Musicals, operas and plays are regularly being reimagined. The recent production of Oklahoma! on Broadway; Michael Mayer’s production of Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera and the production of King Lear in which Glenda Jackson starred as Lear are just three examples. Enter director Phil Chan with Boston Lyric Opera‘s production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

For the uninitiated, Madama Butterfly tells the story of Cio-Cio San, a young Japanese girl who falls in love with a US Naval officer named Pinkerton.

Unbeknownst to Pinkerton, she has a baby – his baby. Unbeknownst to Cio-Cio San, he’s gotten married.

Chan has changed the setting of this tragic story to 1940s San Francisco – before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. If you know your history you know that soon after that 120,000 Japanese Americans were interred in concentration camps in America – not for being the enemy, but for looking like they could be the enemy. Cio-Cio San (Karen Chia-Ling Ho) is now a nightclub entertainer named Butterfly. Pinkerton (Dominick Chenes) is about to be shipped out to war as a result of the bombing.

It’s a bold decision, but there is so much more to Chan’s thinking as I learned when we spoke last week before Madama Butterfly opened. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with Chan, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: What is it about this story that you think resonates so strongly and so deeply with people?

I think it really comes from the music. Puccini has written such a beautiful opera with such strong musical characters, such emotional highs and lows. Why does one like one roller coaster over the other roller coaster? It’s the feeling of butterflies, both extreme joy and relief, and then utter despair. You just ride between those two emotions for most of the opera.

It’s always been sort of a controversial opera. In the forties, it was actually canceled for a little bit. Canceled because people were afraid that it was empathizing with Japanese people too much. Now it’s again undergoing another sort of canceling because of its rightly poor depictions of Asian people. Caricature depictions. What it reinforces about Asian women.

We’re also having a second look at this opera, especially in the light of this anti-Asian social hysteria that has come out since COVID. It showed us that our acceptance of Asian-Americans here is really just a very thin veneer, the smallest thing, and we are not accepted here anymore.

When and where did you first experience Madama Butterfly?

I probably first saw it at The Met the current production [by Anthony Minghella], which is beautiful. I think I saw it before I had much of an awareness of any of this advocacy; how we represent Asian people. I saw it as just another fantasy that was told in the dramatic way, just like there are stories that take place in Germany and other places.

But then I started to dig a little bit deeper. The way we do things in opera and ballet that we’ve inherited from Europe that don’t necessarily serve everyone. These stories have power and they’re telling us specific narratives over and over again at the expense of Asian-American voices. What do they reinforce and what do they tell us – works like Madama Butterfly, this hyper-sexual, hyper-submissive Asian woman? You know what happens when we see that on stage?

In reality Asian women are being pushed onto subways tracks and and followed home and stalked home and shot down at their places of work, blamed for a disease. How are those two things connected when the arts are a way to empathize with the other? What if our arts aren’t doing us that favor anymore because the power depicting them is from 100 plus years ago?If we want this work to still have resonance, we need to help clear away some of the 100 years of cultural baggage so that Puccini’s intentions can be kept pure. So that’s what we I tried to do with this piece.

Is there something to learn by seeing how previous generations presented themselves, others and how they presented stories? Is there something to learn from those mistakes that should allow for them to exist in spite of their flaws, in spite of these depictions that are not appropriate?

I think there’s a difference between static art forms like photography, painting, sculpture, film and the performing arts which are living art forms. The static art forms [we] need to keep them as that is right. Birth of a Nation is arguably a great American film. It’s also a very problematic film. But we need to keep it alive and look at it within a context of where it belongs, which is in a museum to understand how it changed the minds of our people in a dangerous way. 

With the performing arts, however, we have a different set of rules. The performing arts have to be a mirror to our current moment. They have to reflect who we are and of our time. And if those things don’t hold true, the art isn’t honest. It doesn’t have integrity. Think about Shakespeare. If you’ve ever seen a Shakespearean play with a woman in it, you’re already seeing something radical and very different. The reason we’ve done that is because we need the art to better reflect our times. It’s by reimagining that we get to keep these works alive.

What I’m saying is let’s use our creative imagination. Let’s imagine this music with a bigger story for more people. Then let’s use that money we make from Butterfly ticket sales to commission a female composer or a Black composer or an Asian composer who’s alive now to make new work that reflects us so we can contribute to the canon as well. That’s also the bigger picture that I’m hoping this process brings out.

Anybody who tackles a story that has suicide in it, as this one famously does, as a director, is Cio-Cio San (or Butterfly’s) suicide an act of bravery or not? 

That depends on if the character kills herself. I think we’re questioning some of these stories. So just making the assumption that Cio-Cio San kills herself, again, goes against this. What else could it be? I’m not going to give away our ending, but just asking that question. The character does have to die at the end. But what is another death that we all experience? Or is there a death that is different than an automatic ritual suicide? What is a death that everybody can feel that isn’t just this abstract other thing that we don’t do in our society because we’re not crazy Japanese people who would even do that? 

Suicide doesn’t mean what it meant in the context of this opera when [Puccini] wrote the opera. So that is something that modern directors have to deal with. I think that’s why we’re seeing so much diversity in how this opera ends, which I think is really exciting. It keeps audiences guessing and keeps them wanting to come back and see this story over and over again. 

I saw a production that Josh Shaw of Pacific Opera Project did of Madama Butterfly, where all the Japanese characters sung in Japanese and all the the American characters sung in English. The idea was that these are barriers that they would have to have faced in the real world of Madama Butterfly. Do you think this opera lends itself to more dynamic changes than other operas?

In my research, it’s the Orientalist repertory that is almost the hardest to re-imagine because we love the fantasy. Orientalism has been a vehicle for spectacle for so long. Can you imagine The Met’s Turandot as anything but this giant Peking Opera spectacle? It’s just so big. It’s so beloved. It’s so pretty. It’s beautiful. It’s problematic, but it’s beautiful, right?You want that perfume. It’s very attractive. The problem is it doesn’t hold water when we are diverse. So when you’re looking at an otherwise outside culture as an insider and going, I’m Japanese and that’s not what we look like. Or I’m Chinese – I don’t see myself in this at all. It’s a very disorienting experience. But it was not made for us. So I think the Oriental operas are the hardest to re-imagine and balance because we’re stuck in how it’s done.

You mentioned the hysteria whipped up because of COVID and the resulting anti-Asian violence. Let’s assume that this production is successful in Boston and has a life beyond Boston in other cities. What is your hope that this production of Madama Butterfly will do to change the minds of the kind of people who spat on you and made it difficult for your father to go out*?

I think art is a way to bridge differences between people. Empathy and music is a way to cut through people’s hearts. It cuts through all of the vulnerabilities of the walls. It goes right to your heart. Puccini was very good at that. This way of doing the opera is a way to build empathy for Asian people. A way to say, we are not going to do this again to anybody. We’re not going to do this to Japanese Americans. We’re not going to do it to Jewish people. We’re not going to do it to Black people. We’re not going to do this again to anybody.

If that can be part of the story we can win over hearts, not just minds. It’s not an intellectual debate we’re having. It’s an emotional one. Art is a way to get people to see each other. Man, if you saw me as a real person, you wouldn’t spit on me. So let me give you some good music to help you to see me. I think that’s what this has the potential to do.

Madama Butterfly continues at Boston Lyric Opera with performances on Friday, September 22nd and Sunday, September 24th.

*To see the full context of that question and the full and fascinating conversation with Phil Chan, please go here.

Main Photo: Karen Chia-Ling Ho and company in Madama Butterfly at Boston Lyric Opera directed by Phil Chan (Photo by Ken Yotsukura/Courtesy Boston Lyric Opera)

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After Hours has created immersive productions of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jason Robert Brown‘s The Last Five Years and more. Wetterhahn and Donenberg first worked together when Al Pacino did a fundraiser for SCLA last year. A post-event dinner conversation turned to possible collaborations and the end result is The Tempest which is scheduled to run through April 16th at SCLA in downtown Los Angeles.

In the play Prospero, the former Duke of Milan, has conjured up a storm to exact revenge for his being replaced as Duke of Milan by his brother after King Alonso and his brother Sebastian engineered it. A ship carrying those who wronged Prospero is caught up in the storm conjured by the former Duke. They are shipwrecked and find themselves on an island with only Prospero, his daughter Miranda and a creature named Caliban as its occupants.

This production of The Tempest begins with the audience (split into three staggered arrival times) “boarding” the doomed ship and being introduced to many of the characters from the play. They ultimately find themselves “on” the island where a puzzle is presented by a sprite that allows those who solve it to enter Prospero’s house. Clues as to the answer to that puzzle are meant to be discovered and repeated back to the sprite.

Last week, after attending the final preview performance of The Tempest a few days earlier, I spoke with Wetterhahn about the marriage of Shakespeare and immersive theatre; creating a physical world for audiences that extends the narrative of the play and whether this production is likely to inspire new audiences to want to see other productions of Shakespeare’s plays.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

When you’re creating not just a production of a play, but an immersive experience that extends the narrative of the play into something that’s up to an hour in length prior to the play starts, how much does the text, the language that Shakespeare uses, inspire what the totality of the experience is going to be? 

First of all, what makes a good immersive piece or what makes the easiest or most distinct immersive hybrid piece is one of the main reasons we chose to do The Tempest because of its timeline and location. It takes place essentially in real time in one location, which makes it very easy to drop an audience into [it]. If you’re doing something like Hamlet or the Scottish play where there’s ten different locations in different timelines, it becomes a lot harder for an audience to track. So that I think that was a big one. 

Ben Donenberg, who directed the piece, has dedicated his life to the production and study of Shakespearean text. After Hours, of course, we’re fans of Shakespeare, but this is personally the first Shakespeare piece that I worked on. We were approaching it [with] how do we make Shakespeare more accessible?

The first act there’s Antonio and Alonzo and Adrian. Trying to keep these relationships and names clear is very challenging. It’s very dense and it keeps me from engaging fully with the piece. So we’re trying to figure out how can we get audiences who aren’t trained in Shakespeare to be able to engage in a classic Shakespearean piece of text. To bring this full circle to the original question, we take a lot of inspiration from the text in order to use the characters, the relationships, the general objectives and specific phrases to try and educate the audience and get them invested in the show prior to the play beginning. So that once the play begins we’ve hopefully, in a fun way, forced you to sort of do a study guide before the show begins.

