Sharpenicity

Cendrillon  Met Live in HD  Opera viewers have officially verified —Joyce DiDonato is indeed Cinderella! Her ownership of  Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and now Massenet’s Cendrillon , might put her in a rare category of sopranos who have sung both operatic roles.  Her own fairy tale story of how she found her way through the music business to be one of today’s top opera singers as well as her congeniality is well noted.   We have heard her in so many roles,  but it is as Cinderella that she glistens,  no matter what different composers make of that character. Live at the Met in HD with real life humans is no less imaginative then cinema's cartoon Cinderella. The Met’s production Laurent Pelly’s  storybook production expands the possibilities of the art with the extravagant fashion couture in brilliant red dresses  (like the cover of the book of the  Cinderella fairy tale he remembers from his childhood).  The...

The Barber of Seville Washington National Opera The Barber of Seville is an opera so easy to listen to—and one of the hardest to sing.   The Washington National Opera’s latest production makes an additional demand on the singers— their high notes accompanied by the low comedy of bumps, falls and trips.   The result is a lot of laughs to the great delight at the endless possible physical antics  done with such perfect timing with the music. We expect the barber Figaro to be witty and wise in ways to get things done, for he is after all the factotum or jack of all trades,  as well as a perfect singer especially for the familiar tongue twister arias that Rossini has bestowed on him.   Baritone Andrey Zhilikhovsky does it all.  Tenor Taylor Stayton as Count Almaviva  is certainly a charming royal but he too gets into the silliness as does his love, the lovely soprano Isabel Leonard as Rosina.   For all her elegance, she gets right in ...

Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963-2017   Baltimore Museum of Art Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963-2017 is a study in contrasts. Eight of Whitten’s  larger than life painting from his Black Monolith series —tributes to James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, Muhammad Ali and others African American cultural figures—fill one gallery. These well known works  are on loan from MOMA, Glenstone and other major collections.  These are what comes to mind when we talk of Whitten’s art.  Like their subjects, these are works we have to look up to see,  just as there subjects were  looked up to in real life. But the Baltimore Museum of Art’s exhibit Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963-2017 focuses on about another part of Whitten’s life work- forty of  his sculptures largely unknown and not made for shows but for his personal exploration in art. Unlike his paintings which are in honor of  well known figures that ar...

THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE CONSTELLATION THEATRE  Grusha knows what love is!   In Bertolt Brecht’s   The Caucasian Chalk Circle, our heroine Grusha (Yesenia Iglesias)  knows the delights of young love  when she meets a soldier Simon (Drew Kopas) .   She knows the   hardships of love   as she sacrifices to save a child who is not hers when she finally after many tests faces the big trial before Azdak the comical judge (Matthew Schleigh who is also the Singer who narrates the show). The Caucasian Chalk Circle   is at once an epic tale with 60 characters from every social class from peasant to royalty, covering decades of political tyranny and warfare— and it  also a folk narrative of a simple but determined servant girl named Grusha caught in this chaos and swift changing tides of fortunes.   Constellation Theatre manages to get both the gigantic scope and the intimate details down right in this production....

EN EL TIEMPO DE LAS MARIPOSA/ IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES AT GALA The Mirabal sisters versus Trujillo, the oppressive dictator of  the Dominican Republic is history.  In the Time of the Butterflies— a play by Caridad Svich, based on the novel of award-winning author Julia Álvarez— is the fictionalized recollection of the surviving sister, Dedé.  Broselianda Hernández is the older Dedé, who tells the story of which she is part, and which is played by Catherine Núñez as young Dedé,.  Karen Romero is Mujer Americana, a writer whose family left the Dominican Republic when she was 10. Together they weave the story of their lives into that of   Dedé’s sisters —Alina Robert as Minerva,  Domínguez del Corral and Lorena Sabogal, as Patria.    What Dedé  tells a young writer of her memories of not just what happens but what she remembers.  Together the sisters  as they grow up, they  develop and share their id...

LUISA MILLER VERDI’S RARELY PERFORMED MASTERPIECE  ONCE AGAIN TAKES ITS PLACE ON THE MET STAGE   Luisa Miller is an early Verdi opera, that has long lost its spot in line as his later works take the top places of the most performed operas.    But even while not so well known,  Luisa Miller   most recently got talked about  a lot in the weeks  before its performance on the Met’s Live in HD   Mostly, people remarked, “I have never seen it  or even heard of it before.” The opening scene is dark, with the chorus of villagers blending into the scenery.  The one bright spot is Luisa who emerges in a bright red dress.  This is the incredible Sonya Yoncheva who gets to sing not only with tenor Piotr Beczala as her lover Rodolfo, Placido Domingo as her father Miller, but also with her rival to be as the wife of  Rudolfo,  Countess Federica, sung by Russian mezzo-soprano Olesya Petrova. For this...

COSI FAN TUTTE  Coney Island and  the Met Opera team up for  THE MET-LIVE-in-HD  “If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.”  That  last line from 1970’s folk rock song pretty much sums up the story line of Cosi Fan Tutte ,  Mozart’s great comic opera first performed in 1790. This latest lavish Met’s production is for modern eyes,  would likely have been  a hit in the 18th century too.   Besides being great music, it’s great fun. A dozen Coney Island performers —including a snake charmer, a fire eater, a brother and sister sword swallowing team, a strongman, contortionists, a bearded lady and a pair of little people—join Broadway star and Tony-winner  Kelli O’Hara (as the indispensable Despina) on the Met’s stage.    Five of the Met’s top voices— Amanda Majeski, Serena Malfi, Ben Bliss, and Adam Plachetka— are   the pairs of young lovers who are matched and t...