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Levin: Mozart's first artistic struggle.

Robert Levin deconstructs Mozart

Mozart's stumbling block

As the pianist/professor Robert Levin demonstrated, everything came easily to Mozart the young genius until he had to tackle fugue composition. For the first time, he had to push his imagination. From this process, Mozart's true voice emerged.

Mar 22, 2011 Articles 3 minute read

A year that Eliot scholars have overlooked.

How Paris transformed T.S. Eliot

O, to be a young poet in Paris

In 1910, Paris was the world's intellectual and cultural center and T.S. Eliot was only 22. His year there served as life-long inspiration for his groundbreaking poetry, plays, and criticism.

Richard da Silva

Mar 20, 2011 Articles 2 minute read

Tracy Letts's "Superior Donuts' at the Arden (3rd review)

Uplift vs. apathy in the Windy City

Not by happenstance has Tracy Letts placed this story in Chicago's gritty Uptown section. It would be hard to place such a tale in any setting other than the Windy City.

Jackie Schifalacqua

Mar 19, 2011 Articles 3 minute read

Piffaro at the court of Ferrara

When violinists roamed the streets

Philadelphia's own Renaissance wind band joins forces with a traveling violin band to recreate the first outbursts of the modern multi-section orchestra.

Tom Purdom

Mar 15, 2011 Articles 3 minute read

Hench (left), Fadeley: Beautifully precise. (Photo: Alexander Iziliaev.)

Myth vs. dreams in Wheeldon's "Swan Lake'

It was only a dream? Then give me my money back

In falling back on the framing device of a dream, Christopher Wheeldon's recent adaptation squanders the genuine mythical power of Swan Lake. The same goes for Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan.

Jim Rutter

Mar 15, 2011 Articles 4 minute read

Double's 'Embodied Ghost': When you move, it moves.

Smith, Double and Schmidt at Rosenfeld Gallery

Adventures in cross-fertilization

Can three artists with widely divergent approaches to art meet and mingle harmoniously in one gallery exhibition? In this show each one enhances the other.

Anne R. Fabbri

Mar 15, 2011 Articles 3 minute read

Lee (top), Czajkowski, Apple: Unsubtle sisterhood. (Photo: Jim Roese.)

Sarah Ruhl's "In the Next Room' at the Wilma (3rd review)

Orgasms without love

Sarah Ruhl's new play links the dawn of the electric age with that of the sexual revolution. It's an intriguing idea, and Ruhl makes her points wittily, although they're undermined by a gay subtext and a very campy ending.

Robert Zaller

Mar 15, 2011 Articles 4 minute read

Ijames (left), Spidle: Coming back to life, again.

Tracy Letts's "Superior Donuts' at the Arden (2nd review)

Nurtured by community

The Arden's new production of Superior Donuts differs vastly from the Broadway presentation I saw in December 2009. The Arden's more intimate house enables greater subtlety, endowing Tracy Letts's parable of urban community with a stronger dramatic arc.

Steve Cohen

Mar 12, 2011 Articles 4 minute read

Sottile (left), Lee: Outbursts of despair. (Photo: Jim Roese.)

Sarah Ruhl's "In the Next Room' at the Wilma (2nd review)

Those precious bodily fluids

In the Next Room is Sarah Ruhl's amusingly nostalgic look at a repressed society seemingly liberated by Thomas Edison's newfangled electrical power-driven gadgets. And the Wilma Theater's production is surely a beautiful affair. But is it faithful to the playwright's vision?