Karen Zacarías takes issues like racism, sexism and ageism and tangles them all up in “Native Gardens.” Fortunately, it’s a rollicking comedy with a happy ending. The play continues at the Pasadena Playhouse through Sept. 30. Former “Seinfeld” star Jason Alexander directs.
The first thing you’ll notice when you walk into the playhouse is the elaborate [...]

The new release in the Pittsburgh Live! series is a revelatory performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 by Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
It’s been a few years since we’ve heard Manfred Honeck and the PSO perform Beethoven, and that was a recording of the fifth and seventh symphonies [...]

MacArthur “genius” grant recipient Branden Jacobs-Jenkins worked at “The New Yorker,” but has said in interviews that his Pulitzer Prize-nominated play “Gloria” is not based on his experience there. No matter. It rings so true — as any good fiction does. You can see the Echo Theater Company’s West Coast premiere of his 2015 work, [...]

Composer Mark Abel’s 2018 DELOS CD release, Time and Distance (DE 3550), features acclaimed Los Angeles area vocalists, soprano Hila Plitmann and mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano. Their task was immense in this endeavor — to mediate operatic texts by Abel and area poets Joanne Regenhardt and Kate Gale that address difficult social, psychological and political issues. [...]

The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills presents the Bristol Old Vic’s award-winning production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” directed by Sir Richard Eyre and starring Oscar winner Jeremy Irons (“Brideshead Revisited,” “Reversal of Fortune,” “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice”) opposite Olivier winner Lesley Manville (“Another Year,” “Harlots,” and “Phantom [...]

On Saturday night, the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of its music director, Gustavo Dudamel, performed a concert of orchestral works by Robert Schumann, including the Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 and the Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61. This concert was the second part of the Schumann Focus series [...]

Rigoletto is a study in contrasts — light and dark, tender and brutal, funny and sad. LA Opera’s current production puts Giuseppe Verdi’s groundbreaking musical score front and center as the conceptual and emotional framework from which to explore these dualities. Arresting visuals, sumptuous costumes and talented singers bring the work to a high [...]

On April 25, the American pianist and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Jeremy Denk performed a recital of works by Mozart, Prokofiev, Beethoven and Schubert in the Bram Goldsmith Theatre of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills.
Denk began the program on a quiet, melancholic note with the Rondo in A minor, K. [...]

What do you get when you combine the most exciting young conductor in the world today with one of the world’s best symphony orchestras which he helped to build, a renowned master chorale and talented vocalists performing arguably the greatest symphony ever written — the Symphony No. 9 in D minor by Beethoven, Op. 125 [...]

With the #MeToo movement lately having its cultural moment, whereby at least some men behaving badly get some form of comeuppance, it seems quite timely to have the Pacific Opera Project staging Don Giovanni, the quintessential tale of out-of-control toxic masculinity. To keep things fresh, Artistic Director Josh Shaw has taken over an old warehouse [...]