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For Christopher Plummer as Baron Von Trapp: An instant Austrian folk song.

'Let's Hang On': A composer's search for his culture

Who wrote ‘Edelweiss'? One composer's search for his cultural home

I'm an American composer with German roots that I can't shake off (and don't really want to). But I love my sweet land of liberty above all. So what defines my place in America's manufactured culture? What defines yours?

Kile Smith

Dec 11, 2012 Articles 6 minute read

Tempesta di Mare: After the Thirty Years War

Postwar celebration, c. 1650

Tempesta di Mare showcased the neglected German composers who plied their trade in the decades that followed the devastation of the Thirty Years War.

Tom Purdom

Dec 11, 2012 Articles 4 minute read

Radvanovsky, Alvarez: Gimmickry for its own sake.

Verdi's "Masked Ball' at the Met

The production that flew too close to the sun

Most critics greeted the Met's new production of A Masked Ball with praise for the singing and catcalls for the production. I'd put it the other way around.

Steve Cohen

Dec 11, 2012 Articles 5 minute read

His animal studies are interesting, sometimes bizarre.

Allen Hart's "Bestiary' at Dalet Art Gallery

Jesters, skeletons and mad queens

You can't look at Allen Hart's fierce depiction of an owl about to pounce and not recognize his emotional link to the subject. Hart is that owl.

Andrew Mangravite

Dec 11, 2012 Articles 2 minute read

De Régnier: Ornate and poetic myth-making.

Two French Symbolists in new translation

What's old is new again

Hats off to translator Brian Stableford and Black Coat Press for presenting American readers with a world of new 19th-Century French fiction not seen here since the 1920s.

Andrew Mangravite

Dec 10, 2012 Articles 3 minute read

Penck's 'I and the Cosmos': Munch's 'Scream,' two world wars later.

Drawings from Munich and London in New York (1st review)

The paradox of personality

In a so far rather thin New York art season, two superb drawing shows stand out, one drawn from the Munich civic collection and the other from London's Courtauld Gallery. Both vividly remind us that nothing in the arts conveys a greater sense of immediacy than a drawing.

Robert Zaller

Dec 09, 2012 Articles 9 minute read

Thompson as Armstrong: Bitter at Ike, grateful to the Mafia.

Teachout's "Satchmo at the Waldorf'

Happy on the outside, but….

The Louis Armstrong I met in 1953 was healthy, energetic and genial; the dying Satchmo we meet in Terry Teachout's one-man play is exhausted and bitter. The contrast is instructive.

Steve Cohen

Dec 09, 2012 Articles 3 minute read

Shafer's silvery voice recalled the young Benita Valente.

Sarah Shafer, shining new soprano

We heard her first

Which of today's Curtis students will become tomorrow's stars? In the case of the gifted and intelligent soprano Sarah Shafer, it seems obvious.

Dec 09, 2012 Articles 3 minute read

Knightley as Anna: Not what Tolstoy had in mind.

"Anna Karenina' on film, again

Where have you gone, Greta Garbo? (Not to mention Leo Tolstoy)

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina has been filmed 13 times in the past century. The fussy, shallow current version, directed by Joe Wright from a Tom Stoppard script, reminds us again that great novels often make disappointing films. Maybe it's time to just read the book. Anna Karenina. A film directed by Joe Wright. For Philadelphia area showtimes, click here.