Humbled and Overwhelmed

The cast of Hansel and Gretel take a bow I've come to accept that the Met opera seasons are like a curate's egg. You can't expect a consistent level of quality and inspiration anymore. But once in awhile, you might stumble upon a totally delightful performance. And such was the case with their holiday presentation of Hansel and Gretel . Despite a mid-performance substitution (Tara Erraught, the production's Hansel, sounded wan in the first two acts and was replaced after intermission by Ingeborg Gillebo) the overall performance was one of the best things I've seen the Met do in, well, quite awhile.

The blindingly beautiful Snow Scene, photo @ Paul Kolnik This year I went to an unprecedented seven (!!!) NYCB Nutcrackers . Don't ask how it happened, it just did. First of all, when I bought the tickets to the Nutcracker , I just wanted a happy, uncomplicated experience. But then, well ... #metoo happened to NYCB. It's AD Peter Martins was accused of sexual harassment and abuse and  took a leave of absence from both SAB and NYCB . The charges turned more serious with accusations of physical abuse . I hope the board acts quickly to fully investigate these charges. With that being said I admire the company even more for carrying on with their level of professionalism and high standards amidst the turmoil. There is an element of comfort food to  Nutcracker  season. Every year I laugh at the funny, skittish mice, I marvel at the beauty of Balanchine's Snowflakes, I go squishy at the adorable bunny pulling the tail of the Mouse King, blah blah blah. I also r...

Alex Newell and Hailey Kilgore, photo @ Joan Marcus WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW. The revival of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's  Once On This Island has been getting insanely good word-of-mouth in early previews. I went to see what the fuss was all about last night. First of all, Circle in the Square is exactly the right theatre for this show. The boxed-in seating allowed director Michael Arden to make the entire set an "island." The pre-show involved the cast milling about a sand-and-water-filled set complete with goats and chickens. The ceiling of the theater had bunches of laundry lines. They obviously were trying to recreate the feel of a real Caribbean island. A little cheesy, but it worked.

Kelli O'Hara and Patrick Wilson, photo @ Sara Krulwich When New York City Center announced that the chief Encores! presentation of their season would be Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon , tickets sold out so quickly that you would have thought the musical only came around once in a hundred years. Oh wait ... Anyway tonight's performance was one of glorious highs and depressing lows. Let's start with the positive here: this was a lavish, fully-staged performance. They spent good money on this. It didn't have the feel of a semi-staged concert at all -- there were colorful costumes, enough props and some background projections to evoke the world of the Scottish highlands. This is a production that could transfer to Broadway with minimal adjustments. A few more sets (a ramp served as an all-purpose entrance and exit tool) and less amateurish projections and we'll have a great show.  Of course if it moved to Broadway it probably wouldn't have had the full orch...

Denise Gough and Barbara Martens One of the most popular genres of autobiography is the addict-recovery memoir. The format usually follows a tight script: the promising beginning, the descent into drugs and misery, the harrowing "rock bottom" moment, and then the recovery process by which the addict finds strength from God. The result is usually uplifting and tidy. How engaging these books are depends on the narrator (and editor). My personal favorite addict-recovery memoir is Darryl Strawberry's Straw. Strawberry sounds like a very typical jock who muses about how much his batting average would have been had he "juiced" on steroids and described his ex-wife as "drama, drama, drama." The authenticity and lack of pretension is appealing. I also like Mike Tyson's memoir if only for the honest epilogue in which he admits that he hasn't recovered, is still an addict and working through issues.

Ward Horton, Jack DiFalco, Michael Urie and Mercedes Ruehl, photo @ Joan Marcus I guess the 2017-18 is the season of Seminal Gay Theater revivals. In the spring a highly acclaimed London production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America is coming to Broadway . There was already much hysteria during the Ticketmaster pre-sale where good seats were going for well over $300. But if you want something slightly less lengthy and costly Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy has been revised and shortened to Torch Song and is currently playing off-Broadway until December 9. I saw it this afternoon and highly recommend it. The play spans the 1970's to 1970's and follows the life and times of neurotic, love-starved drag queen Arnold. David Zinn's sets are a wonderful recreation of that era. Michael Urie as Arnold has almost nothing in common with Harvey Fierstein on the surface. Fierstein was larger-than-life and LARGE, period. The androgynous, noodly-limbed Urie looks ...

