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Evidently, summer has caught me napping. It wasn’t until last weekend (July 24-25) that I learned that the joint venture of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra for a summer festival in the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake (near Niagara Falls, Ontario) had been quietly shelved. This was news to me – but I can’t help thinking that the mid-July announcement was intended to go pretty much unnoticed. However, a little online research brought me up to date: a press release, dated July

Review: Oberlin Summer Theatre Festival’s Much Ado About Nothing Laughs at Love An utterly delightful opening-night production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing showed, once again, that the Oberlin Summer Theatre Festival is the place to be for the month of July. The Hall Auditorium theatre sizzled with Director Paul Moser’s jazz-era version of the classic battle between the sexes. Charmingly played lovers Hero (Alexis Macnab) and Claudio (Donnie Sheldon) showed just how

     They’re baaaack.      After an initial trial last year, the Ravinia Festival is once again using giant video screens for every Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert in its pavilion this season. Two 12-by16-foot screens flank the stage, giving listeners in Ravinia’s 4,000-seat pavilion an up-close-and-personal glimpse of the performers from percussion section to guest soloists.      In a recent evening of resplendent Wagner with Ravinia’s Music

  Iolanthe @ Ohio Light Opera 6/30/10 In Gilbert and Sullivan’s nineteenth-century era elves and fairies held the same popular cachet that vampires and werewolves do today. Just as in “Twilight” or “True Blood,” the nonhuman creatures could be both lovely and dangerous. The Ohio Light Opera’s “Iolanthe” delights in the splendid, frothy, utterly musical side of mortals mingling with fairies. While there are supposed to be fatal consequences (the fairy

On opening night at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, the festival stage was draped in Art Deco silks, and its horizon bedecked with wild touches of Magritte and Dali, to tell a magical story of court intrigue, banishment, love and redemption. But this production of Shakespeare's "As You Like It" was also a feast of music. With screaming abandon, Justin Ellington turned the many songs in Shakespeare's play into a fullstage romp in the style of '20s and '30s jazz. And when the comic

The festval this year was excellent. Lots of really promising singers.

Review: Apollo’s Fire @ Cain Park 6/25/10 Apollo’s Fire, Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, offered a slightly re-arranged version of last year’s popular “Come to the River” program on a perfect summer evening at Cain Park in Cleveland Heights. The ensemble, led by Jeannette Sorrell, traditionally performs in more enclosed spaces than the semi-open amphitheater at the park, so the question of the night was “Can they do it? How will they sound amplified?” and “Can we

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I go to a concert nearly every day.  I'll tell you all about it here.

  Kismet, the season-opener for of the Ohio Light Opera, showed in the most tuneful way possible why this ensemble opera company continues to attract musical theatre lovers to Wooster College. From the dramatic opening in the darkened theatre with cast members singing as they walked slowly down the aisles, to the comically satirsfying ending, the show paid lyric tribute to the score’s gorgeous and lush melodies by Alexander Borodin. “Baubles, bangles, and beads,” “Stranger in paradise ” and

Fiddler on the Roof @ Playhouse Square 6/15/10 In the recent Playhouse Square production of the American theatre classic that is Fiddler on the Roof, the fiddler comes off the roof and Tevye comes out of the closet (so to speak). Gravel-voiced Harvey Fierstein, faced with the task of making the role his own, succeeded brilliantly--at least for fans of Fierstein (count me in). Yes, he did channel Edna Turnblad (a la his Tony-award winning “Hairspray” performance) with a few indulgent muggings, but

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Elizabeth Harcombe grew up in Roseburg, Oregon where she began playing piano at the age of 5. She was the pianist at the church where her mother served as organist. Harcombe studied music at Biola University and later got a Master of Music Education degree with an emphasis in piano pedagogy from University of Oklahoma. Harcombe has served as the rehearsal pianist at the Oregon Bach Festival for Helmuth Rilling and for the Oregon Repertory Singers under Gil Seeley. She currently teaches piano at Lewis and Clark College and is the program and

CHICAGO -- The great achievements of humanity are the work of imperfect souls. Whether it's Beethoven scribbling the sublime Ninth Symphony, Isaac Newton transforming physics or – to take the issue at hand -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. leading his black brethren to freedom, lasting deeds can belie the mortal foibles of their doers. Tracey Scott Wilson's finely honed play “The Good Negro,” at the Goodman Theatre, peers inside Dr. King's epochal movement to show us how vision clashed with ego, resolve caromed

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With its musical genealogy in the waters of Adams, Britten and memories of, on the one hand, Janacek (a bit watered down) and on the other, Korngold (a bit modernized), the new opera of Jack Heggie will float for a long time on the scenes of the world opera houses.

Just had the great privilege to experience Jake Heggie's new opera, Moby-Dick. Very  impressive set design and libretto to die for. Musically? Well, more later....

  Ten years ago, when Michael Steinberg retired as the San Francisco Symphony's program annotator and music advisor, he had a farewell essay in the program, entitled "Why We Are Here." It is also part of the book For the Love of Music Steinberg cowrote with Larry Rothe, his long-time colleague at SFS. Steinberg, who died Sunday at age 80, wrote memorably in that essay about music and talking about music, exercising his lifelong vocation and art:   "Tristan und Isolde, the very symbol for

Charles Schulz's love of Classical music developed after World War II when he went to work with a spirited group of artists at Art Instruction Schools in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He and his colleagues held lively discussions about literature, films, and Classical music. Schulz recalled that "We all collected classical albums, which we frequently shared on evenings when we got together to listen to music and challenge each other in wild games of hearts (a card game)." Over the decades Schulz went on to embed Classical music into

Listen to the music. It will snap you to attention, tell you where to cry, and when that long-awaited kiss is coming. The villains have their own dark motifs and the luminous sounds that accompany the hero are as clear as his white hat.. Movie music? Yes, but those words could apply to the opera as well. The two genres, so rigidly separated in public perception, have more in common that first meets the ear. In fact, when five-time Oscar-winning film composer John Williams was asked where he believed his music fit in the