By Paul Horsley Die Fledermaus is a surprisingly difficult opera to bring to the stage, deceptively simple on the surface yet filled with comic subtleties and a sort of effortless […]

By Paul Horsley Yes, the Kansas City Ballet will be mustering enormous forces for its production of Victoria Morgan’s magnificent Cinderella that opens here May 9th, with the 28-member company, […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]