Tereshkina and Kim and Shades A quick day-trip to D.C. yielded great rewards: an absolutely gorgeous performance of La Bayadere from the Mariinsky Ballet. Because of schedule constraints I could only see one performance but I'm confident I ended up with the best cast because, honestly, it's hard to imagine a greater Nikya and Solor today than Viktoria Tereshkina and Kimin Kim. They were awesome. Amazing. Stupendous. I could go on with the superlatives but I'm sure it will get boring fast, if it hasn't already gotten boring.

Katrina Lenk and Tony Shalboub, photo @ Sara Krulwich The Band's Visit , an off-Broadway musical that is now in previews on Broadway, begins and ends with the statement that an Egyptian banded visited the Israeli town of Bet Hatikva, but no one knows about it, because "it wasn't very important." Those words are meant ironically, as obviously, the whole musical is about the visit. But at the end of last evening's performance it also crossed my mind that, well, uh, it wasn't important. I admired many things about David Yazbek and Itamar Moses's adaptation of the 2007 film, but ultimately I didn't really care about the characters. The music (a charming mix of pseudo-Middle-Eastern pop and folk music) didn't really grab me. It was charming, it was pleasant, but, yeah, it wasn't important.

Fairchild in some of his best roles at NYCB After two weeks of Swan Lake NYCB returned to its usual mixed bills. As is often the case the all-Balanchine program reaffirmed Mr. B's genius, the "Here/Now" program revealed which modern works had staying power and which didn't, and the "all-new" works were a mixed bag. NYCB said goodbye to two principals: Rebecca Krohn and Robert Fairchild. First things first: the Balanchine triple bill of Square Dance / La Valse / Cortège Hongrois  showed that the state of the union of NYCB is strong. Square Dance  is in good hands with the allegro technicians of Megan Fairchild/Anthony Huxley. La Valse is trickier -- it can become a cheesy Halloween horror show. But with Sterling Hyltin as the simultaneously delicate and demented socialite and Justin Peck as a hovering, creepy Death, that wasn't an issue.  Cortège Hongrois  is not top-drawer Balanchine -- it's heavily derivative of both Petipa's Raymonda ...

NYCB Swan Lake, photo @ Paul Kolnik When the 2017-18 season for NYCB came out last spring, I saw that the first two weeks of the season were devoted to Peter Martins' Swan Lake . I thought "Oh good, giving my wallet a break." This was one production I was in no hurry to revisit. I saw it once with Sara Mearns and that was enough. Or so I thought. Flash forward to September. I found myself buying tickets to see four (!!!) different Swan Lake casts. The struggle is real, y'all. I still hate the production. I hate the mish-mash of Balanchine/Martins/Ivanov choreography in the lakeside scene. I hate the hideous decors by Per Kirkelby. I hate the mismatched green costumes in the first act. I hate the Jester. I hate the hilariously bad Russian dance in which one female dancer usually slinks as if doing a Middle Eastern belly dance. I hate the cold, non-sensical ending (Rothbart is defeated, but as dawn approaches Odette still goes back with her swans and Siegfri...

Opening night Norma, photo @ Ken Howard Last night was one of my personal firsts: attending an opening night at the Metropolitan Opera. The opera: Bellini's Norma . I thought at the very least it'd be fun in a special occasion sort of way. Instead it was one of the most normal, average nights I've ever spent at the Met. It wasn't a bad performance so much as a terribly routine one. The new production by David McVicar looked like something that was raided from old sets of Die Walkure.  Norma's house looks a lot like Hunding's hut, and the centerpiece of the Druid command center was an enormous tree. I really thought Norma was going to pull a sword from the tree. The costumes by Moritz Junger were nondescript dark drapes for most everybody. It was a safe, inoffensive production for the most part, save some odd directorial choices. Why does Norma begin "Casta diva" by crawling on her hands and knees to the little treehouse platform, and why does sh...

