Sharpenicity

GO GET  YOUR TICKETS NOW FOR  JOURNEY TO THE WEST You don’t need to go to a travel agent and book THE TRIP OF YOUR LIFETIME—Let Constellation Theatre Company take you places you cannot imagine!  In  Journey to the West,  the artistry of director Allison Arkell Stockman  and playwright Mary Zimmerman converge for a multi-layered experience.  A  Buddhist monk (according to ancient Chinese legend) is in search of sacred scriptures in India.  Along the way, he meets a rambunctious monkey (the mind which flips and turns), an insatiable pig (the body and base appetites), and a fiery river monster (heart and muscle).  What started as the re-telling of a historic pilgrimage of a 7th century monk, and became the legend that was recorded as one of China’s four classical novels in the 16th century, has in turn spawned hundreds of films, operas and books on into the  21st century.   Over the centuries,  the ...

OPERA PLOTS: HISTORICAL OR HYSTERICAL …or BOTH? Robert Devereux and Electra While Robert Devereux takes liberties with historical facts, the opera is based on a real person, the English nobleman who was a favorite of Elizabeth I and an ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II.   The opera so named after Devereux, based on his downfall and death, is really about    Elizabeth I, sung by no less than soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, who has sung all three Donizetti Tudor Queen operas in the same season   (Mary Stuart,   Anne Boleyn and now Elizabeth I). Electra is a mythological Greek character, the daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and thus princess of Argos.  Nina Stemme is Electra — last seen in Turandot , this October to be Isolde.  (an equally formidable trio of roles to compare to the Tudor Queens!) Besides their royalty, both women  have the opportunity on stage to enact their rages.  Elizabeth   c...

THE MET SIMULCAST WHAT I DID FOR LOVE  - MANON, MIMI AND MADAMA B Madama Butterfly was a most appropriate opera scheduled for the start of  Cherry Blossom Festival Week in Washington DC.   Even though many in the audience have been suffering from allergies, there was delight at seeing the cherry blossoms drifting like snow— but on the screen so assuredly not real blossoms.  Soprano Kristine Opolais continues to amaze as one of Puccini’s women who is obsessed by passionate love, exuding a sensuous aroma in her portrayals of Manon, Mimi, and Madama B.  Only a few weeks before on Met Simulcast,  she sang Manon Lascaut   In April 2014, she made Met Opera history  singing Mimi  in  Boheme when the lead was sick, with short notice, after having sung Butterfly the night  before.   (Yes, two Puccini women in 19 hours!)  And this is what invites the comparison, that Opolais presents each of the ...

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS JEFFERSON, CHARLES DICKENS, AND COUNT LEO TOLSTOY:  DISCORD If you want the God’s honest real true gospel story, stop in to catch  Washington Stage Guild’s latest production of Scott Carter’s  - THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS JEFFERSON CHARLES DICKENS, AND COUNT LEO TOLSTOY:  DISCORD. These three eminents find themselves after death in a locked room (a No Exit situation, seemingly eternal but not specifically either heaven or hell)  with the task to figure out why they are put together before that door will open.    What is given is that each has written his own gospel, extracting from the original four evangelists what fits his construct of ideas simmered by his personal quirks. The rational Jefferson  (Brit Herring), the sentimental  Dickens  (Peter Boyer), and the passionate Tolstoy ( Steven Carpenter) set about this task.    How will these three ever agree provides th...