Performing Arts

The light-filled rehearsal room for Windmill’s newest show has all the signs of creative chaos. On a props table sit plastic tiaras, a boom box and an umbrella. Across one wall, sheets of paper map out the show with scene titles: “stop, slammer time”, “family that stays together, slays together”, and “princess of drop”.

One-off performance in London brings together people who have experienced vocal loss with professional singers

For its first post-Covid tour, the New York Philharmonic has landed at the unlikely town of Peenemünde. At the westernmost tip of the Baltic Sea island of Usedom, Peenemünde was home to the infamous Nazi rocket testing facility, home to rocket scientist Werner von Braun, and also home to over 10,000 concentration camp and labour camp victims; they made the first V2 rockets there. The visit, says the Usedom Music Festival’s Executive Director Thomas Hummel, sets an example for peace, freedom and diversity.

Anna Netrebko is putting the record straight in an interview with Le Monde in anticipation of her recital at the Philharmonie de Paris on May 25. The soprano told the French news source that she was not guilty of anything and revealed that Peter Gelb went against the terms of her withdrawal from “Turandot.”

The lights dimmed, a hush came over the auditorium and the orchestra struck up the first notes of the overture. This ritual has taken place thousands of times at Kyiv’s grand opera house over the past century, but the performance on Saturday afternoon was something out of the ordinary.

Something nearly slipped past our radar. I fully expected that we'd have trolls on our website saying, "if there's no pit, then I'm not going". That never materialized, because there is a pit for this show. We never even assumed for one minute that this would be allowed at United Supermarkets Arena, because, to my knowledge, it really hasn't happened before. It's also for that reason (and one other big one) that we didn't even ask.

The time between the announcement of the Tony Award Nominations and the Tony Awards ceremony itself is commonly known in the industry as “awards season,” during which time many other annual theater awards are also unveiled that recognize achievements. Unlike the Tony Awards, most other theater awards also...

Anne-Marie Duff’s aspiring singer transfixes in a didactic family saga; My Fair Lady feels strangely vacant. Plus, a stifling tale of dysfunctional siblings

This year’s Glyndebourne season opens with a new production of Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers, conducted by Robin Ticciati and directed by Melly Still. The first opera by a female composer to be performed at the festival, it has a difficult history and a somewhat ambiguous reputation. Begun in 1902 to a French libretto by Smyth’s sometime lover Henry Brewster, it was first performed in Leipzig, in German, in 1906, in a much cut version that Smyth loathed, before being heard in London in 1909 with the libretto in an English translation by Smyth herself, considered so problematic that posthumous attempts have been made to rewrite it. An urtext edition by Martyn Bennett going back to the original French version is given here.

Classical Movements has announced its summer slate for its Secret Garden Concerts in May and June 2022. For the purposes of this article, our focus will be on vocal and operatic performances only. The company will feature performances of “Le Nozze di Figaro” starring Musicians from the Prague Summer Nights...

Sadler’s Wells was sparsely populated for the London opening of Rambert’s programme of three short works. Perhaps it’s a sign of how hard it is to get audiences back to live dance. Perhaps it reveals Rambert’s difficulties in remaking its mark as the UK’s foremost contemporary dance company under a new director, Benoit Swan Pouffer, who took charge at the end of 2018. Or maybe its normal audience were watching Rangers lose the Europa League final.

The Kyiv Opera reopened three months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. According to the Guardian, the opera opened on May 21 with “the Barber of Seville” and received a 10-minute standing ovation. Performances will only take place on weekend afternoons with a maximum of 300 tickets...

The Mariinsky Theatre has announced the first part of the “Stars of the White Nights: The 30th Mariinsky festival in St Petersburg.”. The festival, which is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, is run by fierce Putin supporter Valery Gergiev and usually features several international artists. However, that is not the case this year, as many international artists have canceled all performances in Russia due to the war.

The National Theatre has just released this devastating play online. It has a wonderful performance from Rafe Spall. A family in mourning. A man in crisis. After the death of his dad, Michael is powerless and angry. In a state of heartbreak, he confronts the difficult truths about his father’s...

Soprano Olga Pasichnyk will headline “An Evening of Ukrainian and Polish Song” on June 22, 2022 at the University of Miami. The showcase, which will be presented as part of the fourth annual Frost Chopin Festival, will also feature pianists Ewa Poblocka, Kevin Kenner, Malvyn Lai, Katherine Liu, and Saaya Hara.