What’s the criteria you use in determining what projects are ripe for an immersive experience?

Something that has a very strong sense of location or esthetic because it’s very easy to. I don’t want to say elevator pitch a show, but it’s very easy to to sell an audience or for an audience to understand the show. You’re going to be shipwrecked onto a magical island. Previously, we’ve done One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. You’re going to be a patient in in the in the mental hospital.

I think also shows where the audience has a role within the play are good. For example, in The Tempest technically there’s two different directions we could go and we talked pretty extensively about both. One is you are a shipwrecked part of the crew or a passenger shipwrecked on the island. So there’s a natural role for you. The other would be you are a Sprite on the island. That was a little bit harder to convey narratively to the audience.

You want to introduce the audience to a lot of a lot of characters, but a lot of those characters in person. We tried doing it through puzzles and text, but it’s hard because a big part of the play is [characters who have] never seen another human before: Miranda and Caliban. So if all of the sudden you introduce Miranda to 150 people at the top of the show, it doesn’t help that throughline very well. That was definitely one of the challenges: how do you maintain the integrity of a vacant, deserted island while also battling the reality of 150 of us just washed ashore? 

If you’re looking at making Shakespeare more accessible through through these intimate, immersive experiential productions is the hope that these kind of productions will replace traditional ones, or that people will get a better handle on Shakespeare and be more inspired to seek out traditional productions? 

It’s definitely the latter. There’s certainly enough room for both to coexist. I’m a traditional theater fan at my core. I don’t think this is something that should or could replace traditional theater. But I do think this is a good gateway for people that maybe might not choose to see theater.

If you’ve ever been to a Sunday matinee of any regional theater you know what I’m talking about. Usually there’s not many people under the age of 65 in any of those audiences. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but perhaps there’s a way to attract new people to theater. Based on the audience feedback from this production we have seen that this model really works for attracting new audiences and gets new people excited.

The hope is that they’d see this, get excited and then maybe that’s a gateway to seeing more traditional pieces. And vice-versa maybe for traditional theatergoers to see some more immersive style pieces.

We’ve discussed a bit about how this changes the experience for the audience. How does this change the experience for the actors?

I think they all were very excited by the challenge. We didn’t really have any issues with anybody, but I think a lot of them also found it to be very interesting and exciting. For a lot of performers who like to spend some time getting into the proper actor headspace, getting an hour before the show starts to build rapport with your audience and to embody the character I think is really helpful. It’s not for everybody, but for the actors that choose to audition for a piece like this kind of know what they’re getting themselves into. I think they’ve all really enjoyed that process.

Is there a price to be paid by encouraging people to drink, encouraging people to play puzzles and things like that before they see a show? As you know, the performance I attended had several challenges with audience members using their phones, making out and talking rather loudly.

I will say the Thursday that you came was one of our rowdiest audiences we’ve had. That, I would say, was more of an exception to the rule than the norm. But there’s still definitely much more of that than in a traditional theater. So then it goes back to is that something that needs to be clarified? We have to get our pre-show rules and regulations and expectations set a little bit better. Part of this is people having never been to theater and not fully understanding etiquette. Part of this is, perhaps, people thinking they’re just going to a cocktail experience and don’t fully understand that they’re going to see a full piece of Shakespeare.

We want the actors to be respected. We want the house staff to be respected. We want the audiences to enjoy the show. And we also don’t want other audiences to be distracted by these people. I think it will continue to improve over the course of the run.

My guest felt like the interactive component felt like an escape room to him. How much of an influence is the escape room concept for what you are trying to accomplish here?

I think that’s an astute perspective. So there’s a bunch of different types of these pre-show immersive. If you look at the ship design, for example, the ship sequence is you’re getting quickly introduced to a bunch of characters. There’s not any puzzle or anything like that on the ship, but that’s more of an actor-driven experience. Whereas once we’re on the island it’s a non-actor-driven experience. It was definitely very inspired by puzzle design. We had a number of our friends who are escape room creators come and see it and give notes on the piece.

One of the biggest challenges that an escape room designer doesn’t normally face is a typical immersive piece does not have 150 audience members simultaneously in a night. That is a unique challenge to trying to hybridize these styles.

There was a question that was asked one of the creators of Sleep No More (New York’s follow-the-characters around various rooms version of Macbeth) when that project first opened. How do you balance the concept or design of a community event with the experience each individual will have when they see The Tempest? 

The reason I love theater is because of that energy exchange between the audience and performance. The reason I love intimate and immersive theater is because that energy exchange between audience and performance is put on steroids a little. I think the goal with this hybrid style is to enable that audience to feel an individual connection with characters in the show, while also creating that communal experience of sitting in an audience and watching an excellent show. One of the things that attracts me to theater and to creating theater is that shared communal experience and I assume for most other theater lovers as well. We’re trying to do something where you can develop a personal relationship with the show, but you still have the communal experience of watching a show.

Photo: Chris Butler as Prospero in Shakespeare Center LA’s production of The Tempest (Photo by Brian Hashimoto/Courtesy SCLA)

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“We don’t share everything about ourselves. And of course, we move through the world trying to project an image of ourselves that has some relationship to the totality of who we are and our experience,” actor Seth Numrich recently told me. “But it’s curated, right? We’re always trying to put our best foot forward or show people what we think they want to see from us.”

It’s an intriguing concept going into an interview with an actor like Numrich who is currently appearing in Power of Sail with Bryan Cranston and Amy Brenneman at the Geffen Playhouse.

Written by Paul Grellong, Power of Sail is about a Harvard (Cranston) professor whose invitation to a White Nationalist to speak there stirs up a hornet’s nest of controversy amongst the staff and the students. Numrich plays Lucas Poole who is a grad student who is hoping to get a prestigious fellowship that has launched several other Harvard students into high-profile and well-paying jobs.

“We come to understand and make and form opinions and judgments about these characters early in the play,” says Numrich. “And then because of the nature of the journey that the play goes on, each one of the characters something new is revealed about them. Then the audience gets to learn something and then reassess the assumptions that they made earlier in the evening. And I just think that that’s so cool and exciting because we’re all complicated.”

Numrich is accustomed to playing complicated and complex characters. He’s appeared on Broadway in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, Golden Boy by Clifford Odets and The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. The 35-year-old actor also appeared opposite Kim Cattrall in a 2013 production of Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams.

“What I get really excited about is when the storytelling is truly happening through the characters. With the best writers you never feel like you’re being explained anything or you’re being taught anything. I appreciate plays that can find an entry into big, interesting, important – whatever that word means – questions about the human experience.”

Sometimes those roles require that Numrich do soul-searching to discover what he may or may not have in common with his character. When he appeared in Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America and Kuwait by Daniel Talbott at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in 2015 he told StageBuddy.com that “I truly believe as an actor, as well as a person, that we all have the same capacities inside of us. We don’t like to look at the dark side of our nature, and we often say, ‘Oh, I could never do that. That would never be me.’ But in the right circumstances, you really don’t know.” It’s a perspective he brings to every role.

“I still believe that and it’s very important to me, in terms of the work that I do as an actor, that judging our characters makes it impossible to play any character. It’s never my job to sympathize with a character and their actions and beliefs. But it is my job to empathize with them as a human being. I feel like it’s kind of our superpower as actors is that we are professionally empathetic because we always have to be looking for and trying to understand, why is this person doing what they’re doing? Why are they behaving the way that they are? Why do they choose to move through the world in the way that they do?”

With Power of Sail Numrich says that exploration starts with the play itself.

“What I love about Paul’s writing is I think he does dialogue really well. When you’re speaking his words it never feels unnatural in any way. It always feels real and grounded, which is such a luxury. There’s so much to mine and that’s just exciting because I can just invest myself as the actor in the work I want to do there. And that feels like it naturally illuminates the text and vice versa. I don’t think I’m going to get bored by the end of this run. When I go into any scene I always have more to work on. And that’s not necessarily true of every writer.”

One of the producers of Power of Sail is Daryl Roth (a 12-time Tony Award winner for plays and musicals that includes War Horse in which Numrich appeared) which is fueling speculation that the play might soon set sail for Broadway. If it does, Numrich is confident it will be just as provocative in its next incarnation.

“There’s a lot that people can take from this play. I’ve talked to a lot of people after the show. What’s going on on stage is a mirror of what’s going on in the whole room. We’re asking people to sit for two hours with people living through these questions. It’s a nice reminder that [theater] does have something to offer that these other media do not have, which is that we’re going to all sit together in the same physical space breathing the same air. That feels like a radical, dangerous concept right now in the world. It also feels necessary and so I’m appreciative of this opportunity to do that in a way that feels really connected to the questions that certainly I have been experiencing and living through in the last couple of years.”

Power of Sail continues at the Geffen Playhouse through March 27th. More tickets and more information, please go here.

Photo: Seth Numrich in Power of Sail (Photo by Jeff Lorch/Courtesy Geffen Playhouse)

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Soper used the stories of eight women from fiction, written by men, to explore how they were treated by their creators in her work which is a song cycle for voice and ensemble. Amongst the sources and characters to be found are Lady MacDuff from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Emma Bovary from Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Daisy Buchanan from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Jenny Wong will be leading Wild Up! in these performances.

Last week I spoke by phone with Soper about Voices from the Killing Jar and how timely the work feels now nearly ten years after she composed it. What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

A decade after completing Voices from the Killing Jar, what are your thoughts about the work and your relationship to it?

I guess I do sort of think of it as a piece from an earlier time, but in terms of my relationship, it has changed. I think it was the start of me becoming more interested in works that had explicit theatrical elements and a legible kind of quasi-narrative element. And it was really a chance for me to really see how versatile I could be as a performer. I think those are all the things that I kind of tried out for the first time with that piece that have become just part of my regular practice. I think like all pieces of music – probably for most composers – it’s also a record of a time in my life that had its interesting things. A time when I was really connected to the ensemble I was working with and I was finding my compositional voice as they say.

Do you think the #MeToo movement in some way now makes this work more prescient and more topical?

