Pines Arts Project Announces Summer Season of Shows & Events
'Best Little Whorehouse in Texas' Ron Martin, Nicole LaFountaine & company - photo by Bruce-Michael Gelbert
SOURCE: www.FireIslandQnews.com
By Bruce-Michael Gelbert
April 27, 2009 - The Fire Island Pines Arts Project (FIPAP) recently announced a slate of exciting events at Whyte Hall for the summer of 2009. The season is dedicated to the memory of longtime board member Mary Myers Cole, who had served as FIPAP president and secretary.
To kick off the season, the “gratuitous nudity” of “Naked Boys Singing!” will be on display during Memorial Day Weekend, with performances on May 23 at 7 and 9 p.m.
Expect an evening of comedy aplenty with Jim David, Cory Kahaney, and Jackie Hoffman on June 5 at 8 p.m. Susan Freedner recently considered Jim David’s “South Pathetic” for Q on Stage and Sherri Rase wrote about Jackie Hoffman’s Read more
NYCGMC’s Broadway Voices: They’ve Got It All
Sonelius Kendrick-Smith, Phil Zipkin, Dan Baillie and Eric Saggese - photo courtesy of Broadway Voices
SOURCE: www.QonStage.com
By Bruce-Michael Gelbert
April 27, 2009 - The four members of Broadway Voices-Dan Baillie, Eric Saggese, Sonelius Kendrick-Smith and Phil Zipkin-who are also members of the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, showed off their considerable talent during the chorus’ recent concert, “The Big Gay Sing.” With Chip Prince at the piano, the quartet took its act on the road this spring and presented “I Want It All-A Maltby and Shire Songbook,” at Don’t Tell Mama, where I caught their April 26 performance. They’ve got great voices and engaging presence and they harmonize beautifully: who could ask for anything more?
The show consisted of songs from Richard Maltby and David Shire musicals “Closer Than Ever,” “Starting Here, Starting Now,” “Baby,” and a new work, “Take Flight.” Most songs Broadway Voices selected focused on relationships and breakups, parents and children. Read more
Met “Götterdämmerung”: World Ends with a Spectacle
Christian Franz & Katarina Dalayman - photo by Marty Sohl
SOURCE: www.QonStage.com
By Bruce-Michael Gelbert
The fourth portion of Richard Wagner’s monumental epic “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” “Götterdämmerung” (Twilight of the Gods), opened for the season, at the Metropolitan Opera, on April 25. It was neither the best “Götterdämmerung,” nor the worst, but it was most assuredly a spectacle. James Levine, who had been indisposed and had canceled a repetition of “Das Rheingold,” the prelude to the “Ring,” two nights earlier, returned to the podium in triumph, to wield his expert baton once more and bring the saga to a formidable conclusion. Read more
“Falstaff” Revives with Fresh Voices at Juilliard School
(left-to-right) Nicholas Coppolo, Nicholas Pallesen & Benjamin Bloomfield - by Nan Melville
SOURCE: www.QonStage.com
by Bruce-Michael Gelbert
The Juilliard Opera Center’s (JOC) spring production at the Juilliard School has been Giuseppe Verdi’s final opera “Falstaff” (1893), with libretto by composer Arrigo Boito, after William Shakespeare’s comedy “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” guided by conductor and Juilliard alumna Keri-Lynn Wilson and director Stephen Wadsworth, JOC’s Director of Opera Studies, who staged Handel’s “Rodelinda” and Gluck’s “Iphigéne en Tauride” for the Metropolitan Opera. Why go to a student “Falstaff,” a work in both the Met and New York City Opera (NYCO) repertories? The fresh-voiced ensemble proved sufficient reason and provided more than enough reward. The second performance, on April 24, is reviewed here. Read more
“Fledermaus,” Crisp & Charming, Takes Manhattan
(l-r) Jeanine DeBique, Jazimina MacNeil, Jaclyn Bermudez and Zach Altman - photo by Carol Rosegg
SOURCE: www.QonStage.com
by Bruce-Michael Gelbert
Johann Strauss, Jr.’s beloved operetta “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat, 1874) is in residence in New York again this spring, thanks to the Manhattan School of Music (MSM) Opera Theater, and a crisp and charming rendition it is, with conductor Kynan Johns and director Dona D. Vaughn presiding. The first night’s performance, on April 22, is considered here.