Dave Malloy as Pierre So Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet of 1812 closed this afternoon. It was certainly not the ending fans of this show expected when it opened and was making millions per week. The demise of this musical has been endlessly discussed here , there , everywhere. Today I'll just talk about the thrilling, wonderful experience of being a Last Cometeer.

Government Inspector, photo @Carol Rossegg Over the past week for whatever reason I've seen 5 shows. Two were revisits ( The Great Comet , closing on September 3, and Groundhog Day ) and three were new to me: The Play that Goes Wrong , Government Inspector , and Prince of Broadway . Of all the shows by far the biggest highlight was Government Inspector . It's playing in the off-Broadway New World Stages theater. GO SEE IT BEFORE IT CLOSES ON AUGUST 20. Jeffrey Hatcher's adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's famous play had a synergy of great casting, direction, and production values. The whole evening had the audience in stitches. Gogol's satirical play has lost none of its bite and relevance -- the snobbery, ignorance, selfishness, and corruption of the public officials in the play could be transplanted to modern times without any adjustments.

Katharina and Petruchio, photo @ Jack Devant The Lincoln Center Festival chugged along with more Bolshoi Ballet -- this time they were dancing Jean-Christophe Maillot's Taming of the Shrew . After the excitement of Superjewels , this seemed anti-climactic. I went to see the opening night performance and while it was a perfectly pleasant way to spend a summer evening it's not something I'll rush to see again. The ballet has some virtues. One, its brevity. With an intermission and the prolonged Russian-style curtain calls you were still out of the theater within 1 hr 45 minutes. Two, the score. The music is piecemeal Shostakovich which meant it was always listenable and often very fun. Olga Smirnova and Semyon Chudin (Bianca and Lucentio) have two calm, glamorous pas de deux that establish these two remarkable dancers as the foremost classicists of the company. The role of Hortensio is one of those Bolshoi bravura cameos that gets the entire crowd yelling, especiall...

Original Jewels cast, photo @ Martha Swope In 1967 George Balanchine decided to make a three-act plotless ballet. And then he hit upon marketing gold -- the three sections would be named after gemstones -- Emeralds, Rubies, and Diamonds. And voila! An indestructible cash cow was created. Jewels has in these 50 years filled the coffers of not just the NYCB but ballet companies across the world. It's a hit wherever it goes. Balletomanes love their jewelry and Diamonds are a ballet company's best friend. Lincoln Center Festival decided to capitalize on Balanchine's foundation by creating a One Time Only (!!!) Event -- a Very Special Jewels in which each section was danced by a different company. Ticket prices were through the roof but the event sold out anyway. The Paris Opera Ballet took Emeralds , while the NYCB and the Bolshoi took turns swapping between Rubies and Diamonds . I attended the first two performances so I saw both combos -- NYCB Rubies/Bolshoi Diam...

Veronika receiving roses from the girls, photo @ Kent Becker Part in three of her major roles: Mozartiana, Odette and Myrtha This afternoon I attended an ABT performance that just a week ago didn't interest me at all. I have a real allergy to the way ABT does Balanchine and the program had one of his most sublime works -- Mozartiana . I wasn't in a hurry to see Gomes' AfterEffect, or   the pas de deux from Ratmansky's Nutcracker. I did want to see Ratmansky's Souvenir d'un lieu cher but it was something I suspect will work better in a smaller theater. So why, then, did I go? Actually, for a really unhappy reason: this was the last chance to see Veronika Part dance for ABT. She has been let go  after 15 years with the company. When word got out that Part's contract would not be renewed, fans created an online petition that garnered over 500 signatures. Then things got a little crazy. A particularly vehement fan started hatching all sorts of p...

