Culture Best Bets at Home: May 1st – 3rd

You won’t be lacking for options this weekend to get your culture fix. From school performers to a Tony Award-winning play, to actors switching roles and music of all kinds, here are your Culture Best Bets at Home: May 1st – 3rd.

Frankenstein – National Theatre Live – Now – May 7th/May 8th

In 2011 Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting) directed a production of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that had been written by Nick Dear. Starring in the play were Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller. What made this production interesting is that Cumberbatch and Miller alternated playing The Creature and Victor Frankenstein.

This week you won’t have to choose which one you see, because National Theatre Live is making both versions available. If you want to see Cumberbatch as The Creature go to this YouTube page. Keep in mind that this version is only available until May 7th.

If you want to see Johnny Lee Miller as The Creature go to this YouTube page. This version will remain available until May 8th.

Of course, you don’t have to choose. You could watch both.

Frankenstein runs 2 hours and is recommended for audiences 12 years and older.

Schubert’s Winterreise – May 1st – May 3rd – Carnegie Hall Website and Medici.tv

Fresh off the success of their Live with Carnegie Hall series on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the organization has started a new program to help you get through the weekend.

Carnegie Hall Fridays launches today with a weekly series of concerts that will be available for viewing on their own website and also on medici.tv.

The series launches with a 2019 concert by mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato performing Schubert’s Winterreise. She is accompanied on the piano by Metropolitan Opera conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Each performance becomes available at 3 AM EDT/12 AM PDT on Friday through 3 AM EDT/12 AM PDT Monday.

Upcoming concerts will include performances by Martha Argerich, Anne Sophie Mutter, Daniil Trifonov, Yuja Wang and Philip Glass with such conductors as Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, Valery Gergiev and Michael Tilson Thomas.

Georgia Stitt and Friends – May 1st – 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT – Playbill.Com

Last week we published an interview with singer/songwriter/musician Georgia Stitt about her new album, A Quiet Revolution. Today is the official release date of physical copies of the record and to celebrate she is doing an album release concert on Playbill.com. Joining for the concert are Kate Baldwin, Brandon Victor Dixon, Jeremy Jordan and Jessica Vosk.

Good luck keeping your eyes dry during Jeremy Jordan’s performance. Just a word to the wise.

Sunshine Concerts – May 2nd – 6:00 PM EDT/3 PM PDT

Laura Benanti, the Tony Award-winning actress, wanted to support school children who were unable to perform in their school musicals by encouraging them to send in videos of the songs they were to perform. To perhaps everyone’s surprise she got thousands of videos.

Benanti and Kate Detier-Maradei assembled the best of those submissions to distribute to senior living communities, children’s hospitals, pediatric units and more.

On Saturday everyone will have a chance to watch the best of the videos on Sunshinesongs.com and also on Laura Benanti’s YouTube page. This is not a fundraiser. It is a celebration of the passion and enthusiasm of students who get an alternate way of sharing their gifts with us all.

Laura Benanti got her start in school musicals. Who knows, we might just get an early glimpse at the next big Broadway star. #SunshineSongs

Red – Great Performances on PBS – May 2nd – check local listings

If you have yet to check out Alfred Molina’s towering performance as Mark Rothko in John Logan’s Tony Award-winning play, Red, this is an opportunity you can’t miss. Molina gives another great performance (because when doesn’t he?) in this two-character play that takes place at the time of Rothko’s commission to create murals for New York’s Four Seasons Restaurant.

Co-starring as his assistant, Ken, is Alfred Enoch.

Duruflé and Trumbore – Los Angeles Master Chorale – May 3rd

In their continuing Sundays at Seven series, the LA Master Chorale is making available the audio from this 2019 concert which found Associate Conductor Jenny Wong leading the ensemble in a performance of Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem Op. 9 and Dale Trumbore’s How to Go On.

This audio-only release runs approximately 90 minutes and employs 48 singers and a chamber orchestra. The soloists for the Duruflé are Jessie Shulman, mezzo-soprano and Chung Uk Lee, bass-baritone.

The soloists for How to Go On are Kelci Hahn, soprano; Bethanie Peregrine, soprano; Callista Hoffman-Campbell, mezzo-soprano; Sarah Lynch, mezzo-soprano; Adriana Manfredi, mezzo-soprano; Ilana Summers, mezzo-soprano; Jimmy Traum, tenor; Scott Graff, baritone; James Hayden, bass.

Los Angeles Philharmonic Concert Series – May 3rd – KUSC

KUSC Radio is airing recordings of concerts by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall every Sunday through June 21st. And if you don’t catch the 10 PM EDT/7 PM PDT broadcast, you will be able to stream it at your leisure for one week after the broadcast.

This week’s concert took place October 12th and 13th in 2019. Gustavo Dudamel leads the LA Phil in performances of Chávez’s Symphony No. 2 (Sinfonia India), Esteban Benzecry’s Piano Concerto (Universos infinitos), Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and Rodeo. Sergio Tiempo is the soloist for the concerto.

If you go to the website before Sunday’s broadcast, you can still catch Dudamel and the LA Phil in another program from October 2019 that featured Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Gershwin’s Concerto in F (with Jean-Yves Thibaudet as the soloist), Previn’s Can Spring Be Far Behind? and Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite.

Reminders:

You can still catch the Stephen Sondheim 90th Birthday Concert Take Me to the World on this YouTube page.

LA Opera is streaming a 2018 production of Du Yun’s Pulitzer-Prize winning opera Angel’s Bone on May 1st at 11 PM EDT/8 PM PDT.

The Metropolitan Opera has Aida with Leontyne Price in her farewell performance available on May 1st; Verdi’s Luisa Miller on May 2nd and Borodin’s Prince Igor on May 3rd.

With all these Culture Best Bets at Home May 1st – 3rd, who will have time to be bored? Or see them all?

Main Photo: Johnny Lee Miller in Frankenstein (Photo by Catherine Ashmore/Courtesy of National Theatre Live)