Stephanie Berger News

On August 18, marking the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Park Avenue Armory and lead partner National Black Theatre, together with nine other New York City cultural institutions, unveiled the next phase of the 100 Years | 100 Women initiative.

On August 18, marking the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Park Avenue Armory and lead partner National Black Theatre, together with nine other New York City cultural institutions, will unveil the next phase of the 100 Years | 100 Women initiative.

Someone once asked me, long ago, “Don't you ever get Baroque-d out?” The answer then--when instrumental music was more widely available than vocal--was a firm “no.” Today, when there's the music of Handel and his contemporaries everywhere, the answer remains the same, particularly when it's in the right hands, like Joyce DiDonato (JDD) in AGRIPPINA on disk and recently at the Met. There are also some less familiar--but very much worthy--names, like countertenor Jakub Jozef Orlinski on his Erato CD, “Facce d'Amore,” and mezzo Ann Hallenberg, at Carnegie's Zankel Hall last week with the Venice Baroque Orchestra.

At its fourth annual a?oeCulture in a Changing Americaa?? symposium on Saturday, Park Avenue Armory, together with lead partner National Black Theatre and nine additional   New York City-based cultural institutions, announced the lead group of artists they commissioned as part of the 100 Years | 100 Women initiative. In addition to the Armory and National Black Theatre, the commissioning institutions are : Apollo Theater; The Julliard School; La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company; The Laundromat Project; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of the Moving Image; National Sawdust; New York University (Department of Photography and Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts; Office of Global Inclusion, Diversity and Strategic Innovation; and Institute of African American Affairs & Center for Black Visual Culture); and Urban Bush Women.

With great success, Juilliard's Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts, including a notable alumna, Felicia Moore, as Susan B. Anthony, along with members of the New York Philharmonic under Daniela Candillari performed Louisa Proske's production of the Gertrude Stein-Virgil Thomson opera THE MOTHER OF US ALL. It took place in the Engelhardt Court of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as part of the MetLiveArts series.

I admit this is an absolutely personal, totally one-sided view of what gave one man opera thrills last year and what I will look back on with delight. Some are old works, some are new, some are individual performers, some are ensembles, some are complete productions, some are merely the highlight of an evening, most are domestic, a few are foreign. In any case, as the new decade begins, I recall that these are the vocal highlights that made my heart beat a little faster and made me look forward to the year ahead.

Born in 1901, Austro-Hungarian playwright and novelist ?-dön von Horváth spent the latter of his 36 years warning against the growing threat of European fascist regimes before being fatally struck by a falling tree branch.

The late, great jazz artist Nora York is being celebrated by the release of a posthumous cd titled SWOON and the NORA YORK TRIBUTE CONCERT at Joe's Pub. Learn about York and more in this interview with her collaborator, Emmy award winner Jamie Lawrence.

Even the most jaded New York playgoers who may start feeling a bit blasé about entering a theatre and seeing a large pool of water on the stage (Jeremy O. Harris' DADDY and Lucas Hnath's RED SPEEDO are two recent examples) will undoubtedly be intrigued by the sumptuous display of aquatic symbolism greeting them at the Park Avenue Armory for director Satoshi Miyagi's entrancing staging of Shigetake Yaginuma's translation of Sophocles' Antigone.

Hudson Hall at the historic Hudson Opera House invites audiences to embrace a sense of adventure with a new season of music, theater, exhibitions, film, book launches, special events, and community programs this August to December.

This week's opera performances--Teatro Nuova's LA STRANIERA by Bellini and Mostly Mozart's MAGIC FLUTE--proved that opera can be considered alive and well (and living in New York), as long as those producing it believe in it and give us some voices worth hearing.

Having watched the Mark Morris over the past 20 years, I can say with all honesty that he has all the virtues that distinguish a fine choreographer: musicality, vitality, charm, humor. My problem is that I never find myself warming to anything I see, especially to the program on July 11, 2019.

Today the Merce Cunningham Trust announces Summer & Fall 2019 programming for the worldwide Merce Cunningham Centennial, which unites artists, companies, and cultural and educational institutions in a celebration of Cunningham's vital impact. Launched in the fall of 2018 and continuing throughout all of 2019, the Centennial honors Cunningham's legacy across continents and artistic disciplines. The diversity of activities and participating partners demonstrate the profound, enduring resonance of the choreographer's work and his approach to how the body moves in time and space.

Well before The Met Gala's kitschy theme for 2019 inspired the likes of Lady Gaga, Jordan Roth and countess celebrities to strut their most outrageous stuff down the pink carpet, Mark Morris has been the reigning King of Camp in choreography, celebrating this gleeful genre in company classics such as The Hard Nut. This spring he elevated the playful style integrated with expressive movement in Pepperland, an exuberant homage to the 1960s counterculture and The Beatles' seminal 1967 concept album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Hudson Hall celebrates the Merce Cunningham Centennial with a 6-week program of dance, music, film, and photography to showcase the work of an iconic artist and the enduring power of his living legacy.

Helen of Troy didn't launch a thousand ships but was a put-upon sexual victim and Marilyn Monroe--born Norma Jeane Baker, of the title--was a cloud in the shape of a woman. It was also a “disaster to be a girl” in those days before #MeToo, with powerful men (whether Menelaus or Arthur Miller) holding beautiful women captive (and worse). That was just part of Anne Carson's new ”dramatic work,” NORMA JEANE BAKER OF TROY, with its effective tonal score by Paul Clark, and two wonderful performers, soprano Renee Fleming and British actor Ben Whishaw, under director Katie Mitchell.

The Shed, led by Artistic Director and CEO Alex Poots, has just begun its 2019 inaugural season in Manhattan with Norma Jeane Baker of Troy led by Ben Whishaw, with soprano Renee Fleming. Let's see what the critics had to say.

Like a sad, lonely island, depleted of its bounty, a single floor of the offices of Lehman Brothers is revealed, isolated, lofted above the endless business of a bustling Manhattan. It is empty, save for the boxes of files stacked on top of each other after declaring bankruptcy in 2008 and the memory of three brothers who founded the company 158 years earlier and their descendants who kept it thriving as a global investment bank.

The brevity of political satire's shelf life tends to rival that of a tray of supermarket eggs, but it seems one of the quips penned by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse for the book of their smash hit 1950 musical Call Me Madam is breathing in new life in the 21st Century.

It wasn't so long ago that countertenors were still considered an oddity; today, you can't turn around without tripping over one, or more. Last year, for instance, when the English Concert did Handel's RINALDO at Carnegie Hall there were, indeed, three countertenors. One of them was the young Polish singer--he's 28--Jakub Jozef Orlinski, who just made his New York debut at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall to what I can only describe as a rapturous reception. I totally agreed.