Backstage And Beyond
Elizabeth Caballero has built an opera career playing strong women, and she knows a bit about mettle herself. When she was 6 she and her family boarded a boat off the shore of Cuba and set off for America, as part of the 1980 mass immigration known as the Mariel Boatlift. “Being a child, it […]
Read MoreOne of the highlights of each holiday season in Kansas City is Quality Hill Playhouse’s annual New Year’s Eve Cabaret, which executive director J. Kent Barnhart and friends have been performing for 18 years. This past New Year’s Eve, Kent was joined by vocalist Molly Hammer and double bassist Brian Wilson for a program they […]
Read MoreDeborah Sandler traveled many roads before finding her niche: She sang, played the piano, studied mathematics, worked on a doctorate in musicology, wrote grant applications. But when she started working in opera, she knew she’d come home. “Producing opera is really my passion,” says the Philadelphia native, who on July 1st becomes the Lyric Opera of Kansas […]
Read MoreSure The Barber of Seville is a frothy, wry and at times deliciously silly comedy. But it can’t be played as pure farce, says William Theisen, who directs the Lyric Opera’s production opening on April 21st at the Kauffman Center. “These characters cannot be cartoons,” said the director. “You do have a heightened reality here, and certainly Bartolo is very […]
Read MoreUnicorn production of ambitious war drama rides on fine direction, choice performances During the second Iraq war that began in 2003 we had plenty of movies, books, plays, documentaries and news stories about the impact of the war on those who fought it, and on the Iraqi people who lived through it. But there’s been […]
Read MoreThe Heartland Men’s Chorus has an uncanny knack for picking timely, even “hot” topics for their programs. In 2003 they performed The Few, the Proud, a multimedia concert that told stories about gays and lesbians in the armed forces throughout American history – literally the same week that we entered into the Iraq war. All God’s Children dealt with […]
Read MoreIn 2007, Giuseppe Filianoti feared his opera career might be over. The Italian-born singer, whom critics were calling one of the leading tenors of his generation, underwent surgery to remove a cancerous thyroid gland, and in the aftermath one of his vocal chords became completely paralyzed. But Giuseppe, a native of Reggio Calabria in the far south of […]
Read MoreSome dance companies are formed with a clearly etched vision of what they want to do, and they just go do that over and over. Others grow like Topsy, evolving with the vicissitudes and needs of the company itself and of the community it serves. A prime example of the latter is the Aspen Santa […]
Read MoreCan an opera teach us things about historical events that we can’t glean from factual accounts alone? John Adams’ opera Nixon in China provides one of the most compelling answers to that question, for by general agreement it is a piece that deepens and broadens our understanding of President Nixon’s famous 1972 visit to Mao’s China and […]
Read MoreRational Exuberance: Ray Chen’s KC debut showcases substantial interpretive strengths A classical musician’s devotion to the intentions of composers long deceased often finds itself at odds with the present day’s realities of myriad stimuli and instant gratification. Therefore, it is becoming quite uncommon to encounter performers capable of captivating audiences while simultaneously revering thousands of markings in […]
Read MoreYou might think of Shakespeare as being all about language, but several of his works have been made into ballets in which the entire dramatic arc is expressed without a single word being uttered. Perhaps the most powerful of these is Romeo and Juliet, which owes much of its cache to a brilliant score by Prokofiev. It has been […]
Read MoreBehzod Abduraimov almost didn’t become a pianist. At age 6 he failed his very first piano examination, getting stuck in the middle of Schumann’s The Wild Horsemanseveral times before his teacher finally told him to stop. “After that my teacher said I would never be able to play a piece on piano from beginning to end without […]
Read MoreOLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES: KC BALLET PRESENTS FINE ‘NUTCRACKER’ IN KAUFFMAN CENTER The production of The Nutcracker that the late Todd Bolender created for the Kansas City Ballet is 30 years old this year, but at the opening performance on the afternoon of December 3rd it had a bright new look. That’s partly because it was […]
Read MoreTen strongly lit dancers dressed in soft hues stood downstage, perfectly spaced across the stage. One by one they stepped diagonally out of formation, legs scissored, one arm out and one back, until they formed a sort of human zigzag. Gradually each peeled off in a circular pattern and rushed upstage. All in total silence. […]
Read More“If music be the food of love, sing on.” Thus the Bard might have written his famous line from Twelfth Night if he had heard the Kansas City Chorale singing works set to his poetry. This week the Grammy Award-winning Chorale performs a whole program of music set to, or inspired by, the greatest poet in the English language. […]
Read MoreSimon Carrington knows what he wants in a choral sound, and in 2008 he and two dozen Kansas City area singers formed a choir that has had a huge success in producing that sound. The British-born conductor and singer, who began as a boy chorister and later was a member of the King’s Singers, says […]
Read MoreIf you want to know the heart and soul of America, listen to its songs. And few genres of song tell our stories more vividly than country music, that unique style born of folk and gospel and blues and rooted in the soil of Middle America. Love, work, family, heartache, infidelity, addiction—like it or not, […]
Read MoreThe key to finding a niche in Kansas City is to identify something that’s lacking in the community and go for it. That’s what a group of local musicians did 21 years ago, when they determined that July was a frightfully dead month for music locally—and that classical fans were left hungry for chamber-music fare. Thus […]
Read MoreMark your calendars: In just a few days the Kansas City Ballet enters a new era of its 54-year history, as it moves into its new Todd Bolender Center for Dance and Creativity and, just a month and a half later, begins dancing on the stage of the $413 million Kauffman Center for the Performing […]
Read MoreSAN FRANCISCO – In this loveliest of West Coast cities, the San Francisco Opera has staged what is arguably the most intriguing production of Wagner’s Ring that one can currently see in America. On four separate nights during a week in June at San Francisco’s War Memorial House, I had the chance to witness Francesca Zambello’s brilliant new version […]
Read MoreAnd they’re off! In a fall cultural season to be filled with exciting “firsts,” the Kansas City Ballet leapt from the starting gate on August 26th with the inauguration of its new Todd Bolender Center for Dance and Creativity, located in the restored Power House just west of Union Station. Under a large tent set […]
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