CLASSICAL MUSIC THEATER REVIEWS

Principal Baltimore Symphony Pops Conductor Jack Everly presents top notch entertainment....

Lincoln Center's American Songbook series doesn't usually cross the road to opera-land, but I'm glad it did, when it presented the Ricky Ian Gordon-Leonard Foglia chamber opera A COFFIN IN EGYPT with mezzo extraordinaire Frederica von Stade last week. Performed in Jazz at Lincoln Center's tiny Appel...

The Michigan Philharmonic Orchestra exceeded all expectations on February 13 when it presented BROADWAY VALENTINE, a salute to some of the best love songs on Broadway.  Carefully chosen by Maesto Nan Washburn,  the program included selections from My Fair Lady, Les Miserables, Evita, Superstar, Gr...

There are a lot of superlatives that have been thrown around about the World Renowned Kristin Chenoweth: Stunning, personable, fun, entertaining. All are true and she demonstrated all of those traits when she came to Louisville for a second time and performed with our Louisville Orchestra under the ...

Take one part “Casablanca,” a taste of Bernstein's CANDIDE, some Alfred Hitchcock and you get Sir Richard Eyre's film noir concept for the Met's new MANON LESCAUT, now set in France in the 1940s, complete with Nazis. Tack on that behind-the-scenes drama of “Roberto Alagna to the rescue”--wh...

Bychkov leads the NY Philharmonic a magnificent and majestic Mahler 6th....

It's a shame that Bellini wasn't Donizetti--because the story of LA SONNAMBULA seems to be begging for the full comic treatment and could have been a great companion to L'ELISIR D'AMORE. (I'm not sure how Maria Callas would have felt about changes in one of her great roles.) As it stands, performing...

Peter Martins' reconstruction of the 1836 tragicomedy, 'La Sylphide', and Balanchine's 1972 update of 'Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2' proved to be a particularly felicitous pairing for a February 12th to 18th run at the Koch Theater during New York City Ballet's Winter Season. 'La Sylphide', wit...

Diana Krall's deep smoky jazz fills Sydney Opera House's Concert Hall as she teams up with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra on the first Australian stop of her WALLFLOWER WORLD TOUR....

A prodigy in her own right but suppressed because she was a woman and forgotten in the shadow of her brother Wolfgang, Maria Anna Mozart tells her true story in a galvanizing, intimate one-woman show, 'The Other Mozart,' touring from New York and playing at the Aux Dog Theater Nob Hill until January...

Sometimes, the Metropolitan Opera seems like an endless Puccini festival. It's particularly apparent this season, when top dogs LA BOHEME, TOSCA and MADAMA BUTTERFLY are joined by TURANDOT and MANON LESCAUT, which are not second drawer, though certainly less popular than the first three. (Let's see ...

When I'm sitting down to listen to a piece I can name my top 5 favorite recordings of in order with detailed reasons of why they're ranked as such, it's hard to not have certain expectations. It's even difficult to hear something executed brilliantly and accept it as brilliance if you 'want' to hear...

As a self-proclaimed Broadway and theatre aficionado, I certainly thought I had a solid working knowledge of Stephen Sondheim. His music and lyrics have spanned a generation and impacted the world with innate complexity and thoughtfulness. In particular, Gypsy has had a tremendous personal impact on...

On Sunday, December 20, at 3:00 PM in the Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage, Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute presented A Charlie Brown Christmas. This was a special holiday family concert that was a collaboration between five New York City arts organizations: The New York Pops, The Carnegie Hall...

San Francisco continues a – hopefully – new tradition this week with “A Charlie Brown Christmas – Live!” This delightful program had its West Coast premiere last season, with first-half vocals from Lisa Vroman and the Symphony Chorus. This week, the concert features “Little Mermaid” vo...

Performer Brian Stokes Mitchell speaks of his desire to uplift his audience by adding character to his music. Davies Symphony Hall discovered his exact meaning Wednesday when "Stokes" - "affectionately" called so by conductor Randall Craig Fleischer - immediately lit up the stage with a hearty smi...

Sixty singers under the direction of Karl Geiger, made a suitably strong and joyful noise in Nativity....

On paper, Vivaldi's 1737 opera seria CATONE IN UTICA--involving a confrontation between Cato and Caesar--seems a big mess: The music from the first act is missing and musicologists can't agree what the third act should look and sound like, leaving Act II to make or break a performance of the opera. ...

Bugs Bunny at the Symphony closes its 25th Anniversary, 2015 tour at San Francisco's Davies Hall this weekend. Outside, Civic Center has its holiday decorations up and a community brass group occasionally plays down the street, while inside the San Francisco Symphony continues its tradition of beaut...

I had the opportunity to chat with international singing star Mario Frangoulis the other day, and it was a simply delightful experience. He'll be performing in St. Louis at the Peabody Opera House on December 6, 2015 along with the legendary Smokey Robinson in a concert that will benefit the Voices ...

In the memory of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Steven Isserlis and Robert Levin proved faultless, performing the first of two all-Beethoven programs at Boston's prestigious Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum....

The classical music of India encompasses all of the subtle and blaring complexities of modern life in continuity with millennia of cultural tradition. The rhythmic nuance of vocalization, in unison with ancient instruments, truthfully dramatizes the frenetic synchronism of contemporary street life f...

Indonesia Pusaka is a largely Jakarta-based ensemble comprised of eight folk dancers and twelve classical pianists. In Javanese, pusaka means "heritage". For the first-ever performance of Indonesia Pusaka at Carnegie Hall, the riotous Indonesian composer Jaya Suprana sat himself onstage. Regally ado...

After nearly 300 years, with all of the epochal invention and revolutionary soundscapes to emerge from Western music, Bach is still heard with increasing relevance. Brad Mehldau, known foremost as an improviser, is the first jazz artist to serve as Carnegie Hall's Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's...

Who or what is Lulu, the eponymous character in Alban Berg's landmark opera? Is she saint or sinner? Femme fatale or victim? Put-upon or mistress of her own fate? Whatever else she might be, she is fabulous in the hands of German soprano Marlis Petersen, as the center of William Kentridge's vibrant,...