NEW YORK—Books, movies, people, and events can all be seen differently with the passage of time. Some rise in stature while others are brought down by changing attitudes and the perspective of hindsight. This premise serves as the starting point for Richard Hellesen’s one-person drama, “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground,” now at Theatre at St….
Music for Healing: A Houston-Area Concert to Aid the Vaccine Injured
In September 2021, the Houston Symphony issued a side-letter to the contract with its musicians, mandating that any musician not fully vaccinated for COVID-19 by the end of the month would be stripped of pay and health benefits. Cellist Jeffrey Butler was one of five musicians who declined to be vaccinated on religious grounds. “Your…
Musical Review: ‘The SpongeBob Musical’
CHICAGO—You don’t have to be a kid to enjoy “The SpongeBob Musical,” but it helps a lot if you’re young at heart. After all, this show, which just opened at The Chopin Studio Theatre in Chicago, is based on an animated cartoon character that has appealed to children enthralled by the humorous zaniness and madcap…
Theater Review: ‘The 39 Steps’: Full of Suspense and Laughs
OAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill.—It’s no easy thing to adapt a movie into a stage play. A movie can use lavish background sets and fascinating locations that are unavailable to the theater. In a film, everything can be stopped, re-filmed, and edited post production, while in theater you can’t just stop the action and try again if…
Haydn’s Opera ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’
July 6, 2023
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"Soul of the Philosopher"Arts & CultureBrightFranz Joseph HaydnMaria CallasmusicOrpheus and EurydicePerforming Arts
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When opera first emerged around the late 16th century, composers and librettists took a special interest in the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. It became the subject of the very first opera, “L’Orfeo,” by Claudio Monteverdi. Since then, composers such as Jacopo Peri and Christoph Willibald Gluck created operas around the mythological figure of Orpheus, an…
1942’s ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’
NR | 2h 6m | Biography, Family, Drama | June 6, 1942 As I researched classic musicals, “Yankee Doodle Dandy” popped up. The rather odd thing was that I automatically knew the melody of the theme song and could hum it on a whim. After finally watching the 1942 film directed by the great Michael…
Theater: Staging the World Versus Re-Staging the World
Playwrights create worlds; this we all know. By “world,” I mean the conditions of time, space, and viewpoint depicted in the play that we must accept, if only temporarily, if we are to understand the characters who inhabit that world and the playwright’s point-of-view. Most plays present either a world that needs to be overhauled…
Musical Review: ‘Days of Wine and Roses’
NEW YORK—”Days of Wine and Roses,” a 1962 film about the descent into alcoholism and what comes after, doesn’t seem a likely candidate for a stage musical. Yet bookwriter Craig Lucas and composer Adam Guettel have taken its core elements and turned it into something fresh and involving, with two powerhouse performances at its center….
Beethoven and the Birth of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
For classical music lovers, being able to stream live concerts on social media platforms is a welcome convenience in a busy world. But nothing beats the in-person experience. For city dwellers, a night out to see the orchestra is a relaxing and relatively inexpensive outing. Those living in New York, London, or Paris are lucky…
Theater Review: ‘West Side Story’: A Stunning Revival
The new revival of “West Side Story” is so much more exciting, more powerful and engaging than the previous Lyric Opera of Chicago’s bland production of 2019. This time, Lyric has restaged the musical into a mesmerizing presentation that fully lives up to expectations. Although the show opened on Broadway in 1957, it not only…
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