Steve Smith
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While JSU got there first, I will duly report — having been among those who repeated La Cieca’s initial scoop — that apparently, the "flying bed" in the Met’s current Roméo set sail once again last night, with Natalie Dessay aboard. Nor was the bed the only thing floating — the Associated Press reviewer was,…
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"My one claim to fame is that I once almost killed Michael Tippett…" – Man standing on the stairs after Act One of Lyric Opera’s The Midsummer Marriage on Saturday night. * "The opera is totally awful. [pause] Yeah, it’s a modern opera; I should have known it would be awful, like how any time…
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Hardly two weeks into rehearsals, tenor Hugh Smith either jumped or was bought eased out of Sir Michael Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage at Lyric Opera of Chicago. A week later, director Sir Peter Hall — whose work in Houston Grand Opera’s world-premiere run of New Year, Tippett’s deeply weird yet utterly magical fifth and final…
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Marc Geelhoed (of Deceptively Simple, and my Time Out Chicago counterpart), in reponse to a blog entry by Daniel Felsenfeld (of Felsenmusick) wondering just who Marc is, took a moment today to answer Danny’s question. In the process, Marc gives a shout out to his partner, piano phenom Amy Dissanayake. Felsenfeld, meanwhile, posted with great…
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A wearying day climaxed in a loud, lights-cameras-action! media party in the office space to launch the newest TONY affair, an on-demand NYC cable TV channel devoted to translating our staff editors’ picks and pans to sound and vision on your tube — if you’re in NYC or NJ, anyway. Some predicted results: Theater critic…
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More voices have been added to the discussion of last night’s Roméo. Sieglinde (to whom, happy anniversary) had the harshest words initially, but softened somewhat overnight. JSU draws attention to the general nervousness of the evening, and hopes for improvement with Dessay’s arrival. Wellsungs Alex and Jonathan also had pointedly critical comments well worth reading.…
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One night after hearing Marcello Giordani in William Tell at the Met, I got a most unexpected treat. While I was definitely sorry that Natalie Dessay wasn’t up to the premiere of Roméo et Juliette at the Met tonight (and really do hope that my schedule allows me to hear one of her remaining performances),…
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Anyone who knows me soon also knows that when it comes to tenors, Marcello Giordani is my main man. Part of that probably has to do with formative bonding. I was way too young for my very first operatic experience, which was (I kid you not) Jon Vickers in a Houston Grand Opera Peter Grimes,…
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The technical perils of blogging are revealing themselves to this newbie only gradually. Which is to say I just spent more than two hours tallying impressions of Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince in its Saturday afternoon premiere. One false click, and it all disappeared without a trace. No way I’m going to try reconstructing at…
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Three straight days overwhelmed by work and three straight nights deprived of live performances have threatened to make me a dull boy indeed; happily, I’m overcompensating this weekend. Saturday afternoon brings the New York premiere of Rachel Portman’s lovely all-ages charmer, The Little Prince, at City Opera. That evening’s Ligeti-palooza at Miller Theatre will at…
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It was late. I was tired. And emotions ran high when I spotted, and linked to, the New York Times article on Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s cancellations. I’m guessing that’s why it wasn’t until later in the morning, when I read Susan Elliott’s report on that article at Musical America, that the Times piece finally struck…
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Whatever I might have said can bloody well wait. Go right now to Daniel J. Wakin’s article in today’s New York Times, in which he — or, to be accurate, conductor Craig Smith — finally uncorks the trepidation we’re all feeling with regard to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s constant cancellations this year.
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Tonight brought a special treat, somewhat off my usually beaten path: a preview performance of Souvenir, Stephen Temperley’s two-character, two-act play about the legendarily off-key society warbler Florence Foster Jenkins. The show was generally well received, and Judy Kaye’s portrayal of Jenkins roundly lauded, in an initial run late last year, which I didn’t see.…
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I can’t imagine that I have very much in common with Sir Simon Rattle, but two things came to mind tonight. One is that, like Rattle, my musical training was as a percussionist, specifically a timpanist. Perhaps that explains why, like Sir Simon, I was a relative latecomer to opera. (What’s opera got to offer…
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At an Upper West Side quick-eats joint Monday night: Clerk No. 1: “Yo, who won the basketball game last night?” Clerk No. 2: “I’m a musical-theater student — you think I’d know? (pause) I was watching Show Boat last night, thank you…”
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Thumbing through the May 1968 edition of the American Record Guide, which I rescued from some recycling bin somewhere, yielded this particularly choice advertisement from the now-lamented Composers Recordings, Inc.: INCONSEQUENTIAL! – The New York Times Not a good enough composer! – High Fidelity Considerable limitations! – Music Journal That is what the critics wrote…
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Less than a year after he was appointed artistic administrator of the New York Philharmonic, Chad Smith accepted the job of vice president of artistic planning at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the orchestra he’d originally left to come to New York. Filling his position here is Matias Tarnopolsky, who comes to the New York Phil…
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Unlike my previous, lengthy posts (the earmark of a newbie blogger, or so I’m told), I’m going to try to keep this one relatively brief. That really shouldn’t be a problem, since New York City Opera’s current revival of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett’s 1965 thriller, The Mines of Sulphur, has been much commented upon elsewhere.…
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“Après nous, le déluge.” That was how I started my Time Out preview of Anne-Marie McDermott’s latest project, a three-concert cycle of most of Dmitri Shostakovich’s chamber music (apart from the string quartets) at Alice Tully Hall, which concluded this evening. The series was presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. And while…
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“Now, we were dying laughing at the donkey with tennis shoes on…” Originally, I’d intended to attend Ivan Moravec’s recital tonight at Isaac Stern Auditorium. But the workload beckoned, and thus I’m sitting at home watching the soon-to-be-released DVD of Good to See You Again, Alice Cooper, a film of Cooper’s 1973 Billion Dollar Babies…
Night After Night 