By Paul Horsley If there’s a sleeping giant among Kansas City theater companies, that genial beast appears to be on the verge of waking up, with a roar. The Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre has been doing increasingly excellent work for 12 seasons: classics and new works, comedies and ponderous plays that deal with racism, sexism, ageism, […]

By Paul Horsley Dead Man Walking is like the Clockwork Orange of opera. You might appreciate its artistic achievement, admire its remarkable attention to detail, even recognize its potential for redeeming social value. But you really don’t have fun, and at the end you find yourself asking whether you’ve gained anything from the grueling experience […]

By Paul Horsley Opera since its beginnings has reveled in hot political topics, from the injustices of feudal society in The Marriage of Figaro to the hapless political prisoners in works such as Andrea Chénier and Tosca. Contemporary opera occasionally takes on controversial historical issues, too, crafting real-life events not so much to make political […]

By Paul Horsley Often when you scratch the surface of something that seems utterly new, you find the oldest of sources underneath. The Lord of the Rings draws on Wagner and Norse legend, West Side Story is Shakespeare, and so forth. The piece that Igor Stravinsky and his collaborators called The Soldier’s Tale (L’Histoire du […]

Check out The Independent’s Arts Calendar, here.

By Paul Horsley Minneapolis has one. Even Detroit has one. Berkeley has one, and so does Washington, D.C. Winston-Salem, Fort Worth and St. Louis all have one: So why doesn’t Kansas City? Well, now it does. Until 2016 our city didn’t have a full-time professional African-American theater company. The Black Repertory Theatre of Kansas City […]

By Paul Horsley Ronen “Roni” Koresh’s background in dance is clearly defined, yet his quirky, dynamic choreography remains difficult to categorize. He studied ballet, jazz, folk dance and contemporary styles in his native Israel, danced with the second company of Martha Graham’s Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv, and made a beeline to New York […]

By Paul Horsley What is it about a song that makes you want to dance? That’s the big question J. Kent Barnhart and his collaborators at Quality Hill Playhouse hope to answer in their brand-new “I Got Rhythm,” which rusn through February 19th at the intimate little theater on 10th Street downtown. Of course there […]

By Paul Horsley Can music change the human heart? Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato believes it can, and the Prairie Village native has devoted a substantial part of her international career to projects that further this tenet. In addition to being one of the great singers of our time, Joyce has produced a series of award-winning recordings […]

By Paul Horsley Beginning in just a few days, Kansas City will be offering holiday programs of all sorts, so no sitting around the house with year-end blues! Get on your feet, get up and make it happen, as Gloria Estefan might say! Here are a few of the more notable choices. . NOVEMBER 18-December […]

By Paul Horsley The Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s The Marriage of Figaro, which runs through November 13th, bears the marks of a master director: Its fluid, natural interaction of characters, its moments of sly but seldom overplayed wit, and its sharp focus on essential characters at essential moments all keep the mind and the […]

By Paul Horsley When Robert Levin plays Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with the Kansas City Symphony in November, you can be sure of one thing: His interpretation will be different not only from any other pianist’s but also from any other performance he himself has presented of the piece. One of the leading exponents of […]

By Paul Horsley Everyone loves the romantic comedy in which Daddy gives up his dalliance with the spicy younger woman when he realizes it’s Mommy he really loves after all (while the kids beam with delight). If this plotline has a source it might well be Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (with its libretto by […]

By Paul Horsley Many musicians would give their E-string for a chance to resurrect Mozart or Beethoven or Brahms for an hour or two, just to ask them some burning questions that have been left to historical speculation. Wolfgang, did Salieri really poison you? Ludwig van, did you honestly intend the ridiculously fast tempos implied […]

By Paul Horsley For four centuries, Shakespeare’s plays have served as an inexhaustible inspiration for literature, operas, films and even Broadway musicals. And as the world commemorates the 400th anniversary of the bard’s death this year, we are more sharply aware than ever of the adaptability of his works. In no realm is the process […]

By Paul Horsley A fresh take on a familiar Broadway musical can be invigorating, but such an endeavor has its perils. The Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s “reimagined” version of Evita, which opened September 16th, is a scaled-down production that allows the viewer to focus on the songs, the text and the personal drama of the […]

By Paul Horsley Updated versions of well-known operas work best when they remain true to their concept from beginning to end. Director Doug Varone’s version of Hansel and Gretel is set in Depression-Era New York, and that’s fine: The 19th-century rural poverty of Humperdinck’s story translates relatively easily into urban poverty in the 1930s. Instead […]

By Paul Horsley When 17-year-old Blanche DuBois caught her husband in flagrante delicto with an older man, she impulsively lashed out at what she called his “degeneracy” (“You disgust me!”). The beautiful young man, whom Blanche loved desperately, went out into the yard and blew his brains out. Such an early trauma could screw with […]

By Paul Horsley In an increasingly diverse 21st-century America, sectors of society that have remained predominantly white are continually being challenged to examine their methods, purposes and even future viability. Classical music is no exception: If great music is “universal,” then why have its practitioners and audiences remained unrepresentative of the ethnic and cultural makeup […]

By Paul Horsley Clowns are fun and scary at the same time, and in that sense they are a lot like Grimm Fairy Tales. We shove goofily painted clowns in front of our kids all the time, yet many of us fear clowns so deeply that there’s even a clinical term for it: coulrophobia. So […]

By Paul Horsley If you want to start a new chorus in Kansas City, you’re going to need a solid concept, some chutzpah, and boundless optimism. Jackson Thomas brought all of those things when he formed KC VITAs Chamber Choir last year, a chorus of top-flight singers that, after an astonishingly successful debut last year, […]