So last night I saw Hello Dolly! with the Divine Miss M and didn't have to donate a kidney! Of course the Divine Miss M in this case was Miss M(urphy). Some people in the audience muttered that they wanted to see Midler (I guess the sign to the left didn't tip them off?). But once Donna Murphy stepped off that trolley and started singing, I think the entire audience was like "Bette who?" Donna really sang the living daylights out of a role that's often associated with divas of a certain age with a limited vocal range. She can belt, she can interpolate high notes, she can sing while doing all sorts of physical comedy, in other words she was absolutely amazing! It was one of the most joyous nights in the theatre that I've ever experienced. It's not really fair to compare the rest of the cast to how they were in March . That was early in previews and they were still figuring out what worked, what didn't, and the comic timing. What I can say thoug...

Diana and Marcelo's curtain calls Tonight ABT bid farewell to one of its most beloved artists. After the fraught finale of Cranko's Onegin  the sold out crowd screamed and yelled their appreciation for Diana Vishneva. Her longtime stage partner Marcelo Gomes hugged and comforted her. Confetti streamed down from above, the stage was covered in flowers, ABT colleagues marched onstage with hugs and more bouquets, and Diana looked simultaneously sad and elated as she basked in the love of the audience. Oh yeah, Diana's husband also made an appearance. The Diana and Marcelo Lovefest Curtain Call Routine was dialed up an extra notch tonight. He swung her around in an embrace as confetti fell. He fell to his knees in obeisance and she fell to her knees in response. She cried, they kissed, they nuzzled. It's really the Show After the Show. Usually I find their routine cloying, but this was her farewell, so it was almost cute.

Sarah Lane and Danil Simkin Last night Sarah Lane made a last-minute substitution for an injured Maria Kochetkova in Swan Lake . This was Sarah's New York debut in the role, and after a banner season where she's triumphed in Ratmansky's Whipped Cream and Giselle , the buzz and anticipation in the sold-out auditorium was high. It was generally thought that if Sarah could bring down the house as Odette/Odile, a promotion to principal would happen. Odette/Odile is not as natural of a fit for Lane as Giselle. Sarah Lane doesn't have a physique that screams "swan." She's petite and her limbs are beautifully proportioned but not elongated. Her extension is decent but without the height and dimensions she did not fit the aesthetic of the traditional Swan Queen. Also, she's a natural allegro dancer with fast limbs and quick footwork. ( Whipped Cream took advantage of this to an absurd degree.) The drawn out adagio movements of Odette were sometimes cli...

Danil Simkin as Lankedem Over this week I attended a mishmash of performances. They ranged from good to mixed to awful. Let's start with the good: a fun, entertaining performance of Le Corsaire from ABT. This season at ABT the principal women have been falling like flies due to injury (currently, Isabella Boylston, Veronika Part, Gillian Murphy and Maria Kochetkova are on the DL list). What this has meant is lots of opportunities for soloists, and the 6/8 performance showcased the talents both of veteran soloist Sarah Lane (Gulnare) and the newer Skylar Brandt (Medora). These two talented ladies managed to grab attention away from the men, whose pirate's chest full of ballet tricks usually dominate the ballet. Skylar Brandt is a winning combination of technique, charm, and beauty. She has a natural stage face -- her large eyes capture the light. Her technique is formidable -- in act one her solo had attitude turns followed by triple pirouettes. You can see how strong h...

Hallberg and Murphy, photo @ Kent G. Becker I saw three (!!!) Giselles in ABT's spring season. And in a way, each Giselle was a celebration -- the first celebrated the return of a beloved dancer whom many feared was lost to injury forever. The second performance celebrated the 20th anniversary of a company treasure. The third performance celebrated a long-time soloist's chance to shine in the spotlight. Albrecht was the last role I saw David Hallberg dance nearly three years ago . Then came the devastating injury. Every year balletomanes hoped to see him again and he didn't appear. He disappeared from social media, so much so that when he finally posted on Instagram again the caption read "emerging from the shadows." Turns out he has spent the last year in Australia for intense physical therapy. The May 27 performance of Giselle at the ABT was therefore the kind of event where you see as many dancers in the audience as balletomanes. I saw Sara Mearns, T...

