Doctor X is a certifiable, industrial-strength nogoodnik making Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi look like Mary Poppins. She sees her face like a squirming bowl of worms. I have no idea what that means. Okay, let’s take it to mean that she does not see herself as a good looking gal. The love of her life (the nurse) has a face like a china plate. Maybe that means she has a face like a beautiful piece of Wedgewood china, like a creamy white cameo against a field of pale, delicate blue. Okay, that makes sense. Let’s go with that one, too.
Picture this; the date is 1815 in the Frankenstein Castle on the Rhine River in Germany. The family gathers for a holiday celebration, with all the peculiarities you would expect from a gathering at the Frankenstein’s Castle. Add to this the flavor of ballet and the thread of a classic Christmas tale, and you have this year’s “Son of a Buttcracker.”
The Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future leads us through a futile attempt to redeem intensely practical Scrooge. Of course, it doesn’t work. She (the Ghost) is a hopeless underachiever. She transports us from time to time and place to place and invariably ends up somewhere other than her intended destination. But Scrooge is irredeemable. He hates Christmas. Durang divides Mrs. Cratchit into two, a nice Mrs. Cratchit married to Bob Cratchit and a nasty Mrs. Cratchit who keeps trying to kill herself by jumping off London Bridge. Scrooge, bah humbugging his way through the play, falls in love with nasty Mrs. Cratchit. Who woulda thunk? But, it seems like a perfect match.
The Reno Chamber Orchestra’s third finalist for Music Director is Maestro Martin Majkut talks to Norm Robins about the history of Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) and growing up in a country going through turbulent times. The Maestro also tells us of what we will be hearing this weekend as he takes the baton for The Reno Chamber Orchestra.
This rarely performed modern masterpiece is another spectacular must-see opera from the Met’s 2019-20 live in HD season. Staring one of the world’s greatest living countertenors, Anthony Roth Costanzo, in the title role and featuring J’Nai Bridges as his Queen, Nefertiti, and Dísella Lárusdóttir as his mother, Queen Tye, it will literally knock your socks off. This is the last opera in Glass’ historic “Portrait Trilogy” (the others were about Einstein and Gandhi) and is a mystical examination of events in the life of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV who took the first known steps towards monotheism two centuries before Moses, and then re-named himself Akhnaten after his one God – Aten – a higher manifestation of the Sun God Ra.
This play is an ensemble piece, a fast-paced tragedy and comedy that will leave you touched by the humanity of it all and laughing uproariously at its comedy. But it is different from ordinary plays. Ordinarily, a play lays some groundwork by showing us the characters and the situation. Then the playwright builds some tension and some conflict. In the denouement at the end the conflicts and tensions are resolved, and all the loose ends are tied up. The play has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
What happens when a couple who seems perfect from the outside decide to go their separate ways? Well, in “Divorce Party” they do just that, have a party to celebrate what they once had and mark their new beginnings.
You won’t want to miss seeing this breathtakingly beautiful production designed by Anthony Minghella and featuring Bunraku traditional Japanese puppetry along with the live singers. Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is one of the world’s best-loved and most-performed operas, not only because of its astonishingly lyrical beauty, but also because of its wholly believable story – a heartrending tragedy brought on by imperialism and the clash of different cultures.
For its second live in HD transmission of the 2019-20 season, the Met has chosen Jules Massenet’s wonderfully melodic, Manon – a deliciously French take on the tragic story of Manon Lescaut (also made into a deliciously Italian opera by Puccini – but that’s another story!). A teenage girl from the country – far too pretty for her own good – is sent alone to the outskirts of Paris to be met by her cousin and escorted to a convent. Her non-too vigilant, and non-too-upstanding, cousin allows her to catch a glimpse of the decidedly un-convent-like life of actresses who are enjoying the company of wealthy “patrons”–and the rest, as we say, is history.
