By Paul Horsley We tend to think of Die Fledermaus as a champagne-soaked romp filled with catchy tunes and the infectious dances for which Johann Strauss, Jr., is known. But the piece has a darker side. Dr. Falke is miffed, mightily miffed, at his friend Eisenstein for leaving him drunk on the public square—dressed in […]

By Paul Horsley His playing has been called “blistering” and “arrestingly novel” and he has been declared “potentially one of the greatest pianists of the 21st century.” But Yevgeny Sudbin, who performs on the Harriman-Jewell Series on April 26th, does not concern himself with such things. His focus is on his lifelong passion and obsession: […]

By Paul Horsley The Van Cliburn Tribute Concert presented this Friday at the Kauffman Center promises to be one of the highlights of the musical season. It features music by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, Cliburn’s own favorite composers, and by Park University ICM Director and internationally renowned composer Ingrid Stölzel. Among the performers are ICM artistic […]

By Paul Horsley Even during his lifetime, Leonard Bernstein delighted in being a sort of Great American Conundrum. Known as a “triple threat” in his youth, the pianist-conductor-composer made a mark on history as the first American-born conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and later as a serious composer of symphonies, concertos, choral and chamber […]

By Paul Horsley Anyone who was lucky enough to get to know the American pianist Van Cliburn, who died last year at the age of 78, learned two things quickly. First, from earliest childhood he was a lover of all things Russian, a trait that was made plain to the world when he won the […]

By Paul Horsley Since making a huge impression here as the Countess Almaviva at the Lyric Opera’s of KC’s Marriage of Figaro just a few years back (in the company’s last production in the old Lyric Theatre), soprano Katie Van Kooten has rocketed to the top of the opera world. Now in her vocal and […]

By Paul Horsley La Bohème is a cradle-to-the-grave kind of opera. No matter where you are in life, it has something to offer. “Each time you revisit this piece you see a whole different aspect of it, and I think that’s probably its greatest strength,” says Linda Brovsky, who directs the Lyric Opera’s production of […]

By Paul Horsley The dazzling legacy of the Harriman-Jewell Series is defined not just by its milestones, such as tenor Luciano Pavarotti’s world recital debut in 1973 or the inaugural performance by legendary Balanchine dancers Patricia McBride and Edward Villella. It is defined by the loving care with which the late Richard Harriman, Series co-founder […]

By Paul Horsley Within the space of a month, from January 16th through February 15th of this year, no fewer than nine major classical instrumentalists performed in Kansas City: violinists Pinchas Zukerman, Gil Shaham and Nicola Benedetti, pianists Garrick Ohlsson, Leon Fleisher, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Luis Fernando Pérez, cellist Colin Carr, and percussionist Martin Grubinger. […]

By Paul Horsley Gil Shaham has been playing Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin privately since he was a wunderkind, but only in the last few years has he begun to perform them publicly. These six masterpieces, which Bach composed in the first quarter of the 18th century, during a period of creativity that […]

By Paul Horsley Love is like a virus: It infects not just the lovers themselves but all those around them. Armed with this premise Kansas City Repertory Theatre artistic director Eric Rosen has begun building his daring new production of Romeo and Juliet, a co-production with UMKC Theatre that opens January 17th. Inspired by his […]

By Paul Horsley Kansas Citians might look back at 2013 as a year of sea-change in the local performing-arts scene. It was the year the Lyric Opera spent record amounts on magnificent productions that garnered substantial national attention. It was the year the Harriman-Jewell Series brought the greatest Wagnerian soprano of our time to town, […]

AN APPRECIATION By Paul Horsley Russell Patterson was a “player,” and not just in the musical sense. Anyone who played tennis or bridge or even poker with the Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s founding general director, who died October 1st in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, at age 85, knows that his single-minded goal was to win. […]

By Paul Horsley When traditional holiday performances continue to meet public and critical success year after year, presenters may show understandable resistance to tinkering with them. The “if-it-ain’t-broke” cycle is of course partly about revenue stream, so one always moves forward with stealth. The Kansas City Ballet’s durable production of The Nutcracker has stood up […]

By Paul Horsley Devon Carney, who began as KC Ballet’s new artistic director in July, has made some tweaks to Todd Bolender’s Nutcracker for 2013, though most of the changes will be unnoticeable to all but the most seasoned KCB fans. “I really don’t want to fool around with Todd’s production too much,” says the […]

By Paul Horsley It’s true that the production of The Nutcracker Todd Bolender created for the Kansas City Ballet is more than 40 years old, but through the years many a hand has helped freshen up the holiday classic, which runs at the Kauffman Center from December 7th through the 24th. An altered variation here, […]

By Paul Horsley When a choir counts J.S. Bach among those who have led it over its 801-year history, and still functions in the church where the master and his offspring thrived, performance expectations are high. The Thomanerchor, or St. Thomas Boys Choir of Leipzig, has weathered all manner of political and cultural vicissitudes through […]

By Paul Horsley Just because Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem uses standard Catholic liturgy as texts doesn’t mean its messages are strictly Christian or even inordinately religious. Indeed its message of consolation is universal, and its gentler approach to death stands in stark contrast to that of some of the more severe Requiems in the repertoire. “The […]

By Paul Horsley That the Lyric Opera’s new production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute is a banquet of visual delights is beyond question. Its wildly colorful scenic designs, digital animations and costumes by world-renowned sculptor Jun Kaneko are quite unlike anything we’ve seen on the Lyric stage: Playful and fun in often explosively eye-dilating ways, […]

By Paul Horsley Artists are always being told to create art about what they know, even though many live such insulated lives that they know little beyond the world of their own art. But it can work: From Nabokov’s Pale Fire to Fellini’s 8 ½, from 30 Rock to Rembrandt’s “The Artist in His Studio,” […]

Paul Horsley Deborah Voigt is one of the great sopranos of our age or any other, and although her voice has diminished in recent years she can still delight an audience at the drop of a hat, in just about any context. At her Harriman-Jewell Series recital on October 25th she presented a personal side […]