FALL/WINTER 2011 -Vol 19, Issue 2

On the Cover:
Back Street Ballet, silkscreen, by Meredith Mayer.
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Cool Brittania

Da Capo Chamber Players
Merkin Concert Hall, New York,
October 10, 2011
By Anne Eisenberg

The veteran Da Capo Chamber Players have a knack for programming, and on October 10 at Merkin Concert Hall they showed that flair yet again when they opened their 41st season with “Cool Britannia”– an innovative program featuring contemporary chamber music by composers born in the British Isles.
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Gods and Robots

Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera,
American Repertory Theatre with MIT’s Fast Arts Festival and Chicago
Opera Theater, Cutler Majestic Theatre,
Boston, Massachusetts, 25 March 2011;
and Prometheus Bound,
American Repertory Theater, Oberon,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 29 March 2011

By Leann Davis Alspaugh

You know you’re in a theatre full of science geeks when the line “What is this Death…is it a form of entropy?” gets a big laugh. Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera made its American premiere in March 2011 at Boston’s Cutler Majestic Theatre, a co-production of American Repertory Theater, MIT’s Fast Arts Festival, and Chicago Opera Theater. The production brought together composer Tod Machover, poet laureate Robert Pinsky as librettist, director Diane Paulus, and Gil Rose conducting the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP). The MIT Media Lab assembled high-tech forces on stage and off, ranging from remote-controlled Operabots and video-infused periaktoi to “sound-producing Hyperinstruments.” A bank of 40 computers and a wireless network ran the software that controlled the robot choreography and coordinated the sound and video environment. Puppeteers were stationed on the catwalk above the stage to assume manual control in case the robots ran amok.
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20th Century Operas in the 21st Century

by Leonard J. Lehrman

Librettist/director/teacher Stephen Wadsworth had two big debuts in NY this past fall, first at the Met, then at City Opera. At the former, he took over the staging of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov when German director Peter Stein refused to subject himself to the indignities US customs imposes on foreign visitors in the name of security. At the latter, his collaboration with the late Leonard Bernstein, A Quiet Place, finally came home, though staged by Christopher Alden. Continue reading ‘20th Century Operas in the 21st Century’

Music for Silenced Voices:

Shostakovich and His Fifteen Quartets

By Mark Zuckerman

Start the idea of great Twentieth Century Russian composers and three names likely spring to mind: Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Of the three, only Shostakovich spent his entire creative life in the Soviet Union. He came of age just as Joseph Stalin came to power in 1924 and navigated Stalin’s 30-year reign, surviving him by almost a quarter century. He is probably best known internationally for his large works – 15 symphonies, 6 concerti, and two operas – and in Russia for these, numerous film scores, and incidental music. Not as well-known are his chamber works, including 15 string quartets.
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