Jonathan Franzen’s ‘The Kraus Project’

Why was Karl Kraus so angry? Well, you’d angry too if….uh….

Karl Kraus, the Austrian playwright, editor and social critic, was little known to today’s English-speaking audience— until now. Thanks to the novelist and Kraus scholar Jonathan Franzen, the angry old man of German satire lives anew.

Andrew Mangravite

Oct 05, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

Yannick leads Beethoven’s Ninth (2nd review)

Yannick leaps off a musical cliff

Yannick Nézet-Séguin is emerging as an artist of notable imagination and daring. In the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth he was maybe a little too daring.

Oct 05, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

The magic of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’

Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and the way we were

For one night, Singing’ in the Rain transformed my ordinary childhood into something wonderful. It’s still performing the same function for my adulthood.

Virginia Alpaugh

Oct 01, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

Yannick leads Beethoven’s Ninth (1st review)

In the quest for goose bumps, size matters

Yannick-Nézet Séguin’s version of Beethoven’s Ninth inadvertently demonstrated that the same work can be performed in radically different ways. He made the most of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s major asset: Its size.

Tom Purdom

Oct 01, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Opera Philadelphia’s ‘Nabucco’ (2nd review)

The mightiest man on Earth? (and other flaws in Verdi’s Nabucco)

Nabucco’s characters lack depth, and the music is less accomplished than what Verdi would write just a few years later. So director/designer Thaddeus Strassberger was indeed clever to mount this Nabucco as it might have been performed in Italy in the 1840s.

Steve Cohen

Oct 01, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Jane Austen's ‘Emma’ at the Lantern

Jane Austen’s 21st-Century problem

If you love Jane Austen, you’ll love the Lantern’s lovely adaptation of Emma. But if Austen’s novels were force-fed to you in high school, you might gag. In our age of instant gratification and short attention spans, therein lies a cultural challenge.

Alaina Johns

Oct 01, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Opera Philadelphia’s ‘Nabucco’ (1st review)

Jehovah vs. Baal, then and now

Verdi’s dramatically clunky Nabucco was a broadly drawn metaphor for Austria’s domination of Italy. Thaddeus Strassberger constructs a play around a play in an effort to mask some of the drama’s weaknesses. Its virtues include a fiery new soprano and a final moment of genuine theatrical magic.

Sep 30, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Kafka’s ‘The Castle’ at FringeArts Festival

A Kafka who’s not Kafkaesque

Unlike Kafka’s The Trial, the protagonist in The Castle is no victim. He’s an ambitious fellow who might even be a stand-in for Kafka, or even the messiah. Or both.

Steve Cohen

Sep 28, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

Philadelphia Orchestra’s Tchaikovsky opening

Back to the future with Yannick and Anne-Sophie

What have the Russians done for us lately? Well, Tchaikovsky is timeless, as the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter reminded us on opening night.

Steve Cohen

Sep 28, 2013 · Articles · 2 minute read

Orchestra 2001’s opening weekend (2nd review)

Young composer, astonishing head

Sometimes I dread poems set to music. But when it works, it’s art. Chris Rogerson's Fishing was one of three new works, each giving a prominent role to the keyboard.

Lesley Valdes

Sep 28, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read