Film: If there were six best actress Oscar nominations instead of five, the sixth would probably have gone to androgynous Tilda Swinton, who plays the mother of an exasperatingly evil son in We Need to Talk About Kevin. It is kind of an update of The Bad Seed, about a defiantly rotten kid and the mother who cannot cope with him. Director-writer Lynne Ramsey wants us to consider what we would do if we had a child who we simply did not love. She tells the twisted tale with an emphasis on strong visual images, as well as the pivotal memorable performance by Swinton. John C. Reilly, back on track after the wince-inducing Carnage, plays her unsupportive husband. Opening at area theaters today.
Theater: The Theatre at Arts Garage at 180 NE First St., Delray Beach, is again the most interesting place for fans of new work this weekend as Lou Tyrrell unveils his New Play Festival, a series of six readings from major playwrights, most of whom are familiar to past patrons of Florida Stage. As with that now-defunct company’s 1st Stage festivals, this successor event will feature a keynote address by Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman at 7 p.m. on Saturday, followed by her latest script, Nightly News from the War on Women, about human trafficking and global violence against women. Another high point of the fest is likely to be a new work by Israel Horovitz, Gloucester Blue, a dark comedy involving infidelities and murders (Sunday night at 7 p.m.). Tickets available by calling (561) 450-6357.
Editor’s note: The Saturday performance of this opera at Arts Garage has been canceled.
Music: The Palm Beach Opera wraps up its One Opera in One Hour presentations tonight with Florencia en el Amazonas, written in 1996 by the Mexican composer Daniel Catan for Houston Grand Opera. Catan, whose sudden death last April of a heart attack at age 62 cut off a composer who had won real affection from opera audiences, has in Florencia written a work whose music is entirely derivative of late Puccini, in particular La Fanciulla del West and Turandot. But it is lovely, ear-pleasing music nevertheless, and surely will do well with audiences tonight at the Harriet Himmel Theater in CityPlace.
Florencia is the story of an early-1900s boat journey on the Amazon River to the Brazilian city of Manaus, where Florencia Grimaldi, a famous opera singer, is determined to reunite with her lover Cristobal, a butterfly hunter. The One Opera in One Hour shows feature the Young Artists, and are abridged versions of longer works, accompanied only by piano. The seven-member cast stars soprano Alexandra Rafalo as Florencia, with guest baritone Daniel Snodgrass as Riolobo, the ship’s mate who is the intermediary between reality and the mystical world of the river.
The earlier productions in this series were Handel’s Semele, in January, and Copland’s The Tender Land, in February. The Canadian soprano Emily Duncan-Brown triumphed over a painfully minimalist and bizarrely cut version of Semele (no Where’er You Walk, for example) to offer a very engaging reading of the title character. Her voice proved up to the challenges of Handel’s melismatic style, and one only wished bad production decisions had not deprived us of hearing her do Myself I Shall Adore, also cut for no good reason.
Duncan-Brown was just as good in the role of Laurie in the Copland opera, where she further demonstrated decent acting chops by believably presenting a young woman on the cusp of a scary but enticing adult life far from her farm home. Evanivaldo Correa, an ineffectual Jupiter in Semele, was a very good Martin, with a strong, pleading sound that lent credibility to his character’s wish to settle down and leave the life of itinerant labor behind.
Also notable was bass Benjamin Clements as Grandpa Moss. Somewhat underpowered on the mainstage, in the intimacy of the workshop production his voice took on a rich, sonorous quality that was deeply masculine and commanding.
The One Hour productions have been quite memorable in past seasons from the standpoint of concepts, but this year, stage director Andrew Nienaber has kept things disappointingly modest. Semele had no concept at all, and Tender Land’s costumes provided the only hint of the opera’s setting. Surely Florencia will offer him some other opportunities, and one hopes he takes advantage of them.
The opera will be presented at 8 tonight at the Harriet. Tickets are free, but reserved seating costs $15. For more information, call the opera company at 561-833-7888 or visit www.pbopera.org. – G. Stepanich
Also tonight and Saturday, the Cleveland Orchestra welcomes the great American soprano Dawn Upshaw to the Knight Concert Hall at Miami’s Arsht Center for two concerts. Upshaw will sing the Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra by the Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov, one of the handful of contemporary composers with a big international profile. Nicola Luisotti also conducts the Clevelanders in the Triumphal March and ballet music from Verdi’s Meyerbeer-like Aida, and in the Symphony No. 5 (in B-flat, Op. 100) of Prokofiev. Tickets start at $20. Call 305-949-6722.