Concerto DSCH with Bouder and de Luz, photo @ Paul Kolnik A matinee performance on Saturday, May 20 (officially titled Here/Now No. 9) was perhaps the single most dispiriting afternoon I've ever spent at NYCB. The program presented six different works. By the end of the fourth week of the Here/Now festival the number of injuries was staggering -- every week had a multitude of casting changes.  The dancers, usually so chipper on social media, had resorted to  venting  and more  venting.  Georgina Pazcoguin's wry line " To those who fell, to those who made it (extra kudos) and to those ballets we will never see again... " pretty much summed it up. Reichlen in Red Angels The first work on this program was something called Red Angels . Four dancers in red unitards stood in four separate spotlights and gyrated for 10 minutes. It actually pained me to see Tess Reichlen and Preston Chamblee, both so gorgeous in physique, reduced to this sort of junk. Th...

Princess Praline and Boy (Lane and Simkin), photo  @Matt Masin ABT's spring gala began with the usual boring speeches, and then an announcement from Kevin McKenzie that he was basically giving choreographer Alexei Ratmansky a blank check -- the "Ratmansky Project" would allow this prolific choreographer $15 million to create ballets for the next five years. Ratmansky is obviously a hot commodity and ABT will do anything to keep him -- a few weeks ago, his new piece Odessa was also the raison d'etre of New York City Ballet's Spring Gala. The Sweet Shop, photo @ Gene Schiavone And then the eagerly awaited New York debut of  Whipped Cream . This ballet had its premiere in Costa Mesa in March. Everyone marveled at Mark Ryden's sets and costumes. And when the curtain went up, I looked at the sets and costumes and thought, wow, they are amazing!!! They look like a Macy's Thanksgiving float come to life, with enormous blinking and moving stuffed an...

Andy Karl as the Weatherman stuck in February 2. Photo @ Sara Krulwich Well I did something I never thought possible -- this afternoon I saw Groundhog Day: The Musical and with that I've seen all four musicals up for a Tony for Best Musical.  I've also now seen the two actors thought to be in hot contention for Best Actor in a Musical: Dear Evan Hansen's Ben Platt vs. Groundhog Day's Andy Karl. How did I like Groundhog Day ? Well ... uh ... I liked the parts more than the whole, if that makes sense. I LOVED Tim Minchin's breezy, catchy, compulsively listenable score. I think "Small Town, USA," "Nobody Cares," "One Day," "Night Will Come," "Seeing You," are all great songs and the strength of the score will give Groundhog Day a life after award seasons are over. I also LOVED Andy Karl's smarmy, smug Phil Connors. He plays the character totally different from Bill Murray -- Murray is all sarcastic bite, ...

Cast of Odessa, photo @ Andrea Mohin Spring Gala at the New York City Ballet is traditionally a more substantive, dance-heavy evening than the Fall Fashion Gala. The good news: dance lovers often line the third and fourth rings dressed in non-designer clothes because they love ballet. The bad news: the ballets. The raison d'etre for last night's gala was Alexei Ratmansky's new piece for City Ballet. Ratmansky's batting average at the NYCB has been 4/4 -- Russian Seasons (2006), Concerto DSCH (2008), Namouna (2010), and Pictures at an Exhibition (2014) have all traveled widely to other companies and are considered modern classics. My expectations were sky-high for his new work  Odessa .

