David williams patterson schwartz1/22/2024 ![]() ![]() Along with an impressive team of puppeteers.īoston Opera Collaborative | Shirley-Eustis House, Roxbury Oct. Chinese countertenor Chuanyuan Liu sings the title role. The family-friendly puppet parable “Monkey” promises elements of “The Wizard of Oz” and exceptional production values. Mexican-born composer Jorge Sosa, who created White Snake’s 2019 immigration opera, “I Am a Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams,” is maybe halfway between. Librettist Cerise Jacobs’s activist opera company has included work by significant composers and composers virtually unknown in these parts. White Snake Projects | Emerson Paramount Center Theatre Sept. In a time when anti-Asian hate crimes have been increasing, can the BLO creative team turn Puccini’s sentimental and even repellant stereotyping into living drama? Soprano Karen Chia-Ling Ho sings the title role. As the result of BLO’s three-year Butterfly Project, a study in authentic story-telling, Cio-Cio San (called Butterfly) will no longer be a timid turn-of-the-century Japanese geisha, but a pre-Pearl Harbor American nightclub entertainer, and instead of yearning for her American lover to return to Japan, she’ll be trapped in an American internment camp. Given the corniness of the Italian libretto and the American melodrama it’s based on, the fresh look might be most welcome (unlike, say, Boston Lyric’s cockamamie, musically destructive notion last year of performing the four acts of Puccini’s “La Bohème” in reverse order). ![]() One of the world’s most beloved operas is being re-examined for the way it has misrepresented its Asian characters. Tickets are free.īoston Lyric Opera | Emerson Colonial Theatre Sept. AR and AI might be even better suited to Machover than to Wagner. And it will be staged by MIT’s Jay Scheib, who directed what was probably this year’s most internationally-discussed opera production, the augmented-reality version of Wagner’s “Parsifal” at the Bayreuth Festival. This new production stars ascending superstar bass-baritone Davóne Tines (who has already thrilled Boston audiences with his Celebrity Series concert in April and for his magnificent performance as Malcolm X, in Andrew Davis’s “X,” with Boston’s Odyssey Opera). The score is an inventive and often hauntingly beautiful arrangement of synthesizer, live instruments, and electronically expanded instruments, which Machover calls “hyper-instruments,” a compelling amalgamation of minimalism, medieval, Wagner and rock. The impressive Bridge recording, conducted by Machover, is still in print. Dick’s semi-autobiographical sci-fi novel of the same name. It was Machover’s first opera, based on Philp K. Commissioned in 1987 for the 10th anniversary of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, two years later “VALIS” had its American premiere, under the direction of the composer at MIT’s Media Lab. I can hardly think of a more exciting way to begin the new classical season than with a newly updated revival of Tod Machover’s shimmering electronic opera “ VALIS” (an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligent System). MIT Theater Arts Performance Space, Cambridge Sept. Opera | Symphony Orchestras | Visiting Artists | Vocal Music | Solo & Chamber Music | Chamber Orchestras | Early Music | Contemporary Music There’s no shortage of great music in this part of the world. But all the events I know of are here to which my own prejudices and predilections encourage me to anticipate with pleasure.Īnd if these musical events aren’t enough, please don’t forget to check listings of concerts - especially free concerts, student concerts, and faculty recitals - offered at the various schools and conservatories. I make no claim that this is an “objective” list, and I don’t personally recommend all of them. Here’s a list of the most notable events on the classical calendar from just after Labor Day through just before Christmas. From the free to the pricey, from the intimate to the grandiose, no one in a 10-mile radius of Back Bay can complain about our range of offerings. ![]() Facebook Email Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director Andris Nelsons conducts Holst's "The Planets." (Courtesy Aram Boghosian)įew cities the size of Boston offer quite as much classical music. ![]()
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