Review: Chicago Opera Theater’s production of Kurt Weill’s Der Silbersee
Scott C Morgan sees Chicago Opera Theater – the Windy City’s second-oldest and often more adventurous opera company – in Kurt Weill’s Der Silbersee.
Brecht
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Italian singer Milva has died at 81 – a career from pop to Berio
Milva, the Italian singer who interpreted Brecht, Piazzolla, chanson, Italian pop songs, and Berio has died at 81. She had been ill for several years.
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Zubin Mehta reflects on a life in music on the eve of his 85th birthday
Mehta talks about Israel, Los Angeles, India and Italy; his children, his bout with cancer, and the world’s greatest singer.
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Riccardo Chailly and Irina Brook bring Brecht and Weill back to La Scala
On March 18 at 8 pm CET, Riccardo Chailly conducts Die sieben Tosdsünden (“The Seven Deadly Sins”) and Mahagonny Songspiel in a live-streamed performance from La Scala.
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Evan McKie answers the Gramilano Questionnaire… Dancers’ Edition
Q&A When did you start dancing? In the womb. Why did you start dancing? I will probably never know the answer to that. I just know why I keep doing it. Which dancer inspired you most as a child? Rudolph, Pina, Kazuo Ohno, Gregory Hines, Erik Bruhn , Karen Kain, Evelyn Hart, Robert Tewsley, Lynn…
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Igor Yebra answers the Gramilano Questionnaire… Dancers’ Edition
Q&A When did you start dancing? When I was 13 years old. Why did you start dancing? Because I liked it and in my house it was something normal to see ballet; although first I wanted to be a football or basketball player! Which dancer inspired you most as a child? Fred Astaire, Antonio Gades and Vladimir…
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The Mikhailovsky Theatre opens its new season tonight with Semionova and Gomes in Giselle
Tonight the Mikhailovsky Theatre opens its 2012-2013 season with Polina Semionova dancing the eponymous heroine in Giselle. Semionova left to join the Berlin Staatsoper immediately after graduating from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy. Coincidentally, earlier this week Daniel Barenboim, the Music Director of the Berlin Staatsoper, gave a press conference at the Mikhailovsky where he announced that on 5–6 September 2013, he will perform there…
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So does Ute Lemper approve of Angela Merkel? Nein!
Ute Lemper is touring Europe with her cabaret programme which includes material by that most political of theatre writers, Bertolt Brecht. Lemper herself has always been outspoken about her views, upsetting much of the German establishment along the way. The mix of her native German tongue, with almost perfect English and French, might have made…
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Giuseppe Picone answers the Gramilano Questionnaire… Dancers’ Edition
Q&A When did you start dancing? I started when I was 10 years old at the Teatro San Carlo ballet school in Naples. Why did you start dancing? My elder brother Raffaele took me to the audition and I fell in love with ballet immediately. Till then I had no idea of what ballet was….
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Vito Mazzeo answers the Gramilano Questionnaire… Dancers’ Edition
Q&A When did you start dancing? At 9 years old. Why did you start dancing? I saw Carla Fracci dancing. Which dancer inspired you most as a child? Carla Fracci and Erik Bruhn for their great partnership. Which dancer do you most admire? Sylvie Guillem for the light that emanates when she dances; Massimo Murru…
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Paul Chalmer answers the Gramilano Questionnaire… Dancers’ Edition
Q&A When did you start dancing? Age 6, then National Ballet School, Toronto, age 9. Why did you start dancing? Saw ballet on TV. Which dancer inspired you most as a child? Nureyev. Which dancer do you most admire? Anthony Dowell. What’s your favourite role? Onegin by John Cranko. What role have you never played…
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Ornella Vanoni wows the Milanese audience at the MITO Festival
“Le canzoni della Mala” are songs about the Milanese underworld, most of which originated in the 50s when the great Italian theatre director Giorgio Strehler realised that Milan lacked a tradition of songs about prostitutes and thieves. In order to give his adopted home a body of such songs, as his beloved Brecht had given Berlin,…
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Private video surfaces of the anti-Israel protest at the BBC Proms concert
