New York, New York
LIMELIGHT’S GUIDE TO THE BEST ARTS EVENTS IN THE BIG APPLE this JULY
Classical Music
Tanglewood
When all is quiet in New York, New Yorkers head for Tanglewood in the beautiful Berkshire Hills. The 2019 season will see Boston Symphony Music Director Andris Nelsons leading 14 programs, including the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts’ The Brightness of Light, written especially for Renée Fleming and Rod Gilfry.
Pekka’s Four Seasons
Finnish virtuoso Pekka Kuusisto, known for his improvisatory flair and intense, intimate playing takes on one of the hallmarks of the violin repertoire, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, interspersed with folk music from Finland and Norway. Andrew Manze and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra set a lively tone with Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances.
Pekka’s Night Music
Alongside spirited bassist Knut Erik Sundquist, maverick violinist and ACO Collective leader Pekka Kuusisto performs an exhilarating after-hours recital, blending the beauty of Bach with Scandinavian folk music. Part of the Mostly Mozart Festival, the concert takes place high above the city in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse with wine, candlelight and the NY skyline.
Mozart & Brahms
Louis Langrée and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra explore Brahms’ Third Symphony, while Mozart specialist Martin Helmchen plays the most Romantic of Mozart’s piano concertos, the powerful D Minor. Tying the two composers together, Helmchen will play cadenzas by Clara Schumann, Brahms’s close confidante, muse, and collaborator.
Ashley Fure & Anna Thorvaldsdottir
In a free concert as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival, immerse yourself in the sound worlds of pioneering composers Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Ashley Fure, and Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir. International Contemporary Ensemble play Thorvaldsdottir’s Sequences and Illumine, Fure’s Something to Hunt and Snæbjörnsdóttir’s Esoteric Mass.
Opera
La Straniera
The young singers of Teatro Nuovo perform a Bellini bel canto rarity. Written in 1829 to follow up Il Pirata, whose La Scala debut had made the young Sicilian the most sought-after composer in Italy, it is one of the most gorgeously melodic scores in all of opera, and at the same time one of the most uncompromisingly focused on psychological drama.
Kosky’s Flute
In case you missed it in Adelaide, Mozart’s opera as reimagined by director Barrie Kosky and British theater group 1927 is here for a run in New York. The result is a spectacular kaleidoscope of 1920s silent films, Weimar cabaret, and the dark whimsy of fairy tales. A stellar cast from Komische Oper Berlin interacts with vividly rendered animated projections in a live fantasia.
Tanglewood’s Walküre
Get out of town and head to Tanglewood to catch Andris Nelsons leading a concert performance of Wagner’s Die Walküre, with a cast including Amber Wagner (Sieglinde), Christine Goerke (Brünnhilde), Stephanie Blythe (Fricka), Simon O’Neill (Siegmund), James Rutherford (Wotan) and Franz-Josef Selig (Hunding) over two days and three performances.
Korngold’s Heliane
SummerScape opera presents a US premiere. Das Wunder der Heliane features an erotic love triangle between a despot, The Ruler; his neglected wife, Heliane; and a messianic Stranger. An allegorical tale, Heliane premiered to acclaim in Hamburg in 1927. A bus will take you to and from Lincoln Center to Bard (two hours) on the day of the performance.
The Thieving Magpie
Teatro Nuovo presents Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra, a rare “opera semiseria” where characters from the world of “opera buffa” – villagers, ordinary working-class people – have serious things happen to them. The heroine of La Gazza is tried and condemned for theft, and is on her way to the gallows when rescue arrives (yes, the titular magpie was the real thief of the missing silver).
Musicals & Theatre
Mark Morris
The “Mozart of modern dance” returns with a new dance work commissioned by Lincoln Center that illuminates Satie’s playful Sports et Divertissements. Then comes Empire Garden, an exploration of Ives’s lyrical – and at times, whimsical – Piano Trio. The performance culminates in V, a triumphant and virtuosic piece set to Schumann’s exuberant Piano Quintet.
The Black Clown
Cry to the world/That all might understand:/I was once a black clown/But now—/I’m a man! Fusing vaudeville, gospel, opera, jazz, and spirituals, The Black Clown brings Langston Hughes’ 1931 poem to life in a new music-theatre work. Powerful and prescient, it shows a Black man’s resilience against a legacy of oppression. Featuring bass-baritone Davóne Tines
Handbagged
The Iron Lady and The Queen. Born six months apart, each woman had a destiny that would change the world. But when the stiff upper lip softened and the gloves came off, which one had the upper hand? Transferring from London, Moira Buffini’s wicked new play imagines what the world’s most powerful women talk about behind closed palace doors.
Coriolanus in the Park
For the first time since 1979, Free Shakespeare in the Park presents Coriolanus, the Bard’s blistering drama about a general voted into power by a populace hungry for change, and the unraveling that follows. Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan directs a modern-day version of this riveting epic of democracy and demagoguery.
Mojada
MacArthur Genius Award-winning playwright Luis Alfaro returns with the New York premiere of his stirring drama about love, immigration, and sacrifice, inspired by the Ancient Greek story of Medea. Alfaro’s reinterpretation follows a young Mexican mother who gives up everything to bring her son to America, only to find America demands even more.
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.