That’s not for me to say. That’s probably just for people receiving the work now to say. Of course, I have thoughts and sadnesses about how things have changed even since I wrote that piece. And in a way I think things haven’t gotten better necessarily with regard to gender equality.

Here we are on the call and you ask me about #MeToo. Of course, I get it. I’m not upset or even surprised that you would bring that up. But I don’t know. If people who are not in the majority point of view, everyone who’s not the straight white man, it’s like I did write this piece about these female characters. So I can’t really say that it doesn’t involve gender or my feelings about it or that it would be inappropriate for you or anyone else to want to talk about that in context of the piece.

To be clear, the reason I asked is that there are certain pieces of art that get created and then become more resonant because of what has happened, not as a result of that work necessarily, but just what has happened with time after their debut.

That makes sense.

I recently spoke with conductor Ruth Reinhardt and we talked about when it was going to be that a woman is a composer or a conductor and not a woman composer or a woman conductor. Do you see that shift in perspective happening in your lifetime?

I guess I’m not super optimistic about great strides for equality in my lifetime at the moment. This is such specific moment where it’s difficult to be optimistic about cultural shifts.

What was your reaction when Yuval Sharon suggested pairing your work with the Schoenberg?

I think we had talked about a couple different things of mine. I didn’t really realize that they premiered exactly one hundred years apart. That seemed very cool to me; a nice synchrony. I think it makes a lot of sense. They’re both minor dramas. They both have kind of like a weird instrumentation. They both are for unconventional singers. So I’m pleased and honored to be half of that double bill.

How challenging is it for you as a composer to get additional performances of a work beyond a premiere? Many composers with whom I’ve spoken said getting the first performance is easy, but getting the subsequent performances is much more challenging.

I’m very grateful that people are doing my work. Sirens has been done a couple of times and Voices from the Killing Jar, too. I was writing things that I thought would be really fun and challenging for me to do as singer that I wasn’t getting the opportunity to do. I want to be theatrical. I want to play an instrument while I’m up there or whatever. So I think what’s been really gratifying to me is to see other singers say, “that looks really fun and I want to try that” or “I’ve got some friends I want to do this piece with.” I hope that one of the reasons my stuff is sticking around is because it’s just really challenging and interesting and a fun experience for the performers.

As somebody who doesn’t sing, it’s doesn’t look like it’s easy at all.

It’s not easy. As someone who didn’t get a vocal degree and didn’t really start studying voice in any serious way until basically after I wrote for voice, I know it’s possible to do without achieving a higher level of vocality. The singers who tend to do my work tend to have more thorough training than I do. Maybe it’s an opportunity for them to do some of these others thing you don’t encounter in vocal pedagogy.

Composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger said “A great work is made out of a combination of obedience and liberty.” Do you agree with her or is there another way to describe what a great work or a great composition is today?

Well, how do you interpret what she means by that?

That that are certain rules you start following as a composer, but there’s this liberty to go off and do you want to do as well. That it’s this combination of the structure you’re taught and then what you choose to do with it.

Now there’s less of a sense of you’re taught about a certain structure because we’re even much further from any kind of common practice than she was. For me I’m trying to figure out what’s effective and it helps to have some rules. And you can do anything you want. I don’t know that I would say anything in particular is the characteristic of a good work.

I like a really good quote by Iris Murdoch, the novelist. What is it? It’s like the moment from after something is a space where the work hasn’t totally committed itself. Like it’s too late to go back, but it’s too early to say what it is, is like a really important moment. And that genius is when that moment is spread over the whole working process. I think it’s sort of this balance of trying to hone in on it, but also being open to changing your mind and breaking all of your rules at any given moment.

For tickets for Saturday’s performance, please go here. For tickets for Sunday’s performance, please go here.

Photo: Kate Soper (Photo by Liz Linder/Courtesy KateSoper.com)

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What do you make of that item when you are Davies? “It’s ridiculous. The only reason I found that very nice was because Andreas Scholl was the person I first listened to and kind of idolized when I was 18. And I thought if I can have the kind of career he has, which seems to be a career where he can choose to do concerts; he can do a bit of opera; he’s got a beautiful sound. That’s fine for me because that seems to be a good role model.”

Davies clearly learned plenty from his idol (with whom he ultimately ended up performing). He’s doing exactly what he admired about Scholl’s career. On Wednesday he has the official opening night of Santa Fe Opera’s first-ever production of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which he will sing the role of Oberon.

For those who watched the Metropolitan Opera’s streaming productions during the pandemic you saw Davies perform in Nico Muhly‘s Marnie with Isabel Leonard; the Thomas Adés opera The Exterminating Angel and Handel’s Agrippina. The latter opera was conducted by Harry Bicket who leads the orchestra for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Britten’s opera, though not performed nearly as often as Billy Budd or Peter Grimes, is credited with rolling back centuries worth of history where the countertenor was confined to churches. It’s a significant moment in history that is not lost on Davies.

“I think without this role it’s very unlikely we’d be seeing countertenors in operas at the moment because it legitimized the countertenor as a serious stage voice. For someone as important as Benjamin Britten to put their faith and trust in a singer, and in particular Alfred Deller who was part of the whole regeneration and rebirth of 18th century music at the time, it’s hugely significant.”

Not that the press reaction to Deller’s performance was universally accepted as Davies learned.

“When I sang this role at the Aldeburgh Festival [home of the Britten-Pears Foundation] we got taken around to Britten’s house and the archives. There is a letter that Deller wrote to Briten after the dress rehearsal. In those days, because it was a new piece, the Times newspaper came and reviewed the dress rehearsal to get people interested in opening night. It was particularly unfavorable towards Deller and they couldn’t get their heads around it. Deller felt embarrassed and apologized and said ‘delete me when you see fit.’ Meaning before the opening. Britten could have said ‘you got me out of a tight spot’ and hired a woman to sing it. [He didn’t.] To me that letter is hugely significant because on it hinges the careers of most countertenors today.”

For such a groundbreaking role, Davies said that Oberon poses unique challenges for countertenors.

“To sing Oberon you have to really be able to sing it all in your falsetto properly to get that sound that Britten wanted – proper alto countertenor singing; none of this chest voice and trying to fake the bottom. These days it’s considered quite hard, even though it’s a relatively pain free role to sing. There’s not a coloratura aria, but a lot of countertenors shy away from it because it is just too low. They are going into the vocal studio with the mezzo sopranos and working on their high range because many careers can be flashy and if you can sing high that’s exciting. For me it’s so important to be able to sing a healthy voice with a low range near the bottom of your range. That is always a good indicator of your singing.”

In his mid-twenties Davies was already considering how long his career might be and whether his would be a voice that lasted a long time. He told Opera Today in 2006 that he’d “hope that in twenty years, I’d still have a happy voice.”

“When you are 27 you don’t realize how easy it is to do stuff and how quickly you can recover from tiredness, alcohol, whatever. At the time it seems difficult. Now I think it’s not so much the voice is less happy, but you’re just more self-aware of everything. I think I’m actually happier now when it goes well because there have been times in the last ten years, as all singers will tell you, where you have moments of doubt about the health of your voice. I think at the moment, depending on what’s in the diary, I’m pretty happy about my singing.”

He’s certainly happy about this production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream which reunites him with director Netia Jones.

“I did a production of this opera with Netia and it was a completely different production. It’s interesting to see a director take on a piece for a second time and she’s really nailed it. I’ve been in quite a few productions. They are either quite plain in the sense that they just do the play or they are kind of extreme. I did one at English National Opera with Christopher Alden which was set in a school and it was the power of teachers over the school and the school burned down. It was all very dark and I loved it. But this kind of sits somewhere in between. As it was done in Shakespeare’s time the same actor plays two different roles. Theseus and Oberon are kind of the same person. I’m king of the fairies, but I’m also the shadow, the human person. I hope it’s going to go down well because I think it’s pretty good.”

As is getting back on stage with an orchestra and an audience.

“We’ve had a lot of time to reflect on exactly why it is we do this job. And what became really apparent in this last year is when you do stuff without an audience there it feels completely wrong. You shouldn’t be standing there being paid to sing to nobody. Even if it’s on the internet. That’s not a real thing. It isn’t music unless it’s heard by somebody. As a performer you completely rely on the people listening to dictate where it’s going to go next – especially in opera when you’re repeating yourself over weeks.

“What differentiates classical music from pop music is people go to pop concerts because they want to hear the live version of a band’s song. There’s something really special about classical music where you want to hear the sort of definitive version that’s a one-off in that moment. Not I want to hear this opera live because I’ve listened to a CD. The moment you hear this music it’s gone. Nobody else will ever hear it again in this version. That’s what’s really special.”

For tickets to A Midsummer Night’s Dream please go here. There are performances on August 4th, 13th, 19th and 25th.

All photos: Iestyn Davies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (photo by Curtis Brown/Courtesy Santa Fe Opera)

The post Iestyn Davies Learns from the Past to Assure His Future appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

“Lots of things draw me back,” he said last week during our conversation. “There is something very interesting, I think, about how we work and where we work. If you work at the Metropolitan Opera, which I’m very lucky enough to do every year, I walk down to Lincoln Center and I go in a back door. Then I go down three floors into the subterranean basement where there is no natural light, where the air is of dubious quality and you rehearse in these boxy rooms all day. Just the difference between that and driving up to the opera in the morning under a crystal blue sky and rehearsing outdoors. We have hummingbirds flying behind us, we occasionally have to sweep snakes off the campus when we come in, the flowers. It sounds like nothing, but, particularly this year after having all the traumas of lockdown, if you can get people before they even arrive for work to have their hearts filled with a positive spirit and a happiness, half your work is done.”

And he has a lot of work this year. He’s conducting productions of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The former is one of the most regularly performed works and the latter a much less well-known opera.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

Is there such a thing as a perfect opera and do you think The Marriage of Figaro is that opera?

I think it is pretty close. It think it is the perfect marriage, pardon the pun, of music, libretto and voice and production and orchestra in the performance at least. It is very hard to find that sweet spot where everything is so completely unified. You’re not aware of the libretto being one thing and the music being something else. It’s just a complete fusion and I think that’s what Mozart and [librettist] Da Ponte achieved with Figaro.

As popular as it is, you’ve conducted it countless times. Are new discoveries still there to be found for you in this opera?

