Renée Fleming’s program on October the 9th was two recitals in one, the first a hugely intelligent exploration of the early-20th-century German and Austrian lied, the second a generous serving of mostly Italian arias that shone light on a variety of operatic heroines. It was a worthy demonstration of two dynamics of Renée’s character: the intellectual curiosity […]

“It’s show business, my dears, we’re entertainers!” George Balanchine used to tell his dancers, and in few of his ballets is this notion more overt than in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, which forms part of the Kansas City Ballet’s fall program running from October the 14th through the 17th. In addition to the choreographer’s hallmarks — the detailed […]

Australian-born Stanton Welch, artistic director of the Houston Ballet, has established himself as one of the world’s most inventive choreographers. Dance fans in Our Town have had ample opportunity to see Stanton’s work thanks to the Harriman-Jewell Series, which has brought his company to town seven times beginning in 1979. On October 30 the Harriman presents Houston […]

The Kansas City Chorale is in a remarkably good place these days, both institutionally and artistically. This week the multiple-Grammy-winning chorus of local professionals opened its 2010-2011 season with a concert of music by René Clausen, which I attended on October 19 at Asbury Methodist Church. I marveled at the uniformity and beauty of sonority — especially […]

On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be all that much Beatle-ness to Stanton Welch’s The Long and Winding Road, a 25-minute ballet that the Houston Ballet II performed on the Harriman-Jewell Series on October 30 at the Folly. Peter Breiner’s arrangements of the songs are more Vivaldi than George Martin — they sound so much like Baroque concertos that […]

Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov has always been an anomaly among operas. In addition to hovering, like much Russian opera, on the periphery of our Italian- and German-dominated repertoire, it has for most of its history been performed in a souped-up re-orchestration by Rimsky-Korsakov that glazes over much of its austere, at times intentionally raw flavor. To add to […]

When men flake out, women just have to look after themselves — and each other. That’s a primary lesson in Norma, Vincenzo Bellini’s 1831 opera about love, betrayal, heroism and female friendship, which opens November the 6th at the Lyric Opera. The druid priestess Norma is caught in an impossible situation: Her companion, the Roman proconsul Pollione, has […]

Considering the number of elements that must come together for an operatic production to succeed, it’s a miracle that it ever happens. When it does, it’s sometimes hard to say why it does, but it nonetheless makes for an extremely satisfying evening of theater. At the Lyric Opera’s Norma, which opened November the 6th at the Lyric Theatre, all the […]

Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero and French cellistGautier Capuçon are acclaimed musicians with international careers, and their gifts on their respective instruments are prodigious. Gautier has made a mark in collaborations with his brother, violinist Renard, and Gabriela you might remember from her appearance at President Obama’s inauguration withItzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma. Yet their Harriman-Jewell Series recital on November the […]

Alessio Bax has made a career of taking roads less traveled. The Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient from Bari, Italy has circled the globe performing the widest variety of music, not just in Europe and Asia but in Tel Aviv and Mexico City. He has explored interesting corners of the repertoire, both in recital and with […]

Few things in concert life are as satisfying as hearing musicians who have attained near-legendary status actually live up to those legends. On November the 19th at the Folly Theater, Pinchas Zukerman and Yefim Bronfman played the Brahms’ Second Viola Sonata so gorgeously and insightfully, and with such detailed nuance and color, that one was reminded why these artists have […]

Imagine a full-length ballet like Swan Lake or The Nutcracker,but based on an American subject and crafted by an entirely American creative team. You’ll have to imagine it, because such a thing has not existed – at least not until now. More than a quarter-century ago, composer Maury Yeston began to ponder this gap in the repertoire, and he determined to do […]

The Kansas City Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker remains one of the city’s most refined holiday offerings, with Balanchine- and Robbins-influenced choreography by Todd Bolender, great dancing by the company members, well-trained kids from the Ballet School and a Christmas tree that grows to enormous proportions. At the December the 11th opening night performance all the elements were […]

It was an auspicious year for the performing arts in Kansas City, with few signs that arts groups were “holding back” in anticipation of next year’s first season in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. We obviously weren’t able to attend everything in 2010: It’s been a long time, in fact, since Kansas City’s […]

January 14-February 6: Another American: Asking and Telling (Kansas City Repertory Theatre). Actor/playwright Marc Wolf interviewed some 150 individuals about the U.S. military’s recently repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and the play that resulted won an Obie Award. January 21: Sequentia, Voices from the Island Sanctuary(Friends of Chamber Music). The sanctuary in question is the walled Cathedral of Notre Dame […]

Paris in the 12th century was a hotbed of student unrest, corruption and greed, and lively political discourse – and it saw a ferment of artistic, literary and musical creativity the likes of which the Western world has rarely witnessed. Within the walled Notre Dame Cathedral complex on the city’s Ile de la Cité lived hundreds […]

Marc Wolf’s one-man play Another American: Asking and Telling is not just about the American military’s bizarre and soon-to-be-defunct “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, it addresses the whole history of the armed forces’ harsh and often cruel treatment of gays and lesbians. Therefore the recent repeal of the policy – an event that could easily have kicked the […]

Violinist Joshua Bell delighted a sold-out Folly Theater audience on January the 22nd with his signature earthy-sweet tone and lovely, long-breathed phrasing. This generous Harriman-Jewell Series recital included three meaty masterpieces of 19th-century Romanticism, and Josh tackled all three with aplomb. Brahms’ Sonata No. 2 began a bit perfunctorily but built momentum. The Andante tranquillo was […]

The Kansas City Symphony’s first season in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts looks auspicious indeed, with Mahler’s Second Symphony, Beethoven’s Ninth, Brahms’ German Requiem and commissions from composers Chen Yi, Stephen Hartke and Daniel Kellogg. Performers include former Cleveland Orchestra music director Christoph von Dohnanyi, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Joshua Bell, pianists Emanuel Axand Yefim Bronfman and Our Town native and Metropolitan star mezzo-soprano Joyce […]

Of all the local organizations who will be presenting for the first time this fall in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, none will be more thrilled to “stretch its legs” than the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. After decades of performing in the cramped, moldy Lyric Theatre (among other venues), the company has […]

Joyce DiDonato, who grew up in Prairie Village, is fast on the way to becoming the world’s greatest living mezzo-soprano. In anticipation of her February 13th recital here on the Harriman-Jewell Series, we asked what she’s up to these days. She was entrenched in a production at Houston Grand Opera — and looking forward to two Metropolitan […]