If you still think of Oklahoma! as a wholesome slice of Americana and cheerful life on the prairie, you might want to take another look. You don’t have to scratch hard find darker elements beneath the surface of this musical from 1943: misogyny, gun violence, bullying, anti-immigration sentiment. And although Musical Theater Heritage at Crown […]

Four women far upstage in pajama-like outfits skip in place, their limbs flying in precisely crafted, whimsical calisthenics. Downstage, a ballerina in red pointe shoes is dancing, now two ballerinas, and now with men, in a juxtaposition of classical and contemporary styles that appears all the more startling because of the ensemble’s placement in front […]

David Parsons embodies the kinds of values and ideals that any Kansas City artist would do well to emulate. He is as comfortable hacking through weeds at the Leawood home of his hardy 91-year-old father, UMKC Emeritus Professor Stanley Parsons, as he is gathering accolades (with the New York-based company he founded in 1985) in […]

If there really is a crisis in the performing arts in America, somebody forgot to send Kansas City the memo. In the past decade, our city has seen the formation of dozens of small non-profit organizations, from theater companies to chamber ensembles, dance groups to jazz orchestras, choruses to opera companies. And there’s no reason […]

Contrary to popular opinion, Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers does not rely on a single beautiful duet: It has several quite lovely numbers and a few choruses that are worth your time. To be sure, taken as a whole this opera, which preceded the inimitable Carmen by 12 years, is a bit of a mess. Yet to […]

Anyone who has owned a pet understands the ineffable bond that can form between human and animal. But what if your pet were instrumental in saving not only your life but the lives of hundreds of others, and had done so dozens of times? Perhaps only those who have served as military Search Dog Handlers […]

There’s only so much oppression that you can withstand before you finally burst out and shout: Enough! That’s pretty much what happened at the Stonewall Inn on June 28th, 1969, when one of the habitual police raids on the Greenwich Village tavern turned violent. The ensuing series of protests in and around the bar, which […]

The glory of Così fan tutte is, to a great extent, its music: Mozart is the reason we continue to treasure this masterpiece, more than two centuries after its premiere in Vienna in 1790. Thus we were grateful, at the opening of the Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s production on March 16th, that director James […]

Daniela Mack is by far one of the most thrilling young mezzo-sopranos of our time. Kansas City is privileged to have her join the Lyric Opera’s production of Così fan tutte, which plays at the Kauffman Center from March 16th through the 24th. (See our full preview article here.) Daniela’s bold interpretations are matched only […]

Comedy is often most effective when it borders on the serious, when it delves into complex truths about human nature. Così fan tutte fascinates us not only because its score is “as consistently glorious and elevating as any ever written,” in the words of conductor-scholar Jane Glover, but because its sexual politics are as wittily […]

From a purely visual point of view, Lady of the Camellias is one of the most appealing full-length works in the current repertory of the Kansas City Ballet, which in recent years has focused much attention on more “family-oriented” stories. Val Caniparoli’s choreography for this retelling of a semi-autobiographical Alexandre Dumas fils tale will delight the […]

Followers of contemporary classical music are accustomed to experiments in fusing Old World traditions with those of rock, jazz, folk, even hip-hop. These projects “click” only about ten percent of the time, at best, and when they do it’s often difficult to articulate exactly why. Listening to the Innova Recording of The River, a 60-minute […]

An orchestra is more like a sports team than you might imagine. If a lone violinist starts a piece two beats before everybody else, you’re bound for disaster. If an athlete grandstands to the detriment of a team effort, defeat lurks. These simple truths form one of the premises of the Kansas City Symphony’s upcoming […]

Determination is usually the main factor that decides whether or not a new arts group will thrive. That’s why there’s good reason to believe that Opus 76, Kansas City’s new “resident string quartet,” is on course to blaze a trail as the most significant local professional quartet in recent memory. Now in its first season, […]

Maria Ioudenitch has spent most of her 23 years in Overland Park and, more recently, in Philadelphia and Boston, but she feels her artistic soul is Russian to the core. And, in fact, the aspiring violin virtuoso, who performs the Glazunov Concerto with the Kansas City Symphony from January 11th through the 13th, was born […]

Great artists are frequently blessed with the most inquisitive of minds. For two decades, Prairie Village native Joyce DiDonato has established herself not only as one of the great singers of our time but also as an artist constantly exploring fresh repertoire, innovative formats, and artistic landscapes where operatic mezzo-sopranos have dared not tread. On […]

One late night a few years back, as playwright Harvey Williams was leaving the Just Off Broadway Theatre where his KC MeltingPot Theatre is based, he noticed the familiar flicker of “campfires” in the Penn Valley woods. A handful of Kansas City’s homeless were nestled up there, trying to stave off winter’s chill, as far […]

One of the great things about living long is that sometimes you get to see trends you thought were lost forever make surprising comebacks. Marilyn Maye, the Wichita native who got her start some 70 years ago performing what we now call the “American Songbook” (a genre that was pushed aside for a number of […]

There is nothing flashy about Horton Foote’s language. He writes the way people talk. Yet his plays and screenplays have the power to move strong men and women to tears. Small wonder he has won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama (for The Young Man from Atlanta), two Best Screenplay Oscars (for To Kill a Mockingbird and […]

It’s amazing, really, that in the dazzle of costumes, projections, puppetry, lighting and even a mechanical Toto, Septime Webre’s new The Wizard of Oz still managed to remain a ballet. The Cuban-American dance maker, who recently left a longtime post at Washington Ballet to take a position at Hong Kong Ballet, is a gifted choreographer, […]

When Septime Webre set about to create a ballet of The Wizard of Oz, he recognized the challenge facing anyone who adapts L. Frank Baum’s story: Audiences come with certain expectations. The key, as he and his designers had to confront right off the bat, is to satisfy those desires and to push us to a […]