Sharpenicity

  Welcome back to Sharpenicity         This week specials are something to sing about!   A Medieval Christmas concert         A  jazz opera MET in HD opera

  Eurydice — The Met Opera’s production  In Live in HD Opera —is stunning.  There is so much to say for the cast:  the amazing Erin Morley as Eurydice, Barry Banks  properly evil as  Hades, Nathan Berg  as her beloved father, Josha Hopkins as her lover/husband as Orpheus one.  Sticking by his side is his musical self, countertenor  (and breakdancer) Jakub Józef Orliński, The Three Stones —Chad Shelton, Ronnita Miller and Stacey Tappan—are an updated but essential addition to the  classic story.  Sarah Ruhl wrote the play, Mary Zimmerman the staging, Jakub Józef Orliński conducts.  Matthew Aucoin, the  31 year old composer now joins the Who’s Who list  of composers who have  written about Orphesus.  ( He  has a new book, The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera.) About Eurydice, there is no connect with any possible divine or  historical character. She was born in stories that became poems ...

  Fairytale operas end so happily—Cinderella gets to marry the prince, Mythical figures on the other hand usually end up in a  bloody grusesome death scene.  We know from the news that while Cinderella might have gone off to be a princess, that is far from the happy ending for real life princesses!  But what to be made of the mythical females, like the princess Iphigenia who gets slain so that  Greek ships will  to have wind for their sails to Troy.  The opera  “. . . (Iphigenia)”  opens to ancient sailors thundering and roaring, drinking  and cavorting.  One Iphigenia after another is brought on stage, and led to the altar to be slaughtered like a goat for a celebratory feast to appease the female goddess Arthmis for the slaying of her favorite deer.     How wlll this ever end?   The myth spinners who go on for centuries have offered many versions in opera and paintings and movies (ione happy ending favorite is ...

  “Time is relative.” While the two year break from a live concert is a long time, the selections for The Folger Consort’s A Medieval Christmas   go back a thousand years, from late 11th century   Aquitaine and Catalonia to 14th century Italy   and 13th and 15th-century England.   The program included  exciting vocal music in Latin and early English as well as instrumental arrangements  Lesser-known earlier carols, such as “Miri it is” and “Edi beo thu hevene queene” flowed  into  later familiar English carols such as “Ah, my dear son,” “There is no rose,” and “Lullay, lullow,”  Soprano Emily Noël was exquisite in delivering vocal music selections. Multi-instrumentalists Dan Meyers on medieval winds and percussions and Mary Springfels on vielle and citole  were in top form.  Special thanks to Artistic Directors Robert Eisenstein and Christopher Kendall for this tradition by the Folger Consort. While modern music is an ind...

BANDSTAND The story behind Bandstand has both the nostalgic and the heartbreak of the years when soldiers, marines and sailers returned from the battlefields of World War II in the 1940s to rebuild their lives to “Just Like It Was Before”.   Everyone in this is a star, starting with the couple.   Zack Zaromatidis plays Donny Novitski   and Jennifer Elizabeth Smith as Julia Trojan who share a tragedy that  will bring them together through music.   Roxy York as her mother and the guys  in the band keep cracking one liners as well as share their own wisdom and heartbreaks.   If the audience at the National Theatre had been the ones that were in the 1945 audience to vote for The Donny Nova Band to be winners of a national competition,   their applause alone would have put them over the top immediately.   For from being just another nostalgic piece,   the music and the dancing in Bandstand are first class winners. At National...

TIMON OF ATHENS Timon of Athens is one of those longtime “underrated”   plays by Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, one that everyone comments they have never seen before. Simon Godwin’s directs this stunning production of a tale worth telling, most befitting of our money driven time. There are two sides to every coin, and in this parable that revolves around money there are two sides to Timon, the main character.   In a dream world, Timon lavishes gold and gifts to buy friendships and fun.   One day the money’s gone and so are all the friends that money can buy.   Trading her golden bejeweled costumes, Timon dons rags, retreating from bright lights, to living in a dark cave.   Kathryn Hunter (the first British woman to play King Lear, as  well as other classical male roles)   stars as Timon. Hunter brings out the humanity in this strong yet vulnerable character who goes from happy party girl to crazed homeless misanthrope. Having seen T...

THE AMEN CORNER Mia Ellis has many roles to fill in Shakespeare Theatre’s production of James Baldwin’s  The Amen Corner.   She is Reverend Margaret, the inspired pastor of a struggling congregation in Harlem. She is the wife of Luke (Chike Johnson), a shabby musician husband who re-enters her life ten years later as he is dying.  She is mother to David (Antonio Michael Woodard),  their teenage son who is struggling with how to live his own life. There are moments when Margaret is like Greek tragic figure with her entrenched flaw of her righteousness that she has been set apart by God.As one so chosen   who does God’s will in all circumstances. she looms like an Old Testament prophet, her message flowing   in   her passionate sermons from her pulpit through the congregation, inspiring spectacular singing and dancing.   She maintains her position in divisive meetings with the church elders in her kitchen on how they should conduct their ...