A member of the audience filmed the disturbances at Zubin Mehta‘s 75th Birthday Prom with the Israel Philharmonic, which led the BBC to take its live radio broadcast off the air. The anti-Israel protesters disturbed the concert as several points during the evening. In his excellent blog, Norman Lebrecht writes: The clips remind me of the way the Nazis broke up…
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Russian playwright Yuri Lyubimov quits theatre company after half a century
Russian playwright Yuri Lyubimov has left the theatre company he has led for nearly 50 years. Lyubimov, 93, founded Moscow’s Taganka Theatre in 1964 but fell out with its actors over pay during a Czech tour. “I confirm I have taken my final decision – to leave the theatre,” Lyubimov told the RIA Novosti news agency…
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Italian dancer Vito Mazzeo is promoted to principal with the San Francisco Ballet
At the end of his first year with the San Francisco Ballet, Italian ballet dancer Vito Mazzeo has been promoted to the role of principal dancer. Mazzeo is a product of the school of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. After dancing several seasons with London’s Royal Ballet, he returned to Italy where Carla Fracci…
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The most luxurious exercise in Giselle compare and contrast since Natalia Makarova and Gelsey Kirkland danced the role at ABT on consecutive nights in 1977
Alastair Macaulay for the New York Times writes: A double climax occurred on Friday and Saturday evenings at the Metropolitan Opera House when the two most idolized interpreters of the title role today, Diana Vishneva (Russian, from the Mariinsky ballet of St. Petersburg) and Alina Cojocaru (Romanian, from the Royal Ballet of London) danced for…
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Musical chairs at the ABT
Changes in casting of male roles at American Ballet Theatre continues. The Royal Ballet’s Johan Kobborg will make his first appearance with Ballet Theatre as a guest artist at Saturday’s matinee of “Giselle.” Kobborg will dance the role of Albrecht, replacing Maxim Beloserkovsky, who is injured. Earlier this week the company announced that the Bolshoi’s…
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After 500 years the Romans finally give Lorenzo Lotto his dues
Living in Covent Garden with London’s National Gallery on my doorstep, I often used its galleries as a useful shortcut between Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square. As the gallery has free entrance you can visit as many times as you wish from 5 minutes to 5 hours – now that’s civilized! So dashing between the two…
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The Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome celebrates Lorenzo Lotto
The Italian capital is hosting an exhibition of masterpieces by 16th-century artist Lorenzo Lotto, whose distinctive paintings have enjoyed an upsurge in popularity over recent decades. The Scuderie del Quirinale in the heart of Rome is displaying 56 paintings by Lotto (1480-1556), under a special agreement signed with the regional government of Marche, where the…
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Elier Bourzac and four other Cuban ballet dancers remain in Canada after tour
A principal dancer with the Cuban National Ballet, Elier Bourzac, is one of five company members who declined to return home with the troupe after its triumphant first appearance in Montreal last month. All five are seeking to stay in Canada in the hope of joining Canadian dance companies. Among their first acts in the…
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Anna Nicole’s breasts loom largely on the Royal Opera House stage – “I’ll eat my six-gallon hat if it’s not a stonking great hit.”
“The sad but true story of Anna Nicole Smith, a two-bit, surgically enhanced American stripper, nude model and C-list celebrity who married an 89-year-old billionaire and ended up, at the age of 39, dead from an overdose of prescription drugs in a lonely hotel room.” Thus Rupert Christiansen in The Telegraph sums up the new…
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Sergei Polunin triumphs in Giselle at the Royal Opera House
Judith Mackrell in The Guardian finds much to praise in 21-year-old Sergei Polunin‘s Albrecht: Physically, Polunin could not be more ideal for the role. With his wide poet’s forehead, slender build and black velvet gaze he’s not only the most handsome man Giselle has ever seen, he’s a pin-up boy for the whole idea of…
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The Maestro and Madonna – it must be the date from hell
From Norman Lebrecht’s excellent blog ‘Slipped Disc: I had to read this twice to make sure the hangover hadn’t turned into a Bruckner nightmare, but even in the cold light of day it appears that the conductor Christian Thielemann has told the Berliner Morgenpost that he’d like to spend some time with Madonna. Image via…
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