Year: 2013

Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) present BAM 2013 New Wave Festival the New York City Opera production of ANNA NICOLE, composed by Mark-Anthony Turnage with a libretto by Richard Thomas, in the Howard Gilman Opera House. The above video clip is from the original production at the Royal Opera House (ROH), Covent Garden. The photograph, below, is from the BAM production. In Feburary, 2011, while commenting on the stage musical, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, I mentioned that the Royal Opera House in London had commissioned an opera based on the life of Anna Nicole Smith. I ruminated that DOCTOR ZHIVAGO seemed to…

Photograph by Bob-Seary New Theatre presents HAY FEVER by Noel Coward at the New Theatre, Newtown. Noel Coward’s HAY FEVER is given a perky and, mostly, stylish production at the New Theatre. Some regard Mr Coward’s plays as, relatively, frivolous pieces of fluff, and, certainly, Mr Coward himself, declared his distaste for “plays with a message”. Mr Coward’s prolific output needs not much introduction, and beside his play texts, has left an extensive musical repertoire, and some curious film projects that still hold some deal of interest (IN WHICH WE SERVE). Of his plays from the pre-World War Two era,…

The Metropolitan Opera presents Dimitri Shostakovitch, THE NOSE at the Lincoln Centre. How could one not take notice of these names, all on the same “bill’ and not want to see what they have all concocted: The Metropolitan Opera, Dimitri Shostakovitch, William Kentridge, Valery Gergiev, Nikolay Gogol and Yevgeny Zamyatin? Plus, for us Australians: Alexander Lewis (Who? – the young Australian tenor. Son of Michael Lewis, I think). THE NOSE is a co-production of the Metropolitan Opera, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and the Opera National de Lyon. It was first presented at the Metropolitan Opera, in 2010, in this wonderful staging…

The New York Philharmonic at the Avery Fisher Hall at the Lincoln Centre, New York, present RAVEL, BERNSTEIN and TCHAIKOVSKY. I attended an 11 am Friday morning concert. It was the second performance of the first program of the season, conducted by Alan Gilbert, the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. The program began with a short work by Maurice Ravel: Alborada del gracioso (Dawn Song of the Jester). Written originally as a piano solo in 1904-05 as part of a five movement piano suite called MIROIRS. The Alborada del gracioso was the fourth movement and Sergei Diaghilev utilised…

SPIDER-MAN. TURN OFF THE DARK, Music and Lyrics by Bono and The Edge. Book by Julie Taymor, Glen Berger and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa at the Foxwoods Theatre, 42nd Street, New York. “Kevin, you saw SPIDERMAN?”, some of my friends have asked with sceptical bewilderment. Well, yes!  How could I not want to see SPIDER-MAN? Besides being the current musical theatre “object of fascination” by those musical theatre nuts we all know, it is a work by Julie Taymor, the ‘genius’ of THE LION KING and the highly theatrical and original films: TITUS (1999), FRIDA (2002) AND ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007) THE…

THE GLASS MENAGERIE was Tennessee Williams’ first success on Broadway. It was in 1944, and catapulted Mr Williams into the rarefied sphere of iconic artists, which he ably affirmed again and again, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1948, Pulitzer Prize) and CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (1955, Pulitzer Prize) were to come. Laurette Taylor, the original interpreter of Amanda, in that production, built a legendary aura around that role, and it has been, subsequently, the object for actors of a certain age, to pursue. On my last visit to New York I saw the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of THE…