Sara Bareilles as Jenna in Waitress My Broadway blitz continues: I saw a concert version of Victor Herbert's operetta Babes in Toyland , the new play Oslo , and Sara Bareilles sing her own score in Waitress . She's taking over the role of Jenna until June. Babes in Toyland was a one-off concert in Carnegie Hall. The original operetta ran 4 hours long. Four hours about a bunch of toys in a cupboard. The conductor Ted Sperling abridged the dialogue (adding an often-awkward "Narrator" to transition between musical numbers) and focused on the music, which was lovely. The lullaby "Toyland" was especially beautiful as sung by Kelli O'Hara and Jay Armstrong Johnson. Lauren Worsham and Christopher Fitzgerald were charming and Fitzgerald was also a hoot. All had the kind of sweet voices that fit operettas like a glove. J.T. Rogers' Oslo is a Very Serious Play about a Very Serious Topic (Middle East peace talks). I'm usually allergic to this sort...

Garanca and Fleming, photo @ Ken Howard Last night's performance of Der Rosenkavalier was the bar none the best- sung performance I've heard at the Met all season. That didn't mean there wasn't a note out of place all evening, but every performer was singing at the highest possible level they are capable of singing. As a result Strauss's opera which can have such longueurs bubbled along to its ending in a surprisingly quick four-and -a-half hours. If you want to hear impeccable vocalism I urge everyone to snatch up a ticket to the remaining performances.

Cast of Dear Evan Hansen, photo @ Matthew Murphy This year is actually unusual because I now have seen all the three major contenders for the Tony for Best Original Musical -- The Great Comet , Come From Away , and Dear Evan Hansen . I have great respect for the creative teams behind The Great Comet and Come From Away , but if DEH loses the Tony for best musical, it will be a travesty. The other two musicals had their charm, and Come From Away was touching. But Dear Evan Hansen was simply one of the most emotional, genuine, beautiful experiences I've ever had in the theater. 

Come From Away's stranded passengers, photo @ Sara Krulwich 2017 is the year I blew all my disposable income on Broadway. Tonight I saw yet another musical: Come From Away . Unless you've been living under a rock, you know by now that Come From Away is based on the true stor y of over 6,000 plane passengers whose flights were diverted to Gander, Newfoundland following September 11, 2001. The residents of Gander had to become impromptu hosts and a bunch of strangers who would never speak to each other on a plane are forced to live in close quarters. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll tell everyone to see it ... In fact the only reason I bought a ticket was because several friends saw it and loved it and I trust their taste.

Unit set of the Kittredges' living room My theater blitz continues: I attended the second preview of the revival of John Guare's  Six Degrees of Separation on April 6th. I know that it's the second preview and thus the show is still ironing out the wrinkles, but I think this revival is well worth attending for several reasons. this is just a well-constructed, well-written, thought-provoking play and even if you've seen the movie I think a live performance is worth seeing. Some aspects of the play are dated. It sounds unlikely nowadays that an art dealer can really own a Fifth Avenue apartment, and the characterization of the Ivy League Kids is overly broad. But the play still makes us think about uncomfortable issues of race, class, identity, and, for lack of a better word, how much of the "liberal" New York population is really so that rich upper class Manhattan Brahmins can feel less guilty for being, well, filthy rich. The Cats jokes are appropriate as...

Sometimes when I watch the characters parade through Trumpland I get a surreal feeling. I almost can't believe that people like Paul Ryan, Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and the rest of the vat of deplorables exist. Tonight on Broadway there was a pithy reminder that people so greedy, so heartless, so devoid of any inner life or compassion and empathy really do exist, and what's more, people have been writing plays about these kinds of people for a long time. The Manhattan Theatre Club's revival of Lillian Helmann's classic The Little Foxes has a bit of stunt casting -- Cynthia Nixon and Laura Linney are alternating roles of Regina and Birdie with each performance. When I first heard about this casting I immediately decided that Cynthia Nixon was a more natural Regina and Laura Linney more of a Birdie. So this was the cast I saw tonight. The show is still in the first week of previews.

Bette Midler in Hello Dolly! Photo @ Julia Cervantes This was a big Broadway blitz for me. On Friday evening, I attended City Center's Encores! presentation of Cole Porter's   The New Yorker's .  A day later it was time for Divine Miss M (aka Bette Midler) and the highly publicized revival of Hello Dolly ! Finally I watched Glenn Close get ready for her closeup in the revival of her star vehicle, Sunset Boulevard .