I think that as a conductor one thing you should do is also see what your orchestras and cast bring to the table. In that sense every time I do it is different. Working with the director also has to be added to the mix. So one has to be a bit of a chameleon, but then one also has to be very respectful of Mozart and of the music. It’s sort of a balancing act, but because of that I think every time I conduct the piece it’s slightly different and you want to find different ideas and different colors.

In 1948 a scholar Hans Keller, made the argument that there were many parallels between Mozart and Britten, notably in their “exaggerated importance attached to historical perspectives.” What, if any, similarities do you find?

That’s such a tough question. Because also I think that for Britten a lot of stuff was quite personal as a gay man at a time when it was illegal. It was also historical perspective for him. In all of the operas there’s a sense of this outsider and a person who is not proselytizing or complaining about the situation, but is clearly referencing it. You see that in Peter Grimes, you certainly see that in Billy Budd and to a certain extent there is an element of that in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The whole wedding thing – in the play they kind of all do get married at the end. And in the opera that whole thing is kind of mysteriously swept under the carpet perhaps because Britten and Peter Pears couldn’t get married. I don’t know. I don’t want to read too much into that.

For Mozart it was a similar thing. He was writing in the 1780s and there was the US revolution, the whole French situation, the situation in Vienna. I think that had to be something that influenced him every day of his life.

What surprises you most about the way Britten set Shakespeare’s play with his music?

It doesn’t surprise me that it’s brilliantly set. Most composers would really shy away from setting very very high end poetry because you’re on a losing wicket. How can you ever dare to aspire musically to the kind of quality of the text. Even Verdi when he was writing his Shakespeare operas he didn’t dare actually take on Shakespeare’s text. Britten is one of the few people in history that actually set Shakespeare’s text and all but one sentence is the original Shakespeare.

Britten told Joan Peyser of New York Times in a 1969 interview that “it is better to be a bad composer writing for society than to be a good composer writing against it. At least your work can be of some use.” Wasn’t Britten actually being both a good composer and writing for society at the same time?

I don’t think it is necessarily an either or. I think it’s kind of a both and. But I think Britten did feel very strongly obviously about so many things. He was a conscientious objector during the war. The War Requiem is very clearly expressing a moral outrage about the senselessness of war. Not a political thing, but a human response to that. I think certainly the theme through his pieces is just about how we treat people in society who don’t necessarily fit in. He was obviously quite bitter about it, but also realized as an artist he was in a unique position to actually talk about it in a way that wasn’t offensive. He was provocative and allowed people to be challenged. Not in a threatening way, but in a way which hopefully caused conversation and then many years later actually caused something to be done about that.

For tickets to The Marriage of Figaro please go here. There are performances on August 3rd, 10th, 14th, 18th, 21st, 24th and 27th.

For tickets to A Midsummer Night’s Dream please go here. There are performances on August 4th, 13th, 19th and 25th.

This is the second of our week-long series of interviews with artists participating in this year’s Santa Fe Opera season. Check back on Wednesday for our interview with counter tenor Iestyn Davies who sings the role of Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Main Photo: Conductor Harry Bicket (Courtesy Santa Fe Opera)

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There are three shows that make up this year’s season. Two classic plays are paired with the world premiere of a new work.

William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar started on Saturday and will run through October 30th. Ellen Geer and Willow Geer co-direct this production which is seen from the point-of-view of the Soothsayer (Gerald C. Rivers).

The company includes Willow Geer (Portia); Christopher W. Jones (Brutus); Mark Lewis (Julius Caesar); Melora Marshall (Cassius) and Michael McFall as Marc Anthony.

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream opened on Sunday and will run through November 7th. Amongst the unique features of this production is that Ellen Geer has written original music that has been paired with some of Shakespeare’s text to be sung during the production. There is additional music by Marshall McDaniel.

Melora Marshall, who plays Titania, directs a company that includes Ethan Haslam (Demetrius); Julia Lisa (Hermia); Joey Major (Lysander); Sara Mountjoy-Pepka (Helena); Terrence Wayne Jr. (Puck) and Lisa Wolpe (Oberon).

Each of these two productions will be new productions that condense each play into 80 minute performance times with no intermission.

Having its world premiere will be The Last, Best Small Town written by John Guerra who used Thornton Wilder’s Our Town as the inspiration for his play. Performances begin July 31st and continue through November 7th.

The Last, Best Small Town is set in Fillmore and depicts the lives of two neighboring families. It’s a study of contrasts: one family is living the American dream while the other is struggling to make that dream a reality.

Christopher Wallinger and Christine Breihan portray Hank and Willow Miller. They have one daughter, Maya (Jordan Tyler Kessler). Richard Azurdia and Jeanette Godoy play Benny and Della Gonzalez. Their son, Elliot (Kelvin Morales), is succeeding in ways that the Gonzalez’s have always dreamed of. But Benny’s alcoholic father (Miguel Pérez) is complicating things for the family.

What will Maya and Elliot be able to do in a world where it is possible theirs will be the first generation to do less-well than their parents?

Ellen Geer directs.

Tickets for Julius Caesar can be purchased here. Tickets for A Midsummer Night’s Dream can be purchased here. Tickets for The Last, Best Small Town can be purchased here.

Photo: Gerald C. Rivers, Mark Lewis, Frac Ross and Christopher W. Jones in Julius Caesar (Photo by Ian Flanders/Courtesy Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum)

The post Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum Summer 2021 Season appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Indirectly celebrating this natal day are multiple options that fall under the category of a line from Hamlet, “The play’s the thing.” Beyond the Shakespeare options are five other plays.

If you want funky jazz, contemporary classical music, operas from Europe or modern dance, I’ve got that for you as well. They’re all so good, I can’t make one of them the top pick.

In As You Like It, these famous words are said, “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.” So in this spirit of this weekend’s Academy Awards, the nominees for great players in Best Bets: April 23rd – April 26th are:

THEATER: Neat – Manhattan Theatre Club – Now – April 25th

Charlayne Woodard’s one-person show Neat opened at New York City Center in a Manhattan Theatre Club production in 1997.

Lawrence Van Gelder, writing for the New York Times, said of Woodard’s play, “Ms. Woodard sings, she dances, but most of all she tells good stories, bringing them to life in ways that are poignant.”

Woodard revisits the work in this prevention as part of MTC’s Curtain Call series. The great thing is you can see this wonderful play and performance for free. All you have to do is register. But act quickly, the run ends on Sunday, April 25th.

DANCE: Digital Program 5 – San Francisco Ballet – Now – May 12th

Three archival performances make up this program from San Francisco Ballet. They include 7 for Eight from 2016 and Anima Animus and Snowblind from 2018.

Helgi Tomasson is the creator of 7 for Eight which is set to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. David Dawson is the choreographer of Anima Animus which is set to music by Ezio Bosso. Cathy Marston is the choreographer of Snowblind which uses music by Amy Beach, Philip Feeney, Arthur Foote, and Arvo Pärt.

Tickets are $29 and allow for 72 hours of access to the program.

PLAY READING: Two Sisters and a Piano – New Normal Rep – Now – May 23rd ART IN AN EMAIL

Playwright Nilo Cruz is best-known for his Pulitzer Prize winning play Anna in the Tropics from 2002. Three years prior to that success he premiered Two Sisters and a Piano.

The play tells the story of two sisters under house arrest in Cuba in 1991. One sister is an author and the lieutenant keeping track of their case has fallen in love with her. The other is a pianist who finds her piano tuner falling head over heels for his client.

Cruz has directed a new reading of Two Sisters and a Piano with Jimmy Smits (Anna in the Tropics); Florencia Lozano (Rinse, Repeat), Gary Perez and Daphne Rubin-Vega (both of whom appeared in Two Sisters and a Piano at The Public Theater.)

In A.D. Amorosi‘s review of this reading for Variety, he says, “Cruz’s playful poetic language, even at its most harshly politicized, and his easy direction allow his actors a delicious freedom. Even when its characters are not free, enclosed in one cramped apartment with nothing but mangoes, rice and the occasional rum shot (and despite the virtual limitations of a laptop’s viewing screen), Two Sisters and a Piano is as open as a Havana landscape, with all of its flavors, scents and sensory overloads at full tilt.”

Tickets are $25 with $10 tickets available for students.

PLAY: The Royale – Private Reels: From the LCT Archives on Broadway on Demand – Now – May 16th

Real life boxer Jack Jackson (the first African-American world heavyweight champion) serves as the inspiration for the story of Jay “The Sport” Jackson in Marco Ramirez’s 2016 play The Royale. (He was also the inspiration for The Great White Hope).

The story is told in six rounds.

Rachel Chavkin, Tony Award-winner for Hadestown, directed this production. Starring are McKinley Belcher III (the 2020 revival of A Soldier’s Play), Khris Davis (Sweat), Montego Glover (Tony nominee for Memphis), John Lavelle (Catch-22) and Clarke Peters (Five Guys Named Moe).

As Ben Brantley said in his rave New York Times review, “…the great subject of The Royale, which has been given such original and graceful theatrical form, is the selfish single-mindedness required of champions, and the repercussions such a focus has when it’s exercised by a black man in a white man’s world.” 

There is no charge to watch The Royale, but you will have to register with Broadway on Demand.

THEATER: An Iliad – A Noise Within – Now – May 16th

Easily one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences I’ve had seeing a play was when I attended Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson’s An Iliad at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica. It’s a powerful work that is inspired by Homer’s Iliad.

This play, specifically called An Iliad because it isn’t the Iliad, calls for just one actor and a cellist and that actor has to be completely on top of his/her game.

A Noise Within is offering streaming performances of An Iliad with co-founder Geoff Elliott and actress Deborah Strang alternating performances. Joining them as both composer and cellist is Karen Hall. Julia Rodriguez-Elliott directs.

The link in the title will take you to the website so you can see which actor is performing in each performance. Tickets, which are $25 for an individual and $40 for a family, must be reserved a minimum of two hours before each performance.

To see what Denis O’Hare had to say about the show, check out my 2014 interview with him here.

OPERA: Jules Massenet’s Manon – Wiener Staatsoper – April 22nd – 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM

Conducted by Frédéric Chaslin; starring Nina Machaidze, Juan Diego Flórez and Adrian Eröd. This Andrei Serban production is from 2019.