The title of comedy refers to a costume that Dr. Falke wore to a Viennese masquerade ball, sometime before the action begins, at which he and his friend Gabriel von Eisenstein, who was decked out in butterfly wings for the fête, got quite loaded. As a prank, Eisenstein abandoned Falke, still in his bat outfit, leaving him to make his way home, when he awoke, in the morning light, thus curiously garbed. The high jinks of the operetta constitute “the bat’s revenge.” Read more
Paper Mill’s “1776″ is Patriot’s Dream
The Cast of 1776 Photo by Kevin Sprague
SOURCE: www.QonStage.com
by Sherri Rase
Spring is a time of renewal and, lately, it also seems to be a time of revival. I don’t mean tent meetings or outdoor speechifying. “1776″ has come to Paper Mill Playhouse.
I’m about to shock you. Even growing up around Philadelphia, I had never experienced this marvelous musical. Often we feel we live in the most enlightened time, and there is some truth to that. However, the lessons learned from “1776″ resonate, not just from more than 230 years ago, during the handful of days the action describes-this show was written 40 years ago and has the same bittersweet commentary to make on that day’s and today’s issues, as it does on the challenges faced by our forefathers during the birth of the nation. Read more
Hamlisch Hosts Minnelli, Grey, Holliday, O’Hara & Szot in Dynamic Philharmonic Gala
Hamlisch - photo courtesy CAMI
SOURCE: www.QonStage.com
By Bruce-Michael Gelbert
On April 20, at Avery Fisher Hall, Broadway composer Marvin Hamlisch (”A Chorus Line,” “They’re Playing Our Song”) led the New York Philharmonic and an illustrious array of stars from the Great White Way and beyond in a dynamic Spring Gala, billed as “New York Moments.” All luminaries contributed their services and all, save Hamlisch, who presided over a concert entitled “Broadway’s Greatest Showstoppers” last May, and Kelli O’Hara, who was Eliza Doolittle in the orchestra’s “My Fair Lady” in March 2007, were making their Philharmonic debuts. With one sensational star turn after another, the evening could well have had “Showstoppers” as a subtitle. Read more
NJ’s Boheme Opera’s Beautiful “Butterfly” Emerges in Spring
Teresa Eickel & Mauricio O'Reilly - Photo by Edward L. Kedzierski
SOURCE: www.QonStage.com
by Sherri Rase
Celebrating its 20th year as a full-fledged opera company, Boheme Opera (www.bohemeopera.com) mounted a new production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” at the Patriot’s Theatre in the War Memorial in Trenton, New Jersey. This review is of opening night, April 17.
I arrived in time for Maestro Joseph Pucciatti’s Pre-Curtain introduction. During this survey speech, about fifty early birds like myself were treated to a glimpse of what culture was like at the time that “Butterfly” was written. Read more
Young Americans Cabell & Pittas Take Top Honors in Met “Elisir”
Elisir D'Amore scene - photo by Marty Sohl
SOURCE: www.Qonstage.com
By Bruce-Michael Gelbert
Gaetano Donizetti’s opera buffa with serious underpinnings, “L’Elisir d’Amore” (The Elixir of Love, 1832), returned to the Metropolitan Opera repertory on March 31 and I caught up with it on the evening of April 18, the sixth of the season’s seven performances, after several cast changes, scheduled and not, since the opening. I had heard Nicole Cabell in concert and looked forward to hearing her in staged opera. This was to have been her first Met Adina, but she had, in fact, already sung the role at the previous hearing, filling in for Angela Gheorghiu. Nemorino was to have been sung by Rolando Villazón, but he had cancelled the whole run of “Elisir” and been replaced, in succession, by Massimo Giordano, Barry Banks, and, finally Dimitri Pittas, who sang on the night considered here. Read more
Successful “Siegfried,” Continuing Met “Ring,” Features Striking Debut of Tenor Franz
Christian Franz & Irene Theorin - photo by Beatriz Schiller
SOURCE: www.Qonstage.com
By Bruce-Michael Gelbert
The Metropolitan Opera’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” Richard Wagner’s epic tetralogy, continued on the afternoon of April 18 with the third part of the saga, “Siegfried,” in a, for the most part, exceptionally well sung performance, featuring the strikingly successful debut of German tenor Christian Franz in the killer title part.
Much of the first act is sung by two tenors in contrasting roles, the Aryan hero Siegfried and the Nibelung dwarf Mime, who raised him-and, misshapen and greedy, is one of the composer’s notoriously anti-Semitic caricatures. Too often Read more
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