Sharpenicity

MOBY DICK A Giant White Whale was spotted near the Wharf on November 18.    No ordinary one was it, but the fabulous fabled  Moby Dick  arriving at Arena Stage!    Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre Company’s had sailed with the classic nineteenth century Melville novel of New England whalers with their harpoons and ships, into this twenty-first century theater at the Southwest waterfront. Moby Dick   is not just another fish story.  That very long Great American novel which many people find unreadable has now taken its legs to the stage.    Lookingglass Theatre Company’s exuberant production  while true to Melville’s words and spirit magically interjects both humor and silence into a script that waves between lyrical and dramatic.      Rather than overload the scenery with authentic looking antiques from that era of New England whalers, this staging employs a unifying sy...

  L’Amour de Loin The Met’s opera sets sail upon A Sea of Love Do you remember that oldie “Sea of Love”?…  Come with me …To the sea …The sea of love - I wanna tell you -How much-I love you.”   How simple that song made love  and the sea - both eternal -seem to be.  But for all its beauty and allure,  the sea —like love— is vast and deep and dangerous.     In  L’Amour de Loin- the Met’s Live in HD broadcast— the sea is the fourth and very complex character in this tale of medieval love. The title of the opera comes from the poetry of troubadour Jaufre Rudel who developed  the concept of “love from afar.”  In the time of the Second Crusade in the 12th century, the poet fell in love with a Countess in Tripoli, a beautiful woman whom he had never seen but had dreamed of  in his works.   It is the sea which  separates the lovers and it is across the sea, that the poet will take his fateful journey t...

MOZART’S THE MAGIC FLUTE   -  TEN YEARS SINCE THE FIRST MET Live in HD BROADCAST Five things you need to know about the Met’s Live in HD of Mozart’s The Magic Flute . on December 3, 2016. 1.  T he Magic Flute was the first broadcast that launched the Met’s award winning series Live in HD   to movie theaters in 2006.   A hundred operas since then, Live in HD has proven to be a resounding success.  And it all started with that magic moment when The Magic Flute kicked it off ten years ago. 2.  This production is filled with opera legendaries.  Director Julie Taymour,  Maestro James Levine, and an ensemble cast –  Nathan Gunn, Ying Huang, Matthew Polenzani, Erika Miklosa, and René Pape—all  together create a magical stage event. 3.  Tenor Matthew Polenzani might be the prince hero of the opera but  guess who takes the honors as being one of the sexiest men alive;   Papageno, his sideki...