Massenet’s opera was composed in 1883 and had its world premiere in January of 1884 in Paris. The libretto is by  Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille.

They based the opera on the 1731 Abbé Prévost novel, L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut.

A young woman from a small town has an intense desire to lavish herself with all the riches and pleasures life has to offer her. But life doesn’t always work out the way we want. Sounds like a story that could be written today.

This is the first of Vienna State Opera’s productions I’ve included in our listings. Very much like the Metropolitan Opera, they offer a different production each day. There is no charge to watch the productions, but you do need to register on their website. Each production will be available for 24 hours.

MUSICAL: A Letter to Harvey Milk – Now – April 25th

The creators of this musical, Jerry James, Laura I. Kramer, Ellen M. Schwartz and Cheryl Stern were inspired by a short story of the same name by Lesléa Newman. A Letter to Harvey Milk opened off-Broadway in 2018 at the Acorn Theatre in New York.

The setting is San Francisco in the mid 1980s. Harry, a kosher butcher who has retired and is also a widower, is given an assignment to write a letter to someone who is dead. He chooses California politician Harvey Milk – the first openly gay politician elected in California who was later assassinated by Dan White in 1978. But why?

Members of the original cast has reunited for this streaming production. They include Adam Heller, Julia Knitel, Cheryl Stern who are joined by Michael Bartoli, Jeremy Greenbaum, Aury Krebs and Ravi Roth. Evan Pappas directs.

Tickets range from $10 – $50 with proceeds going to The Actors Fund and HIAS. All tickets purchased will allow viewing of the musical through Sunday, April 25th at 11:59 PM EDT/8:59 PDT.

SHAKESPEARE: Shakespeare Sonnet Slam – Gingold Theatrical Group – April 23rd – 6:00 PM EDT/3:00 PM PDT

Happy Birthday William Shakespeare. You don’t look a day over 450. The Gingold Theatrical Group is celebrating by holding a virtual open mic where Shakespeare’s sonnets or other material based on or inspired by the Sonnets will be performed. Everyone is invited to participate and you have three minutes to give it your all.

Joining in this celebration are Stephen Brown-Fried, Robert Cuccioli, Tyne Daly, George Dvorsky, Melissa Errico, Alison Fraser, Tom Hewitt, Daniel Jenkins, John-Andrew Morrison, Patrick Page, Maryann Plunkett, Tonya Pinkins, Laila Robins, Jay O. Sanders, Renee Taylor, Jon Patrick Walker and more.

You’ll have to come up with your own take on the Sonnets, but this is a free party! You can find the Shakespeare Sonnet Slam on Gingold Theatrical Group’s Facebook page.

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL MUSIC: Sonic Shift – Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra – Premieres April 23rd at 9:30 PM EDT/6:30 PM PDT

Composer Jessie Montgomery has curated this new episode of LA Chamber Orchestra’s Close Quarters series. On the program are works by composers Marcos Balter, Anna Meredith and Alyssa Weinberg. Each work explores the progression from acoustic music to electronic and electro-acoustic music with an emphasis on the wind section.

Will Kim provides the visuals that accompany the performance which is lead by Christopher Rountree of Wild Up! Nadia Sirota is the music producer.

This is the first of two Close Quarters episodes curated by Montgomery. I recently interviewed her about working with LACO. You can read that interview here.

There’s no charge to watch this performance. Donations are encouraged.

CHAMBER MUSIC: Neave Trio – Asheville Chamber Music Series – April 23rd – April 25th – Art in an EMAIL

Pianist Eri Nakamura, cellist Mikhail Veselov and violinist Anna Williams are the members in Neave Trio. Following on the heels of their 2019 album Her Voice, which featured female composers, their concert this weekend as part of the Asheville Chamber Music Series will also showcase female composers.

On the program is the Trio No. 1, Op. 33 by Louise Farrench; Rebecca Clarke’s Piano Trio and Cécile Chaminade’s Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 11.

Perhaps none of these composers is familiar to you. They aren’t to me. But Neave Trio’s passion for this lesser-known music makes this concert utterly compelling.

There are three performances: Friday, April 23rd at 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT; Saturday at 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT and Sunday at 3:00 PM EDT/12:00 PM PDT.

You can watch this concert for free, but donations are encouraged.

JAZZ: Sun Ra Arkestra – SFJAZZ – April 23rd – 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

The name Herman Poole Blount probably doesn’t mean anything to you. But if told that was the birth name of Le Sony’r Ra who would later become known as Sun Ra, you might have a better idea who he was.

Experimental, free and avant-garde jazz was his specialty. It was always performed best by the Sun Ra Arkestra.

After Sun Ra’s death in 1993, alto saxophonist Marshall Allen starting leading the ensemble. As he does in this concert at SFJAZZ from 2017.

To get a sense of what might be in store for you in this Fridays at Five concert, here are some of the songs being performed: Space Loneliness, Saturn, Angels and Demons at Play and Space is the Place. It’s going to be trippy.

And you can take that trip for $5 (which offers one full month of digital membership or $60 (which includes a one year digital membership.)

There is an encore showing on April 24th at 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT.

PLAY: Romeo and Juliet – Great Performances on PBS – April 23rd – Check Local Listings

You don’t expect just some stand-up sonnets for Shakespeare’s birthday, do you? Of course not. Let’s throw in some tragedy. As in the tragic love story of them all – Romeo and Juliet.

The National Theatre created this film which maneuvers its way from rehearsal into and around the Lyttleton Theatre. The cast are stuck in a theater that has shut down and act out the story of the Capulets and the Montagues.

Starring as the title characters are Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley. The cast also includes Fisayo Akinade, Ella Dacres, Deborah Findlay, Tamsin Greig, Ellis Howard, Lloyd Hutchinson, David Judge, Adrian Lester, Lucian Msamati, Alex Mugnaioni, Shubham Saraf and Colin Tierney. Simon Godwin is the director.

As with any show on PBS, I’d advise checking your local listings for exact airdate and time in your part of the country.

OPERA: Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte – Wiener Staatsoper – April 24th – 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT

Conducted by Adam Fischer; starring Benjamin Bruns, Olga Bezsmertna, Íride Martínez, Markus Werba and Annika Gerhards. This Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier production is from 2015.

Mozart’s opera premiered in September 1791 in Vienna a mere two months before the composer died. It features a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder.

Prince Tamino is asked by the Queen of the Night to free her daughter Pamina from Sarastro. Tamino, however, is impressed with Sarastro and the way his community lives in the world and wants to be a part of it. Both alone and together Tamino and Pamina endure multiple tests. If they succeed, what will happen to them? To the Queen of the Night?

MONOLOGUES: Whispers International – April 24th – 2:00 PM EDT/11:00 AM PDT

As you know, there was a massive blast in Lebanon on August 4th of last year. Almost 200 people were killed and over 6,000 people were injured.

Whispers International was created to raise money for the victims and to help in the rebuilding of the area around the blast site.

British playwrights Geraldine Breenna, Mike Elliston, Kim Hardy, Angela Harvey, John Jesper and Kate Webster have made their writing available to a company of Lebanese actors to perform.

Those actors are Nadine Labaki, Georges Khabbaz, Nada Abou Farhat, Talal El Jurdi, Bernadette Houdeib, Rita Hayek, Badih Abou Chacra, Dory Al-Samarany, Bshara Atallah, Sany Abdul Baki, Josyane Boulos, Agatha Ezzedine and Hagop Der Ghougassian 

Tickets are £13.52 which at press time equals approximately $18.75.

OPERA: Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel – Weiner Staatsoper – April 25th – 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT

Conducted by Christian Thielemann; starring Ileana Tosca, Daniela Sindram, Adrian Eröd, Janina Baechle, Michaela Schuster, Annika Gerhards

The Grimm brother’s fairly tale about a brother and sister who are lured to a house with sweets and candies only to find a witch who wants to eat the duo is the basis for this opera that had its debut in 1893 in Weimar. Richard Strauss conducted the premiere. A second production the next year in Hamburg was conducted by Gustav Mahler. Adelheid Wette, Humpderdink’s sister, wrote the libretto.

Hansel and Gretel has the distinction of finding much of its popularity not just through opera houses, but on the radio. It was the first opera broadcast on the radio in Europe when a 1923 Covent Garden production was heard over the airwaves. Eight years later in 1931, it became the first ever opera broadcast in its entirety by the Metropolitan Opera.

The opera is commonly seen and heard during the Christmas season. An odd choice, but librettist Adelheid Wette did soften some of the harsher elements found in the original Grimm tales for her brother’s opera.

CABARET: Mandy Gonzalez – Seth Concert Series – April 25th – 3:00 PM EDT/12:00 PM PDT

With the upcoming film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, it’s a great time to check in on one of the musical’s original cast members: Mandy Gonzalez, who originated the role of Nina.

Gonazalez is an insanely talented singer and actress.

I saw her in In the Heights. She’s also appeared in Wicked, Lennon, Dance of the Vampires and as Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton.

I’ve also seen her perform her cabaret act and it is impossible to express the amount of pure joy that comes out of her when she’s singing. (And she does a killer version of Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen.)

She is Seth Rudetsky’s guest in his concert series this weekend.

Tickets are $25 and you can watch the live performance at 3:00 PM EDT or the replay of the concert at 8:00 PM EDT. Whichever you choose, you will certainly have a good time.

IN PERSON: DANCE: Uniting in Movement – American Ballet Theatre – Segerstrom Center for the Arts – April 25th – 1:30 PM PDT

You could be ambivalent about the Academy Awards and go see a rare live performance of ballet in Costa Mesa. ABT has been creating a program of three different works that were filmed this week. On Sunday, they are opening up Segerstrom Center for the Arts for a limited number of people to see the performance live.

The works are Let Me Sing Forever More by choreographer Jessica Lang and set to the recordings of Tony Bennett (clearly the title comes from Fly Me to the Moon); La Follia Variations by Lauren Lovette set to music of the same name by composer Francesco Geminiani and Indestructible Light by Darrell Grand Moultrie which is set to music by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Neal Hefti and Billy Strayhorn.

Hefti, by the way, composed the theme for the television series Batman.

At press time the only available tickets were $80 each. There are Covid-protocols in place for this performance.