A little more than three years ago Jean François Borras got a last minute call to step in for an ailing Jonas Kaufmann. It was his first ever performance of Werther , and I remember being stunned at the beauty of his voice, the sensitivity of his portrayal, and his musical, idiomatic style.

Grigolo and Leonard, photo @ Marty Sohl I caught the matinee performance of Werther this afternoon. My last experience with Werther had been the memorable series of performances with Jonas Kaufmann  where Kaufmann was showered with confetti at the curtain calls.  (I had no idea that this would be the last time Jonas Kaufmann ever performed in NY.) This afternoon's performance was more sparsely attended -- rows of orchestra seats were empty. If I wanted to I could probably list about 1,000 things wrong with Vittorio Grigolo's performance in the title role. Not idiomatic, too veristic, overwrought to the point of hamminess (he let out a huge scream before his suicide), overreliance on a few vocal effects and mannerisms. But when judging Werthers, there's only one factor that matters. Did he break your heart? And by that measure, Grigolo was an unforgettable Werther.

Yoncheva and Fabiano, photo @ Marty Sohl The Willy Decker production of La Traviata opened at the Met in 2010. I saw the first cast and every revival since. That's a lot of little red dresses. All the Violettas I've seen brought something special to the role. However I had never experienced a complete Traviata -- one where ALL the singers came together to create an unforgettable, moving experience. Until last night, that is.

After being out for the fall and Nutcracker season with an injury, the wildly talented Joseph Gordon made his return to the NYCB stage as Gold in the 2/15/17 performance of Sleeping Beauty. NYCB has put up two brief but wonderful clips of the performance: Joseph Gordon as Gold. No explanation necessary. FLASH FOOTAGE: Joseph Gordon made his debut as Gold in last night's The Sleeping Beauty. There are only 5 perfs https://t.co/cNA8orL1NE pic.twitter.com/yqy5yRJOJP — New York City Ballet (@nycballet) February 16, 2017 And the ever radiant Sterling Hyltin's entrance as Aurora: FLASH FOOTAGE: Last night Sterling Hyltin enchanted us as Princess Aurora. She'll dance this role again on Sunday. https://t.co/XuSzbgbOmb pic.twitter.com/GQDkxOCyNp — New York City Ballet (@nycballet) February 16, 2017 Also new to me was Sara Mearns' delightfully hammy Carabosse, by far the most entertaining of the four that I've seen: Last #Sarabosse of the season!!!...

Balanchine's glorious Garland Waltz, photo @ Paul Kolnik I went on a Sleeping Beauty marathon this weekend and saw three performances in two days. NYCB's Sleeping Beauty is one of the finest productions I've seen -- Balanchine's wondrous Garland Waltz with the SAB children weaving in and out of the garland formations is itself worth the price of admission. The designs are beautiful and tasteful. Although Peter Martins cut the knitting scene and made some more abridgments this is a surprisingly complete Sleeping Beauty, and a nice contrast to ABT's historically correct but somewhat fussy and constipated Ratmansky version . For instance, more of the Panorama music is included than many versions, and the Wedding divertissements are almost all there. Especially adorable is the little SAB students they have as Little Red Riding Hood. They steal the show every time. Here are the casts I saw:

Javier Camarena and Diana Damrau, photo @ Marty Sohl Whoever knew that the serene  I Puritani would be the opera to bring out the audience crazies? Last night at the Met's premiere of I Puritani there was this EXTREMELY vocal Diana Damrau fan who would scream "BRAAAAAAVVVVVVIIIIIIISSSSSSIIIIIIMMMMMMAAAAAA" and "THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU" after every number. You could admire her enthusiasm except that sounded more like she was giving birth than anything else. Then at the end of "Credeasi misera" some fanatical vocal purist (???) shouted "NO HIGH F" at Javier Camarena. The audience was shocked. The two overly vocal audience members leant some comedy to an otherwise rather sleepy (if vocally solid) revival. Don't get me wrong -- there's reasons to see this revival, the number one being Javier Camarena, whose warm sweet timbre, glorious upper register and winning stage presence officially put him in the designated spot of The Grea...

