival of the Arts Boca, touched on her latest … [Read more...]
PBO Young Artists deftly take on Rorem’s ‘Our Town’
First, let wide acclaim go forth to this crop of Palm Beach Opera’s Young Artists, who took Ned Rorem’s difficult music for Our Town and made it palatable. Each and every one of them sang splendidly in librettist J.D. McClatchy’s adaptation of one of America’s most popular plays by Thornton Wilder. Brilliant direction by Fenlon Lamb gave real meaning to this excerpted and … [Read more...]
Community dance: A brace of Nutcrackers
As aficionados are happy to point out, The Nutcracker is a most unusual classical ballet in that it doesn’t really have a central character. What it does have is a first half in which mime is crucial to telling the story, and a collection of widely varied dances for the second. It’s a strange story, too, drawn from a tale by the German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, and no … [Read more...]
Guitarist Karadaglić looks to bigger future for instrument
Earlier this month, Miloš Karadaglić signed off on the final proof of his forthcoming recording of the Concierto de Aranjuez, probably the most beloved classical guitar concerto in the world. He’s delighted with how it came out. “It’s everything I ever wanted. It’s a very special recording for me,” said Karadaglić, the rising young guitarist who recorded the emblematic … [Read more...]
Young Artists take PBO stage for Britten’s ‘Turn of the Screw’
Opera has a great bounty of composer anniversaries this year, with the 200th birthdays of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Britten. Britten had what would today be considered a relatively short life, dying at age 63 in 1976 after several years of heart disease-related decline, perhaps exacerbated by a bout of syphilis. He … [Read more...]
The View From Home 47: New releases on Blu-ray and DVD
The straightforward matter-of-factness is right there in the title: A Man Escaped (Criterion, $31.86 Blu-ray, $23.99 DVD). It’s in the past tense, so you know before starting Robert Bresson’s 1956 prison-break masterpiece – based on the memoirs of Andre Devigny, a French POW during World War II – that the protagonist will succeed. For Bresson, suspense has no appeal; it’s all … [Read more...]
Sundays: Past lives, luminous memories
By Myles Ludwig There are times in every writer’s life when he can only write about himself. Philosophy becomes personal. The strictures of fiction, the narrative structure, the plot all seem improbable, and one can no longer feel comfortable creating a landscape into which armies of characters are moved around like tin soldiers on the counterpane of youth. Disguise fails. … [Read more...]