For those willing to wait, Uniting in Movement will be available for streaming through Segerstrom Center for the Arts from May 12th – May 26th for $25.

CHAMBER MUSIC: Argus Quartet: noise/Silence – Five Boroughs Music Festival and The Noguchi Museum – April 25th – 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT (Art in an email)

Cellist Audrey Chen, violinists Clara Kim and Gioncarlo Latta and violist Maren Rothfritz make up the Argus Quartet. Though they perform music from across all eras of classical music, they seem to excel in contemporary works.

This concert was filmed at one of my favorite museums in New York, The Noguchi Museum. It is being presented by the Five Boroughs Music Festival. The Argus Quartet will perform works by composers John Cage (String Quartet in Four Parts); Dorothy Rudd More (Modes for String Quartet), Rolf Wallin (several selections from Curiosity Cabinet) and Paul Wiancko (Vox Petra).

The concert will be available for free streaming on the Five Boroughs Music Festival YouTube channel through December 31st.

OPERA: Bizet’s Carmen – Weiner Staatsoper – April 26th – 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT

Conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada; starring Anita Rachvelishvili, Piotr Beczala, Erwin Schrott and Vera-Lotte Boecker. This Calixto Bieito production is from 2021.

Georges Bizet collaborated with librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy on this immensely popular opera. It was based on Propser Mérimée’s novella of the same name. 

When Carmen was first performed in Paris in 1875 it was considered both shocking and scandalous. 

Set in Seville, Spain, Carmen is a gypsy who has caught everyone’s eye. A soldier, Don José, plays coy and gives her no attention. Her flirtation causes troubles for both when Don José’s girlfriend, Micaëla arrives. Tensions escalate between the two women and after a knight fight, José must arrest Carmen. When she seduces him it sets off a series of events that will not end well for the gypsy woman.

PLAY: Measure for Measure – Goodman Theatre – April 26th – May 9th

Here’s another opportunity to celebrate the bard. But this isn’t going to be your standard production of a Shakespearean play.

Director Robert Falls has transported this play from Vienna to New YOrk City circa the late 1970s (or as I like to describe it, before Disney moved into Broadway).

The story is still the same. Claudio is sentenced to death under an arcane law invoked by Angelo who has taken over for the Duke who has left rather than have to deal with morality issues in (originally Vienna). Claudio’s crime? Getting his girlfriend, Juliet, pregnant.

The Duke returns in disguise and becomes aware of the decisions Angelo has been making. Deception, bargains, bartering, love and death are all on the table in this fairly convoluted play.

Justin Hayford, in his review for the Chicago Reader, had mixed feelings about the production:

“It’s rare for one of Shakespeare’s plays to be ripped from its original setting, transplanted across centuries and continents—and still end up feeling vital, urgent, and utterly contemporary. At least for a while. If Falls and his stellar cast could maintain that vitality past intermission, they’d have a masterpiece on their hands.”

Nonetheless, I think the concept sounds interesting and worth checking out. What else are you going to do on a Monday night? (Of course, I have another option for you…)

Tickets are free, but require registration.

AUDIO PLAY: Brother, Brother – New York Theatre Workshop – Live Premiere April 26th – 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT Art in an email

New York Theater Workshop is offering up a twist on audio plays. This will feature visuals, but not of the performers. Rather, artists Ibrahim Rayintakath​ and Liang-Hsin Huang have created imagery that will accompany Aleshea Harris’ play.

Brother, Brother tells the story of two brothers sharing a bicycle while making their way through Appalachia. They are actors headed to Tennessee. They start getting followed by a mysterious man in a maroon suit. At this moment the dreams they have for their future are confronted by the acts from their past.

Starring in this audio play are Amari Cheathom (terrific in August Wilson’s Jitney), André De Shields (Tony Award-winner for Hadestown), Gbenga Akinnagbe (To Kill a Mockingbird) and Owen Tabaka (Ratatouille: The Tik Tok Musical). Shayok Misha Chowdhury directs.

Tickets are $10. Brother, Brother will remain available for streaming through July 25th.

Those are my Best Bets: April 23rd – April 26th. But a few reminders (and a preview):

MasterVoices has debuted the 3rd part of Myths and Hymns, a series of short films set to Adam Guettel’s song cycle. For details about the series, go here. For my interview with MasterVoices Artistic Director Ted Sperling, go here.

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Gala 2021 is available for streaming through Sunday. For details about the program and how to get tickets, go here.

Carnegie Hall’s Voices of Hope series continues with multiple new shows available for free viewing. For details go here.

The Metropolitan Opera streams Philip Glass’ Satyagraha on Friday (highly recommended); Beethoven’s Fidelio on Saturday and Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites on Sunday (also highly recommended). For details and previews go here.

Here’s a preview of next week at the Met where the theme is City of Light (all the operas take place in Paris). Monday’s opera is, what else, La Bohème by Puccini.

That truly is the full and complete list of Best Bets: April 23rd – April 26th. Enjoy your weekend!

Photo: William Shakespeare (By BatyrAshirbayev98/Courtesy Wikipedia Commons)

The post Best Bets: April 23rd – April 26th appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Amongst the great performers are Hildegard Behrens, Renée Fleming, Mirella Freni, Susan Graham, Marilyn Horne, Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price, Patricia Racette, Golda Schultz and Beverly Sills. One of this week’s productions was directed by two-time Tony Award winner Julie Taymor.

All productions become available at 7:30 PM EST/4:30 PM PST and remain available for 23 hours. Schedules and timings may be subject to change.

The Met is heavily promoting their Met Stars Live in Concert series and the planned resumption of performances in the 2021-2022 season, so you’ll have to go past those announcements and promos to find the streaming productions on the Metropolitan Opera website. 

If you read this column early enough on March 1st, you might still have time to catch the 2014-2015 production of Il Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi that concludes Dmitri Hvorostovsky Week at the Met.

Here is the full line-up of Week 51 at the Met:

Monday, March 1 – Donizetti’s Don Pasquale

Conducted by Nicola Rescigno; starring Beverly Sills, Alfredo Kraus, Håkan Hagegård and Gabriel Bacquier. This John Dexter production is from the 1978-1979 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on July 4th.

Gaetano Donizetti’s opera had its world premiere in Paris in 1843. The composer collaborated with Giovanni Ruffini on the libretto. It was inspired by the libretto Angelo Anelli had written for Ser Mercantonio, an opera by Stefano Pavesi from 1810.

Ernesto is Don Pasquale’s nephew. He wants to marry Norina, but Don Pasquale wants to choose his nephew’s bride. Others conspire against Pasquale and trick him so that ultimately Ernesto and Norina can marry.

With her role as Norina in this production of Don Pasquale, Beverly Sills gave her final performance at the Metropolitan Opera. This was a new production of the opera and was apparently created with Sills in mind.

Harold C. Schonberg, writing for the New York Times said of Sills’ performance, “The role of Norina did not tax Miss Sills’ vocal resources as much as some recent ones she has attempted. It would be idle to claim that she could handle everything in the part, but she paced herself well, avoided elaborate cadenzas or interpolations, and tried to project a clear line. Her work Thursday night was a triumph of experience and professionalism.”

Tuesday, March 2 – Verdi’s Falstaff

Conducted by James Levine; starring Mirella Freni, Barbara Bonney, Marilyn Horne, Susan Graham, Paul Plishka, Frank Lopardo and Bruno Pola. This revival of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1964 production is from the 1992-1993 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on July 24th, October 23rd and February 16th.

Two of Shakespeare’s play served as the inspiration for Verdi’s Falstaff: The Merry Wives of Windsor and sections from Henry IV Parts 1 and 2. Arrigo Boito adapted the plays to create the libretto. Falstaff had its world premiere in 1893 at La Scala in Milan. This was Verdi’s final opera and only his second comedic opera.

Simply put, Sir John Falstaff tries everything he can to woo two married woman so he can assume their husband’s vast fortunes. He’s rather bumbling in his efforts and the machinations in place to thwart his endeavors leave him with nothing short of a major comeuppance.

Edward Rothstein, writing for the New York Times, seemed to thoroughly enjoy the production. And he was very pleased with Plishka’s performance as the title character:

“Mr. Plishka gave the role an almost touchingly human quality. In the astonishing first scene aria, in which Falstaff declares his ambitions, mocks the idea of honor and praises his belly, there were few mannerisms or exaggerations. Mr. Plishka played it straight; he was a Falstaff almost enticingly full of himself. His voice was not often handsome (why should it have been?) but it was large, weighty and in character.”

Wednesday, March 3 – Wagner’s Die Walküre

Conducted by James Levine; starring Hildegard Behrens, Jessye Norman, Christa Ludwig, Gary Lakes, James Morris and Kurt Moll. This revival of the 1986 Otto Schenk production is from the 1988-1989 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available June 30th, October 8th and February 14th.

This is the second opera in Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (also known as The Ring Cycle.) It had its premiere as a stand-alone opera in 1870 in Munich. The first performance of the entire cycle was at Bayreuth six years later. Wagner wrote the libretto as well as the music.

The son of the god Wotan is a fugitive named Siegmund. When he finds himself taking refuge at Sieglinde’s house, the two fall passionately in love. But Sieglinde is married and in order for her and Siegmund to be together Siegmund must defeat her husband in a battle to the death.

This production marked the first time Norman sang the role of Sieglinde at the Metropolitan Opera. She earned rave reviews. What disappointed Donal Henahan is his New York Times review were the very things that make this film possible.

“The most objectionable feature of the evening, however, was also a technological one. Television cameras worked away throughout the performance from positions at either side of the stage and at the foot of both aisles, distracting what surely must have been hundreds of people seated in line with brightly lighted monitor screens. The machines, one learned, were rehearsing for a later Walkure telecast and making ‘scratch’ tapes that might be needed as backups. This, mind you, from a company that will not employ supertitles because they detract the audience’s attention from the stage.”

With this production you’ll get to see the end result of that distraction.

Thursday, March 4 – Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte

Conducted by James Levine; starring Golda Schultz, Kathryn Lewek, Charles Castronovo, Markus Werba, Christian Van Horn and René Pape. This revival of the 2004 Julie Taymor production is from the 2017-2018 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on June 28th and October 1st.

