BWW Review: Union Avenue Opera Gives St. Louis a Brilliant CANDIDE
by Steve Callahan - Jul 8, 2019
Run, don't walk, to see the brilliant CANDIDE at the Union Avenue Opera in St. Louis! This is the opening production of their twenty-fifth festival season, and it is, for my money, the most wonderful of the many lovely shows they've done.
Uncategorizable, Brilliant, and Profound: Bernstein's CANDIDE at the Washington National Opera
by Jack L. B. Gohn - May 6, 2018
When you hear the first few notes of the rollicking overture, you know Bernstein is genuflecting hard to Johann Strauss. Yet this is a story in which the principal characters are bayoneted, hanged, maimed, raped, prostituted, ravaged by disease, and enslaved, among other things, a story which, thematically, takes the characters and us right to the edge of the Nietzschean abyss and gives us a good long sobering look into it - not the sort of thing Strauss or Gilbert and Sullivan ever did.
BWW Review: CANDIDE at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
by Maria Nockin - Jan 29, 2018
On January 27, 2018, Los Angeles Opera presented the Bernstein work at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with a cast that included Emmy-winning television star Kelsey Grammer. He is best remembered for his two-decade-long portrayal of psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane on the situation comedies Cheers, Wings, and Frasier. As Voltaire and Pangloss, Grammer had a huge speaking role that he acquitted with a commanding personality and considerable wit. Surprisingly, he sang quite well, too.
BWW Review: Ronny Whyte's Inimitable Elegant Style Buoys The Jazz Room at Kitano
by Alix Cohen - Jun 6, 2016
Ronny Whyte epitomizes everything gracious, refined, and sophisticated that's become rare in music presented by artists under a certain age and temperament. Even with jazz interpretation, his accessible choices and deceptively casual delivery present songs as their authors intended. When he composes, tacit symbiosis with lyricists creates melody and images that seem to come from a less complicated era. Last Saturday night, Whyte was joined by veteran collaborators--Boots Maleson on bass, David Silliman on drums, and guest guitarist Sean Harkness--for a show that featured mostly eclectic American Songbook standards and originals from his own oeuvre.
Long Beach Opera Reveals 2016 Season
by Nora Dominick - May 28, 2015
Long Beach Opera's 2016 season has been announced and includes a new production of the 1974 version of Leonard Bernstein's comic operetta Candide, winner of four Tony Awards; the world premiere of Tobin Stokes' Fallujah, with a libretto by Iraqi-American Heather Raffo, based on the story of a US Marine and his experience during the Iraq war; Suzan Hanson starring in Francis Poulenc's La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice), a moving monodrama about unrequited love; and the West Coast premiere of the video-pop opera The News by Jacob TV – the Andy Warhol of new music.
Moira Danis to Bring OOPS...I FELL IN LOVE! to the Met Room, 3/23
by Diana Heisroth - Feb 7, 2014
After a string of highly successful shows and CD's (culminating with the 2013 Bistro Award for Outstanding Recording for Some People's Lives), Moira Danis returns to the cabaret stage with a brand new show and a new venue. Oops…I Fell In Love!, which will open at the Metropolitan Room on Sunday, March 23, 2014 at 4:00pm, explores a love affair from beginning to end to beginning again.