New York, New York

LIMELIGHT’S GUIDE TO THE BEST ARTS EVENTS IN THE BIG APPLE this June

Classical Music

Corigliano’s AIDS Symphony

The New York Phil and Music Director Jaap van Zweden play John Corigliano’s dedication to loved ones lost in the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. David Fray plays Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 24, and end the evening with a Nightcap in the Kaplan Penthouse as John Corigliano presents music by composers whose voices were cut short by AIDS.

Terpsichore in the cloisters

MetLiveArts at The Met Cloisters presents a concert in the atmospheric medieval Fuentidueña Chapel. Praetorius’s dances from Terpsichore, named for the Greek muse of the dance, are a joyous affair. The program brings together Sonnambula, the US’s leading interpreters of Renaissance repertoire for an afternoon of Renaissance splendor.

Philadelphia Orchestra & Yannick

Two “lost” works bookend an all-Russian program. Stravinsky’s recently discovered Funeral Song is a memorial to Rimsky-Korsakov. There’s also Rachmaninov’s First Symphony, a notorious disaster at its 1897 premiere. These frame Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, beloved for its biting wit and fiery solo part, played here by Beatrice Rana.

Bryce Dessner & Roomful of Teeth

Situated somewhere between erotic heat and cool classicism, the work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe obliterates the high-low divide. Projections accompany Bryce Dessner’s new score performed by daring eight-person vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) examines how we look and are looked at, bringing us face to face with our humanity.

Manning the Canon

Part of the Stonewall 50-year celebrations, pianist Steven Blier leads a  quartet of vocalists in a musical portrait of life, love and loss in the world of gay men. With music spanning the course of two centuries, the program features works ranging from Schubert’s Der Gondelfahrer to John Wallowitch’s Bruce, with songs by Poulenc, Tchaikovsky, Griffes, Bernstein, Porter, Blitzstein and more.

Opera

Chunky in Heat

New York Opera Fest presents the premiere of an opera based on a libretto by celebrated author A. M. Homes. Chunky in Heat tells the story of a privileged young girl who comes of age poolside at her family’s home in the canyons of Los Angeles, with music by Jason Cady, Paula Matthusen, Erin Rogers, Aaron Siegel, Shelley Washington and Matthew Welch.

Heiner Goebbels’ latest creation

Everything That Ever Happened and Would Happen fuses literature and politics with classical music and jazz in Heiner Goebbels’ sideways view of European history from WWI to now. Part-performance, part-construction site, it re-enacts history on the verge of collapse, only to be rebuilt as if nothing had happened.

Dido & Aeneas

What’s left, when all hope of love is lost? The Angel’s Share presents Purcell’s masterpiece in Brooklyn’s eerie Green-Wood Catacombs – one of the oldest structures in a 478-acre National Historic Landmark Cemetery. If you need any further persuasion, the performance includes a free whiskey tasting at sunset overlooking New York harbor and the Manhattan skyline.

prisoner of the state

The NY Phil’s season finale is the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang’s new opera in a fully staged production. A retelling of Beethoven’s Fidelio, it chronicles a woman’s attempt to rescue her husband from unjust political imprisonment. The action unfolds around the musicians of the Orchestra, who are both observers of the story and participants in the prison.

Stonewall the opera

New York City Opera present Iain Bell’s explosive new American opera that captures the rage, grit, humor and hope of the LGBTQ+ community’s uprising in a Greenwich Village dance club one hot night in June 1969. The work follows a diverse group of characters whose lives collide at that pivotal moment in history when they find the courage to fight back.

Musicals & Theatre

Long Lost

Donald Margulies’ new play is a funny, unsettling, ultimately moving piece about the limits of compassion and filial obligation. Billy appears out-of-the-blue in his estranged brother David’s Wall Street office and tries to re-insert himself into the comfortable life David has built. But what does Billy really want? And how much can family bonds smooth over past rifts?

We’re Only Alive For A Short Amount Of Time

David Cale’s new musical is a memoir of hope, family, and transcendence. Tony Award winner Robert Falls directs as Cale reflects on memories of growing up, escaping his parents’ fraught marriage by singing in his bedroom, and tending to birds in his backyard animal hospital. Until one day things change…

Much ado about nothing

Shakespeare in the Park is back! Kenny Leon directs a new take on the Bard’s comedy of romantic retribution and miscommunication. A community is celebrating a break from an ongoing war. But not all is peaceful as young lovers are caught in a tumultuous courtship – until love proves the ultimate trickster, and undoes them all.

Tootsie

Dorothy Michaels is the biggest thing to hit Broadway in years. Talented, outspoken and an inspiration to everyone, she’s too good to be true. Because squeezed into Dorothy’s sensible pumps is Michael Dorsey, an out-of-work actor willing to do anything for a job. Santino Fontana stars in David Yazbek’s musical, which has already earned 11-Tony-nominations.

Oklahoma

Over 75 years after Rodgers & Hammerstein reinvented the American musical, this is Oklahoma! stripped down to reveal the psychological truths at its core. Daniel Fish’s production upends the sunny romance of a farmer and a cowpoke allowing the classic musical – and our USA – to be seen in a whole new light. The show has received eight Tony nominations.

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.