New York, New York
LIMELIGHT’S GUIDE TO THE BEST ARTS EVENTS IN THE BIG APPLE this January
Classical Music
Sequentia’s Riddles
The Old English Beowulf, the Icelandic Edda, and poems from the 10th-century Exeter Book give a glimpse into a time far from ours yet near in spirit – a world of singing poets, warriors, seers and philosophers. Benjamin Bagby directs musicians who sing and play harps and flutes in a witty and pungent program of chants, songs and spoken riddles.
Dudamel’s Mahler
Gustavo Dudamel’s two weeks with the NY Philharmonic conclude with Mahler’s Song of the Earth, a work of surpassing beauty and an impassioned contemplation of the transience of life, with joys, sorrows, love and a haunting goodbye set against nature’s eternal self-renewal. The LA Phil chief also conducts Schubert’s Fourth.
modern masters
Kronos Quartet has been at the vanguard of what’s innovative and exciting in music for more than 40 years. The ensemble returns to Carnegie Hall for a program that reveals the musicians’ remarkable gifts for expanding the range and context of the string quartet in music by Glass, Gordon, Dessner, Mazzoli, Riley and Reich.
Jörg Widmann
As well as being a leading composer, Widmann is a clarinet virtuoso and conductor. Here he is joined by the International Contemporary Ensemble, praised by The New Yorker as “the new gold standard for new music.” Together they reveal the power, energy, wit and daring that make Widmann one of the most exciting voices of our time.
Dean and Young
The new Chief Conductor of the SSO conducts the NY Phil in Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Britten’s Four Sea Interludes and the New York Premiere of Brett Dean’s Cello Concerto. “The individual battles against the masses” in many of his concertos, but “the Cello Concerto is more concerned with collaboration than conflict,” says the composer.
Opera
Blood Moon
Opening the enterprising Prototype Festival, Garrett Fisher’s Taiko-infused opera-theatre piece concerns three characters who encounter the past on the night of a full moon: a nephew who returns to the mountain-top where he left his aunt to die 40 years earlier, the ghost of the aunt he abandoned, and the moon that presides over this night of reckoning.
La Traviata at the Met
Michael Mayer’s new staging received mixed notices last season but two star sopranos make this worth a look. Aleksandra Kurzak sings the role of Violetta, the opera’s tragic heroine, with rising star Lisette Oropesa taking over laer in the run. Tenor Dmytro Popov sings her lover, Alfredo, and baritone Quinn Kelsey is Alfredo’s father. Karel Mark Chichon conducts.
Ellen West
Ricky Ian Gordon and Frank Bidart’s operatic poem plunges into the emotional challenges of a woman struggling with perceptions of her body, her relationship with food and the world closing in around her. Inspired by one of the earliest cases of existential analysis, the work examines the lives of psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger and his patient, Ellen West.
Damnation of Faust
Berlioz’s compelling take on the Faust legend returns for the first time in a decade, with an impressive lineup. High-flying tenors Bryan Hymel (if he doesn’t cancel) and Michael Spyres sing the conflicted Faust opposite Elīna Garanča as the forsaken Marguerite and Ildar Abdrazakov as the malevolent Méphistophélès. Edward Gardner conducts.
Mattei’s Winterreise
The great Swedish baritone Peter Mattei’s vocal gifts and acting chops will be on display when he brings Schubert’s dramatically riveting song cycle Winterreise to Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. Pianist Lars David Nilsson repeats a partnership that earned them rave notices – and a five-star review in Limelight – for their recent recording of the work for BIS.
Musicals & Theatre
costanza in cabaret
Before he was an opera singer, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo was a Broadway baby moving from community theatre to the Great White Way. In his cabaret at the Guggenheim Museum, he revisits his childhood, drawing on the leading ladies, crooners, and icons that helped form him. And, in a twist, he finds just enough low to balance out his highs.
All-star Aussie Medea
Euripides’ controversial icon is reborn in Simon Stone’s contemporary rewrite. Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale face off as a husband and wife in the throes of an unraveling marriage. Transposing the devastation of Greek tragedy to a modern American home, Stone’s stripped-bare staging throws the couple’s every raw emotion into stark relief.
linney plays lucy
My Name is Lucy Barton is a haunting new solo play that sold-out at the Bridge Theatre in London. Laura Linney plays Lucy, a woman who wakes after an operation to find – much to her surprise – her mother at the foot of her bed. During their days-long visit, Lucy tries to understand her past and works to come to terms with her family. Richard Eyre directs.
bob & carol & ted & alice (the musical)
A bittersweet take on the sexual revolution. The conventional lives of two successful young couples are stirred and shaken when they open their minds to the changing attitudes around them. Duncan Sheik and Jonathan Marc Sherman evoke the confusions of the time, and the lessons of marriage and emotional commitment.
Greater Clements
Sam Hunter’s new play takes place in a fictional town in Idaho, a mining community where properties are being purchased by wealthy out-of-state people, forcing out lifelong residents. Maggie is on the verge of shutting down her family’s Mine Tour. The author’s humor, keen observation and deep sensitivity shows how hard it might be to leave the past behind
New York, New York
LIMELIGHT’S GUIDE TO THE BEST ARTS EVENTS IN THE BIG APPLE
Australians are the world’s greatest tourists, right? And no city offers quite as much in the way of artist thrills and spills as the Big Apple. After a year spent finding his feet, Limelight Editor-at-Large Clive Paget has hunted down the big names and haunted the city’s glittering venues. He’s also found unexpected performance spaces, from clubs to churches and even the odd cemetery. From the glamour of the Met and the buzz of Broadway to classical music hideaways and, yes, even some free stuff, our insider’s guide aims to be everything an adventurous cultural tourist needs.