Music

DEVERSTATING It was the middle-child opera of the season; not like the world-premiere Eurydice or the must-see Ring Cycle. Roberto Devereux is a lesser-known Donizetti confection, and erstwhile Artistic Director Plácido Domingo was set to hot-ticket this tale of Queen Elizabeth and her lover Essex that likely hasn’t been an opera question on Jeopardy! Except…

ONCE IN A WEILL The Weimar Republic’s pyrotechnic explosion of the fine arts in the 1920s produced much “new” music before being deemed “decadent”, and dashed by the rising Nazi regime in the mid-1930s. Two programs by the LA Phil and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen at Disney Hall — one last weekend and one upcoming —…

MYTH INTERPRETATION MacArthur Genius Grant-winning composer Matthew Aucoin called up playwright Sarah Ruhl, the Pulitzer Prize finalist who had achieved said nomination with a play about vibrators. But it was in reference to another work of this other MacArthur Genius Grant-winner, a 2003 play called Eurydice. Did she want to make an opera about Orpheus,…

STRAUSS RELIEVER A few years ago, I saw Richard Strauss’s opera, Elektra. Let me just say that even with moments of beautiful, chilling music it veered into atonal territory, sounding like a disjointed, anticlimactic Danse Macabre, but without the dance. The vocal lines skewed towards the upper range which not only grated on the ear,…

DELIGHTFULLY DELIRIOUS DELARIA She’s butch, bold, brazen and brash. She’s riotous, raucous, ribald and rebellious. She scats with style and scurrilously scours political cads. And above all, she’s enormously entertaining. Since the mid-eighties, I’ve seen her on Broadway as well as her solo shows, some mostly singing and some mostly stand-up. Last Saturday night, January…

KING ARTHUR DETHRONED If you’re a hardcore Henry Purcell fan, don’t expect anything resembling his original 1691 semi-opera, King Arthur, in Long Beach Opera’s production, which opened yesterday, Jan. 12, at the Beverly O’Neill. (A semi-opera is an unusual form of early opera that was half-sung and half-spoken.) Even in John Dryden’s libretto, there is…

A FOX FANTASY The Verdi Chorus is So Cal’s only choral group which centers around the dramatic and diverse music for an opera chorus. The Fox Singers, who constitute the professional ensemble of this wonderful chorus, are presenting, for one-night only on Sat. Feb. 1 at 7:30, a program devoted to all things fantastical. You…

A KRISTIN PRESENT FOR NEW YEAR’S EVE The supremely talented platinum blonde speaks in a small voice and possesses a very petite, yet bodacious body. When she sings, however, we get very unique, beautiful and extraordinarily powerful musical notes in perfect pitch. At 4’ 11”, this wacky and vulnerable powerhouse is the new amalgamated American…

A RINGER Erich Wolfgang Korngold is best known for his grand scores of the golden age of movie music – principally for such swashbucklers as The Seahawk,  Captain Blood, Anthony Adverse  and The Adventures of Robin Hood.  Andre Previn praised these great scores thus: “His wonderful melodies, orchestrated in the most gorgeous Richard Strauss-oriented manner, are a joy…

HANDEL TO PERFECTION There’s little to say about Handel’s Messiah that hasn’t already been said. That this great work has been a seasonal favorite for two hundred and fifty years, assures us it will be performed at least annually for at least the next two hundred and fifty, and beyond. The scale of the piece…

DIANNE TIME IS HERE She was the first singer to ever perform at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and she returns this Friday, Dec 2, 2019, to get your jazz going with a holiday confection of yuletide treats. Songbird Dianne Reeves is easily one of my favorite voices, and I’m astounded how many folks are not…