Mozart’s opera premiered in September 1791 in Vienna a mere two months before the composer died. It features a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder.

Prince Tamino is asked by the Queen of the Night to free her daughter Pamina from Sarastro. Tamino, however, is impressed with Sarastro and the way his community lives in the world and wants to be a part of it. Both alone and together Tamino and Pamina endure multiple tests. If they succeed, what will happen to them? To the Queen of the Night?

Anyone who has seen Taymor’s work for such shows as Juan Darién and The Lion King knows that she regularly employs puppets and wildly inventive staging. 

Alex Ross, writing for The New Yorker about the original 2004 production said, “The Met stage has never been so alive with movement, so charged with color, so brilliant to the eye. The outward effect is of a shimmering cultural kaleidoscope, with all manner of mystical and folk traditions blending together. Behind the surface lies a melancholy sense that history has never permitted such a synthesis—that Mozart’s theme of love and power united is nothing more than a fever dream. But Taymor allows the Enlightenment fantasy to play out to the end.”

Friday, March 5 – Britten’s Peter Grimes

Conducted by Sir Donald Runnicles; starring Patricia Racette, Anthony Dean Griffey and Anthony Michaels-Moore. This John Doyle production is from the 2007-2008 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on May 14th, September 1st, November 13th and December 9th.

Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes had its world premiere in London in 1945. The libretto was written by Montagu Slater who based it on a poem in The Borough by George Crabbe.

In Peter Grimes, the title character is facing intense questioning after his apprentice has died. The townsfolk believe him to be responsible, the coroner rules he was not. Shortly afterward, Grimes recruits another apprentice, John. Ellen, the only person in town who believes Grimes, later finds herself questioning Grimes when she finds that John has intense bruising on his neck. Word spreads quickly about the boy’s injuries and the people in town want an investigation. What follows is tragic on multiple levels.

The title role was written by Benjamin Britten for his partner, Peter Pears. In the mid 60s, Jon Vickers’s performance has been considered definitive for quite some time.

John Doyle, best known for his minimalist productions of Stephen Sondheim musicals, made his Met Opera debut with this production of Peter Grimes. Griffey, having sung this opera a few times before this production, finally found his way into a lead role at the Met.

Anthony Tommasini, writing in the New York Times, found some unique qualities in how Griffey tackled the part: “Mr. Griffey, even though his voice has heft and carrying power, is essentially a lyric tenor. And it is disarming to hear the role sung with such vocal grace, even sweetness in places. Every word of his diction is clear. You sense Grimes’s dreamy side struggling to emerge. The moments of gentleness, though, make Mr. Griffey’s impulsive fits of hostility, his bursts of raw vocal power, seem even more threatening.”

Saturday, March 6 – Dvořák’s Rusalka

Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin; starring Renée Fleming, Emily Magee, Dolora Zajick, Piotr Beczała and John Relyea. This revival of Otto Schenk’s 1993 production is from the 2013-2014 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on April 13th, November 19th and January 17th.

Rusalka was Antonín Dvořák’s ninth opera and was based on fairytales. Poet Jaroslav Kvapil wrote the libretto. Rusalka had its world premiere in Prague in 1901.

In essence, this is the same story told in Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid. A water sprite, Rusalka, tells her father she has fallen in love with a human prince and wants to join him in his world. He asks her to see a witch who gives her a potion to join the prince, but there are conditions: Rusalka will no longer be able to speak and she loses the opportunity to be immortal. More importantly, if the Prince does not stay in love with her, he will die and Rusalka will be damned for all eternity. This is definitely not a Disney version of the story.

Zachary Woolfe, in his New York Times review, asked a question about this opera and relied on Nézet-Séguin to answer it:

“Dvorak’s Rusalka, about a water nymph doomed by her love for a human prince, is a fairy tale. But is it polite and placid, or savage and strange?

“There’s disagreement about the answer at the Metropolitan Opera, where a decidedly mixed revival of the work opened on Thursday evening. The conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, a prime candidate to replace James Levine someday as the Met’s music director, offered a clear vote for savage. He led a fierce orchestral performance, bringing out the symphonic sweep in Dvorak’s score and underlining its most cutting details.”

His comments about Nézet-Séguin proved to be accurate, didn’t they?

Sunday, March 7 – Verdi’s La Forza del Destino

Conducted by James Levine; starring Leontyne Price, Giuseppe Giacomini, Leo Nucci and Bonaldo Giaiotti. This John Dexter production is from the 1983-1984 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on June 18th and 19th, November 6th and February 2nd.

This frequently performed Verdi opera had its world premiere in 1862 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The libretto is by Francesco Maria Piave, based on an 1835 Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino by Ángel de Saavedra.

Leonora is the daughter of the Marquis of Calatrava. She falls in love with Don Alvaro, but her father is dead-set against their getting married. A tragedy befalls all three leaving Leonora to find solace in a monastery.

This was one of Price’s greatest roles throughout her career. Bernard Holland, writing in the New York Times, raved about her performance.

“This was truly Miss Price’s evening. There were some jolting shifts of register, and Miss Price must protect her fragile upper notes with tender care; but her dramatic presence on stage and the overall impact of her singing went far beyond matters of technique. ‘Madre, pietosa Vergine’ had a stunning muted eloquence, and ‘Pace, pace, mio Dio!’ at the end had a sonorous beauty and power of communication that this listener – and I think everyone else in attendance – will think back upon for many years to come.”

That’s all for Week 51 at the Met. Next week’s theme will be Verismo Passions and will include two first-time streaming productions.

Enjoy the operas and enjoy your week!

Photo: Beverly Sills in Don Pasquale (Courtesy Met Opera Archives)

The post Celebrating Women’s History Month: Week 51 at the Met appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

My top pick this week was originally from Dance Theatre of Harlem. They were schedule to show their highly-acclaimed re-invention of the ballet The Rite of Spring with music by Igor Stravinsky on Saturday. We just received word it has been postponed until March 13th.

Luckily there are plenty of other options and my revised Top Pick is The Gathering For Justice’s tribute to the legendary Harry Belafonte.

I also have Tony Award-winner Brian Stokes Mitchell, Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel in San Francisco Opera’s 2013 production of Verdi’s Falstaff, an evening with Tony Award winner Ali Stroker and a release party/concert for Old Friends by Mark Winkler and David Benoit.

But there’s so much more than that. So take a look. Here are my Best Bets: February 26th – February 28th:

MUSICAL: Gatsby – a Musical – Cadogan Hall – February 26th – February 28th

Baz Luhrmann did all but make F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby into a musical. But he’s not the only one who believes this story can, to greater or lesser degree, be musicalized.

Enter composer and lyricist Joe Evans and writer/director Linnie Reedman with their musical version, Gatsby A Musical.

The show played at the Kings Head Theatre in north London in 2012. This weekend, Cadogan Hall is offering a reunion concert presentation.

Daisy is the focus of the musical and she’s played in this concert by Jodie Steele (Six The Musical). Ross William Wild (Million Dollar Quartet) plays Gatsby. Tom Buchannan is played Liam Doyle (Wicked). Blake Patrick Anderson (Be More Chill) plays Nick Carraway with Joe Frost and Emma Williams playing George and Myrtle Wilson. (You don’t need a synopsis, do you? Didn’t we all read this in high school or college?)

Reviews in 2012 were mostly positive, though some said it was more like a play with music rather than a musical. Even if that’s true, if we’re about to embark on our own roaring twenties, wouldn’t it be great to get lost in all the decadence from a century ago?

There are three performances available: Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 PM EST/11:30 AM PST. Tickets, which must be purchased in advance, are £22 which equates to approximately a little over $31.

CHAMBER MUSIC: Jupiter String Quartet – Kranner Center for the Performing Arts – February 26th – 1:00 PM EST/10:00 AM PST

The first weekend of this month I included the Reflection and Renewal series with Jupiter String Quartet in my Best Bets. I’m including them again as the series comes to an end with Friday’s concert. On the program are works by Felix Mendelssohn, George Walker and William Bolcom.

The last two are what makes this concert the most interesting to me personally. Walker was the first African-American composer to receive be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music. His Lilacs was named the recipient in 1996. Jupiter String Quartet will be performing Lyric for Strings, written when the composer was 24 as a tribute to his recently deceased grandmother.

Bolcom’s Three Rags for String Quartets is an arrangement of three popular piano pieces the composer wrote: Poltergeist, Graceful Ghost and Incineratorag. In this concert, Jupiter String Quartet will be playing the last one.

If you’ve missed any of the four performances from Krannert Center you have until March 5th to view them all. Each episode runs 20-30 minutes. There is no charge to do so.

JAZZ: Paula West: Great American Politic – SFJAZZ – February 26th – 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST

Jazz singer Paula West took to the stage at SFJAZZ in 2018 with this show as a musical response to he who was once president. Among the songwriters she relied on to express her views were Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Simon and Garfunkel.

You’re probably thinking, do I really need to end my week with a politically charged show? If you’ve heard Paula West before you already know the answer to that question. If you don’t know her, hopefully this clip will persuade you to take a look.

Tickets are $5 (which gives you access to a full month of Fridays at Five concerts). You can also get an annual membership for $60 (which give you access for 52 weeks).

OPERA: Courtney Bryan’s Blessed – Opera Philadelphia Channel – Debuts February 26th – 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST

Opera Philadelphia continues their fascinating new series of digital commissions with Blessed by composer Courtney Bryan.

Bryan regularly came back to a bible verse from Matthew 5 as protests about policy brutality grew in frequency and intensity around the country.

The verse, a rather popular one, says, “blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Blessed is her musical response to that verse.

Performing are soprano Janinah Burnett and vocalist Damian Norfleet. The film, directed by Tiona Nekkia McClodden, was shot in New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia. Collaborating with McClodden was sound designer Robert Kaplowitz to create what press materials are calling “sonic quilting.”

Tickets range from $10 for a seven day rental to $25 for a digital package.

OPERA: Verdi’s Falstaff – San Francisco Opera – February 27th – February 28th

Conducted by Nicola Luisotti; starring Bryn Terfel, Ainhoa Arteta, Heidi Stober and Meredith Arwady. This Olivier Tambosi production is from the 2013-2014 season.

