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The Taming of the Shrew
People forget that Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew starts with an induction in which a drunken vagabond is to be regaled with a theatrical performance of what is sometimes mistaken for the whole play. The Kate-Petruchio shenanigans is, in short, a play-within-a-play, an imagined world of sex-play and power relations, perhaps challenging to, but…
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Druid Shakespeare
Death, in DRUID SHAKESPEARE: THE HISTORY PLAYS, is an invading parasite. Crosses accumulate on grave mounds like sprouts from bulbs, lives owed, as someone says, to God, payment, with interest, for birth in the world. The plays essayed by this Irish company are four in seven hours – the tetralogy of Richard II, Henry IV…
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10
I haven’t seen the Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet so elegant, in sound or deportment, as they were Monday night at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. The spot has an elegance in its own right, with a view of Central Park and a good, Southern inspired menu. The band has appeared there before, in a series sponsored by…
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Émilie
Soprano Elizabeth Futral gave conductor John Kennedy a heartfelt embrace at the curtain call for her solo performance in the Lincoln Center Festival premiere run of ÉMILIE, an opera by composer Kaija Saariaho and librettist Amin Maalouf. With a text culled from letters, notes and other documents, Futral sings the part of Émilie du Châtelet,…
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A Magic Flute
Of the historically significant theatrical productions that I wish somehow to have been in a position to see, Peter Brook’s pared-to-its-essence Carmen is near the top of the list. So I approached the same director’s hyper-condensed, multi-lingual A MAGIC FLUTE, presented by the Lincoln Center Festival, with a certain eagerness. The result is basically a…
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A Quiet Place
The Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Wadsworth opera A QUIET PLACE was not well received when it premiered in 1985, but after seeing its first New York performance on Wednesday night, by the New York City Opera, I suspect that historical distance was the missing ingredient a quarter of a century ago. Alternating between the 1950s and the…
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Lincoln Center Festival
Two from this year’s LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL: I saw Les Éphémères in two parts on Saturday and Sunday at Park Avenue Armory. There’s a lot I could write about it (of the French genius for extracting poetry from the quotidian, of the remarkable way in which the production cinematizes the stage, of the festival atmosphere…