The week of Nov. 18, the star-maker machinery was humming at full tilt for Julian Lennon. Monday he was in New York to do Katie Couric’s talk show. Then out to L.A. for recording sessions and to get ready for an appearance on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” on Thursday. He was promoting “Everything [...]
This is the bicentennial year for the birth of two of opera’s most towering figures: Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi. However, Wagner had already been dead for 10 years when Verdi’s final opera Falstaff premiered in 1893. Falstaff was not some warmed over swan song from the 79-year-old composer. From all reports, the Feb. 9 [...]
If you have recently started following Yuja Wang, the rapidly rising star pianist in the classical music world, you may get the impression that all the hoopla surrounding her recent fame is due to the attention that the public and the press have paid to the provocative dresses and stilettos she wears on stage. The [...]
I couldn’t sleep after seeing “Tone Clusters” at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga. Joyce Carol Oates’ intense one-act left me with a lot to think about — heavy, unsettling stuff like guilt and innocence, truth, memory and tragedy. This powerful production and the top-notch performers were lauded by the playwright herself on opening night, [...]
It’s not often that operagoers get as many “firsts” as Dulce Rosa offers up at the Broad Stage. To begin with, this is the world premiere of an opera 10 years in the making; it is the first Isabel Allende story made into an opera; it is also the first full opera the Broad Stage [...]
For all you armchair adventurers out there, here’s a tip: sharpen your machete and hack a path down to the Ivy Substation in Culver City. There, the Actors’ Gang is mounting an extraordinary version of Joseph Conrad’s classic novel Heart of Darkness. Brian T. Finney has adapted the book and performs it as a one-man [...]
One of the pressing tasks of a modern opera company is to figure out how to put younger fannies into their seats as the Geritol generation gradually fades away. In the case of LA Opera, they can’t fail to notice that their elephantine competitor for entertainment dollars across town, Hollywood, has done pretty well attracting [...]
Playwright Mark St. Germain offers a fictional meeting between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis in his two-character, 80-minute work, “Freud’s Last Session,” directed by Tyler Marchant and playing now through Feb. 10 on Santa Monica’s Broad Stage.
It is Sept. 3, 1939. Hitler’s invasion of Poland has just unhinged the entire world. Great Britain has this [...]
The new show at the Getty Villa, The Last Days of Pompeii, refers variously to an event, a book, and a rich history of mythmaking. The event, of course, is the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius outside Naples that buried the prosperous Roman town. But if you come expecting to see a display of [...]
As one of the world’s best loved and most performed operas, there is no question that Mozart’s Don Giovanni is going to be enjoyable. Just how enjoyable is up to the production and the orchestra. LA Opera mostly delivers with its solid casting and James Conlon’s lambent orchestral performance, but I deduct some points for [...]
