Latest Articles and Blog Posts

Listening to Shakespeare: One comedian, no problem

November 5, 2013 at 8:42 am

"Are you a comedian?" When the Olivia of Mark Rylance, who is a law unto himself, asked the question of Samuel Barnett's Viola in Twelfth Night last week, I thought he was tweaking the text. I have known the play since my teens, taught it at Harvard, and seen it over the decades in more productions than I can list. And the situation as such was thoroughly familiar. Intrigued by an importunate pageboy (in truth a shipwrecked maiden in disguise), Olivia speculates that he might be an actor. But a comedian? The transcendent Shakespeare's Globe production, now previewing on Broadway for a November 15 opening, mimics Elizabethan conventions, yet the twinkle in Rylance's eye gave the word a fizzy contemporary spin. Olivia was not asking whether "Cesario" played roles for a living. She was asking if his job was to tell jokes.

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review of Der Freischütz

October 29, 2013  •  Opera News

A phosphorescent new mounting of Der Freischütz in Mannheim meets with a Pavlovian reception.

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review of Lux Aeterna: Abbado in Rehearsal

October 2013  •  Opera News

A film by Norbert Beilharz. EuroArts 2001318, 119 mins., subtitled

We go to the archives in search of lost treasure, and sometimes we find it. As a tribute to Claudio Abbado on his eightieth birthday, which fell on June 26, EuroArts has reissued Lux Aeterna, a film by Norbert Beilharz documenting the maestro's rehearsals of the Verdi Requiem in Milan in 1985. Was this the best they could do?

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review of I Due Figaro

October 2013  •  Opera News

Eleanora Buratto, Rosa Feola, Asude Karayavuz, Annalisa Stroppa; Antonio Poli, Mario Cassi; Speranza Scappucci, fortepiano, Philharmonia Chorus of Vienna, Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini, Riccardo Muti. Text and translations. Ducale 8011772000459 (3)

So the well-heeled Count and Countess Almaviva have a marriageable daughter on their hands, the mousy Inez, and a dowry hunter in cahoots with Figaro is closing in. But the girl's heart belongs to Cherubino, who shows up in disguise, aided and abetted by Susanna, the one in this menage who can really count the cards.

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review of Das Labyrinth: Der Kampf mit den Elementen

September 2013  •  Opera News

The Queen Strikes Back! So much for her plunge into Eternal Night at the close of Die Zauberflöte. Tamino and Pamina have yet to rise from their wedding feast when Her Troublemaking Highness is discovered plotting outside. Venus and Adonis, no less (Ladies 1 and 2 in disguise) mobilize to wreck the newlyweds' happiness. Then presto! Unbidden allies appear — the paper tiger Tipheus, king of Paphos, his aim to overthrow Sarastro and win Pamina's hand, mainly by means of idle threats from his sidekick Sithos. In the temple precinct, a reluctant Sarastro clings to power, hustling Pamina and Tamino into a maze for redundant trials just when they ought to be taking charge. Meanwhile, Monostatos is stalking Papagena.

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Books by Matthew Gurewitsch