Two of Shakespeare’s play served as the inspiration for Verdi’s Falstaff: The Merry Wives of Windsor and sections from Henry IV Parts 1 and 2. Arrigo Boito adapted the plays to create the libretto. 

Falstaff had its world premiere in 1893 at La Scala in Milan. This was Verdi’s final opera and only his second comedic opera.

Simply put, Sir John Falstaff tries everything he can to woo two married woman so he can assume their husband’s vast fortunes. He’s rather bumbling in his efforts and the machinations in place to thwart his endeavors leave him with nothing short of a major comeuppance.

I’ll be watching this production just to see Bryn Terfel in this role.

Joshua Kosman, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, said of Terfel’s performance, “His performance as the fat knight has everything that makes Falstaff irresistible – grandiose self-regard, improbable charisma and a vein of deep poignancy, all conveyed through singing of great power and flexibility.

“And as Falstaff says of himself, Terfel was not only a great onstage wit but the cause of wit in others. His very presence seemed to spur his fellow performers to find both the buoyant humor and the rich emotional undercurrent in the piece.”

The production becomes available at 1:00 PM EST/10:00 AM PST and remains available through the end of Sunday, February 28th PST.

JAZZ: Mark Winkler/David Benoit Record Release Party – Feinstein’s at Vitello’s – February 27th – 9:00 PM EST/6:00 PM PST

I’ve written about singer/songwriter Mark Winkler before. In fact, you can see my interview with him from August 2019 here. He has teamed up with pianist, composer and KKJZ radio host David Benoit for a new album called Old Friends which was released on Tuesday.

The new recording finds the duo performing three songs they co-wrote along with well-known tunes such as “The Shadow of Your Smile,” “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” and the title song (originally performed by Simon & Garfunkel). I’ve heard the album and think it’s quite good.

To celebrate the album’s debut they are holding a live-streaming release party from Feinstein’s at Vitello’s in Los Angeles. Joining Winkler and Benoit for this performance are Gabe Davis on bass, Clayton Cameron on drums and Pat Kelley on guitar.

There is the main show at 9:00 PM EST/6:00 PM PST with a ticket price of $31.75. There’s also an Encore After Show scheduled for 10:45 PM EST/7:45 PM PST which will find Winkler and Benoit in conversation with Brad Roen. Tickets are $18 for the after show.

POSTPONED DANCE: Firebird – Dance Theatre of Harlem – rescheduled to March 13th

Dance Theatre of Harlem’s month-long Winter 2021 Virtual Ballet Series concludes this week and they’ve saved the best for last.

In 1982, DTH premiered John Taras’ choreography to the classic score by Igor Stravinsky. Instead of Russia the setting is the Caribbean. Geoffrey Holder created the sets and costumes.

When the work first debuted 39 years ago, Anna Kisselgoff in her New York Times review proclaimed, “It is filled with amusing inconsistencies but it does one thing other versions do not – send its audience into a whooping spell of delirium. When the firebird figure drove out the forces of malice last night, the house cheered as if it had just seen an adventure yarn. And so it had. Good conquered evil and did so in an action-packed continuum.”

There is no charge to watch the ballet.

Firebird will be available for one week on DTH’s YouTube Channel.

BROADWAY/CABARET: An Evening with Ali Stroker – Kean Stage – February 27th – 7:30 PM EST/4:30 PM PST

Ali Stroker was the recipient of the 2019 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance as Ado Annie in the revival of Oklahoma. She made her Broadway debut in the 2015 revival of the musical Spring Awakening.

For this live-streamed show from Enlow Recital Hall at Kean University in New Jersey, Stoker will be performing songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Stephen Sondheim, Carole King, Stephen Schwartz and, of course, Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Tickets are $25 with a discount available to members of the Kean University family (you have to e-mail to acquire that discount.)

Ado Annie is just a girl who can’t say no. How can you say no to this concert?

JAZZ: Artifacts Trio: …and Then There’s This – REDCAT – February 27th – 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST

What began, perhaps, as a one-off collaboration amongst cellist Tomeka Reid, flutist Nicole Mitchell and drummer Mike Reed in 2015 has blossomed into one of the most vital trios working in jazz.

This live-streamed concert through REDCAT in Los Angeles is required viewing for those who like their music on the more adventurous and experiment side. You probably knew that when you read the configuration of cello, flute and drums.

Tickets are $15 for general admission; $12 for REDCAT members and students and $8 for CalArts students, faculty and staff. There will be a post-performance discussion with Reid after the concert ends.

ROOTS MUSIC: Joachim Cooder and Amythyst Kiah with Special Guest Ry Cooder – Skirball Cultural Center YouTube Channel – February 27th – 11:00 PM EST/8:00 PM PST

Every once in a while a concert comes along that doesn’t fit easily into what Cultural Attaché does, but seems too good not to mention. Quite often those events come from the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Saturday’s concert by Joachim Cooder with his father Ry Cooder as a special guest is just such a concert. And for added measure vocalist Amythyst Kiah is also part of this concert.

What can you expect? A little bit roots rock, some folk influences, definitely some blues, a little bit of country and a whole lot of great music.

Ry Cooder might be known to some as the composer of the scores for such films as Paris, Texas and Alamo Bay. He was also the producer of the album that put the Buena Vista Social Club on all of our radars. Above all, he’s a supremely talented musician.

Joachim’s most recent album was last year’s Over That Road I’m Bound, a collection of songs by country artist Uncle Dave Macon. He’s a singer, drummer, keyboardist who has collaborated with his father and also released two other solo albums.

Kiah – you just need to hear this woman sing. Truly. Earlier this year she released a single called “Black Myself” that, well, just has to be heard. She’s got an amazing voice.

There is no charge to watch this show. However, if you make reservations for the concert by February 26th, you’ll get access to program notes and more. And if you can’t watch the show as it streams on Saturday night, it will be available on Skirball’s YouTube channel.

BROADWAY/CABARET: Brian Stokes Mitchell with Seth Rudetsky – Seth Concert Series – February 28th – 3:00 PM EST/12:00 PM PST

During the pandemic you’ve probably seen video of Tony Award winner Brian Stokes Mitchell serenading his neighborhood with “The Impossible Dream” from the musical Man of La Mancha in support of hospital workers during the pandemic.

Stokes, as his friends and colleagues call him, has appeared on Broadway in Jelly’s Last Jam, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Ragtime (originating the role of Coalhouse Walker), Kiss Me, Kate, King Hedley, Man of La Mancha and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. He won his Tony for his performance as Fred Graham in Kiss Me, Kate.

He is also the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for The Actors Fund. In other words, he has plenty to talk and sing about.

If you can’t watch the show live at the time listed about, there will be an encore showing at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST. Tickets for either time are $25.

*TOP PICK* GALA: The Gathering for Harry (Belafonte) – The Gathering For Justice – February 28th – 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST

This gala fundraiser for The Gathering For Justice is advertising this is a “surprise” event celebrating the 94th birthday of legendary actor, activist, singer and songwriter Harry Belafonte. But does that matter? They are celebrating Harry Belafonte.

I grew up with my mother and my aunt talking about how much they loved Belafonte and his music. His records were played regularly by them both. I won’t go into their other, more personal, comments about him.

He’s a Tony Award winner for his performance in John Murray Anderson’s Almanac, a three-time Grammy Award winner, an Emmy Award winner and the recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

While his most recent film appearance was in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman as an civil rights pioneer, it is his work as an activist that he is perhaps best known. Which makes this event with The Gathering For Justice a perfect fit. The organization’s focus on ending child incarceration and the systemic racism within our criminal justice system.

That Belafonte founded the organization also helps (and makes this whole surprise thing a little, well, surprising.)

Amongst the artists coming together to celebrate Belafonte’s birthday are Aloe Blacc, Common, Danny Glover, Tiffany Haddish, Jay-Z and Susan Sarandon.

Tickets begin at $25 but sponsorship packages go for as much as $100,000.

CHAMBER MUSIC: Telegraph Quartet – Noe Music – Debuts February 28th – 10:00 PM EST/7:00 PM PST

Last September San Francisco-based Telegraph Quartet was scheduled to perform at Noe Valley Chamber Music. The pandemic forced some changes. First was the date. Second was the name of the festival, which is now called Noe Music.

The new date is upon us as violinist Eric Chin and Joseph Maile; violist Pe-Ling and cellist Jeremiah Shaw perform a program of music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Johannes Brahms on Sunday.

Korngold is best known for his rousing film scores, but he also composed classical music. His four-movement String Quartet No. 3 had its world premiere in Los Angeles in 1949 as part of the Evenings on the Roof series at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. It’s a stunning work.

Brahms’ String Quartet in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2 was composed in 1873. Along with the composer’s String Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, they were both published as companion pieces Op. 51. The piece performed in this concert actually had its premiere prior to the Brahms’ String Quartet No. 1. Also a four-movement work, this quartet with its use of canons, shows the influence of Johann Sebastian Bach on Brahms.

Tickets are $20 and the concert is expected to run 90 minutes.

Those are my official picks as Best Bets: February 26th – February 28th, but a few reminders:

Saturday’s Met Stars Live in Concert features soprano Sonya Yoncheva in a performance from Germany.

Also from the Metropolitan Opera are the last three productions streaming in celebration of the late baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. They are all works by Verdi: La Traviata from the 2011-2012 season on Friday; Un Ballo in Maschera from the 2012-2013 season on Saturday and Il Trovatore, the final production in which he appeared at the Met from the 2014-2015 season.

Larry Powell’s The Gaze…No Homo is available for free streaming this weekend only from Center Theatre Group. Beginning Monday, March 1st, it will be available for streaming on demand for $20 through March 25th. I’ve written about this show before. I strongly recommend it. Last December I published a two-part interview with Powell. You can read part one here and part two here.

That’s it for my Best Bets: February 26th – February 28th. Have a terrific weekend and I’ll see you in March (on Monday) with next week’s line-up of streaming productions from the Met.

Photo: Harry Belafonte with Martin Luther King, Jr. (Photo courtesy Mr. Belafonte’s Facebook page)

Update: On Friday afternoon, February 26th, I received word that Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Firebird was being postponed until March 13th. This post has been updated to reflect the postponement and a new Top Pick was selected.

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