By Jane Rosenberg With enough Juggling stunts to rival Cirque du Soleil, Philip Glass’s opera, Akhnaten, tumbled into town from London in a new staging co-produced by English National Opera and LA Opera. It was a night to remember, both for its failings and for its strengths. When Glass’s meditation on the life of Akhnaten… Read More Opera: Philip Glass’s “Akhnaten” at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
By Jane Rosenberg All true art refers to the art that preceded it, whether following as a logical outgrowth of earlier investigations or flipping those investigations upside down. Without Giotto, there would be no Titian, without Titian there would be no Delacroix, and so forth. As for dance, suffice it to say that without Petipa… Read More Three U.S. Ballet Companies Celebrate Forsythe at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
By Jane Rosenberg Meditative, spare, hypnotic, fascinating, and tender – words that aptly express the experience of seeing Deborah Hay’s Figure a Sea. Her minimalist aesthetic combined with her insistence on the poetry of everyday movements forge a quiet yet compelling inner dialogue for each dancer and in turn offers the audience a window… Read More Dance: Deborah Hay’s “Figure a Sea” at Freud Playhouse, UCLA
By Jane Rosenberg Verdi’s Macbeth, interpreted by a consummate conductor and orchestra with magnificent singing from the chorus and principals, made for a powerful night of opera and a brilliant opener to LA Opera’s 2016-17 season. With a narrative rife with the evil machinations of that tortured pair of king-slayers, Lord and Lady Macbeth, Verdi… Read More LA Opera Presents Verdi’s “Macbeth” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
By Jane Rosenberg Hershey Felder, like Leonard Bernstein, the subject of his one-man musical play, is a passionate educator, offering general audiences musical insight into the creative process of composers from Irving Berlin to Beethoven. With skillful piano technique, nuanced vocals, and strong acting chops, Felder explores Bernstein’s life and times. What was most engaging,… Read More Hershey Felder as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
By Jane Rosenberg In Alexei Ratmansky’s Symphony #9 and Serenade After Plato’s Symposium, we find a choreographer at one with the music – the dances elegant, inventive, exuberant, and contemporary. Symphony #9 in E-Flat Major by Shostakovich functions beautifully as a ballet score, with sections ranging from jaunty and comical to dark and melodramatic. Ratmansky… Read More Ballet: American Ballet Theatre Presents an all Ratmansky Program at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles
By Jane Rosenberg The stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion came alive last night with the insistent pulse of ten male bodies bouncing, spinning, flipping, and diving. With contagious joy, Mourad Merzouki’s company of Brazilian dancers, Compagnie Käfig, turned street dance into theatrical dance, and in the process made an artistic, political, and social statement… Read More Dance: Compagnie Käfig at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles
By Jane Rosenberg As subject matter for a full-length story ballet, Romeo and Juliet has it all, from tender romance to violent passion, from youth and hope to despair and death, from horseplay to swordplay. It’s no wonder that so many choreographers have found it irresistible. Of all the musical settings of the play, Sergei… Read More Los Angeles Ballet Performs Frederic Ashton’s Romeo and Juliet at Royce Hall
By Jane Rosenberg With its poignant narrative of struggling Bohemians in 19th century Paris and a score of lyric beauty rife with atmosphere and soaring melodies, La Bohème can melt even the hardest hearts and entertain the most demanding audiences. Certainly the LA Opera thinks so and has mounted the Herbert Ross production for the… Read More Los Angeles Opera’s La Bohème at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
By Jane Rosenberg Al Dubin, the lyricist who, along with Harry Warren, brought us such memorable songs as “We’re in the Money,” “42nd Street,” “You’re Getting to Be a Habit With Me,” “Lullaby of Broadway,” and “September in the Rain,” is the subject of the new musical, I Only Have Eyes for You, currently running… Read More I Only Have Eyes for You: The Life and Lyrics of Al Dubin at the Montalban Theatre, Hollywood
The International Review of Music 