Articles
-
Die Zauberflöte at the Metropolitan Opera
Die Zauberflöte at the Metropolitan Opera
"If Simon McBurney hasn’t quite succeeded in making the Met's new staging of Die Zauberflöte cohesive, he and his design team have certainly delivered plenty of invention. The zauber of this opera, of course, lies in the music itself. But Nathalie Stutzmann’s ineffective leadership seldom inspired the clarity necessary for embodying Mozart’s luminous sound world."
-
BOWLES: A Picnic Cantata
BOWLES: A Picnic Cantata
“It feels like a lark: the creators clearly enjoyed their collaboration and were not interested in making a major statement. Ephemerality is coded in its DNA.”
-
Overstory Overture at Alice Tully Hall
Overstory Overture at Alice Tully Hall
"Tod Machover's new piece—a thirty-five-minute monodrama for vocal soloist, string orchestra, marimba and electronics—presented a prevailing texture that was defined by its buzzing, clashing aural elements; but an elusive kind of order seemed to be struggling to break through. The first part of the program had included with Anton Webern’s early Langsamer Satz; whether through design or happenstance, parts of Overstory Overture echoed that work’s late-Romantic language, hinting at both a safe harbor and possible further dissolution."
-
Rediscovered Country
Rediscovered Country
Leon Botstein explores unfamiliar repertory at the annual Bard Music Festival.
-
Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera
Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera
"The Met's new Don Giovanni, directed by Ivo van Hove, benefits from the work of a truly wonderful cast—though this is definitely a production for the #metoo era. We can no longer look at the protagonist’s behavior with ambivalence: his rapaciousness now seems unambiguously monstrous. The staging, a thoroughly grim affair, scants the work’s humor and its surges of amorous heat. There is nothing 'giocoso' in this presentation of Mozart and da Ponte’s 'dramma giocoso.'"
-
CILEA: Adriana Lecouvreur
CILEA: Adriana Lecouvreur
“Director Frederic Wake-Walker’s production may torpedo the work’s dramaturgy, but Maria José Siri’s singing restores it to its rightful place.”