Last night I saw Dave Malloy's wonderful musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 and reviewed it for parterre box here . Suffice to say I enjoyed it very much and recommend it to people looking for a fun night at the theater. Josh Groban and Denée Benton are amazing. Here's my review: I never made it through more than a few chapters of any Tolstoy work. And I never made it through Chapter One, Volume One of  War and Peace . Yeah, I know. I suck. Turns out I was just not using the left side of my brain, because  War and Peac e can actually be a fun, entertaining, lighthearted musical.  The travails of Natasha, Pierre, Andrey, Anatole, and company are really a funny, tongue-in-cheek soap opera.  Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812  is one of those improbable shows that  throws in everything, including the kitchen sink, cabinet and refrigerator, and somehow the final product just works.   One of the things d...

The flock of black swans, photo @ Paul Kolnik I've seen lots of Swan Lakes in my balletomane life. And to be honest, I've disliked or felt indifferent to almost all of them. A long time ago Nina Ananiashvilli impressed me with her boneless arms and old-style Bolshoi acting. Mariinsky swans are hard to beat -- I loved  Viktoria Tereshkina 's strength and chutzpah.  Uliana Lopatkina's Odette/Odile was a master class of classicism, and she also had an inner radiance and spirituality that was heartbreaking. But really, that's ... it? Well tonight I was transported to Swan Heaven again, and in the unlikeliest form: petite, slight Sterling Hyltin in Balanchine's one-act version of the ballet. I've never taken Balanchine's abridged Swan Lake seriously -- sometimes I think he took an orchestral suite and had no idea what to do with it. He added a coda to the pas de deux. He added variations. He deleted variations. He changed the setting to some sort of a...

Teresa Reichlen and Daniel Ulbricht in Prodigal Son, photo @ Andrea Mohin The first week of Winter Season at NYCB is usually low-key. The company is tired from the Nutcracker marathon and also rehearsing for the inevitable world premiere of some new works. So the programming tends to be basic Balanchine. Stuff the audience knows and loves. Dancer-proof ballets. And thus it was so this winter season. The first week was dominated by two excellent Balanchine triple bills: a "Balanchine Short Stories" program of La Sonnambula / Prodigal Son / Firebird and a more eclectic program of Allegro Brillante / Swan Lake / Four Temperaments . I saw one of the AB/SL/4T's performance and two "Short Stories." I don't need to tell you that Tiler Peck was amazing/super/stupendous in Allegro , and that her diagonal of consecutive triple pirouettes that was timed to end exactly with a CRASH in the piano chords gave me goosebumps. Andy Veyette was her fine, steadfast pa...

Side nose moles FTW! It's hard to believe that in less than 24 hours Barack Obama will no longer be POTUS. He's a man I admire so much as a person, as a politician, as a leader, as a role model.  He never lost his dignity, his cool, and (most importantly) his humanity. Other people have expressed their admiration more eloquently. I'll just say this: Barack Obama might no longer be the President of the United States, but he'll always be My President.

Grigolo and Damrau, photo @ Ken Howard Romeo and Juliet are in the crypt. Romeo succumbs to the poison just as Juliet awakens from her self-induced slumber. Juliet stabs herself so she can die along with Romeo. Bodies slump over each other. Curtain. That's what happened last night at the end of the Met's new production of Gounod's Rom é o et Juliette . It's basically what happens at the end of any presentation of Shakespeare's play. Tragic. Heartrending, right? But as the lights dimmed I felt something I haven't felt while attending an opera in a long time: happiness. Yes, happiness. Why? Because the performance last night was pretty much perfect. Not perfect in the sense that there were no flaws with the singers (there were), or that the production by Bart Sher was mind-blowing (it wasn't), but the energy from the star-crossed lovers (Vittorio Grigolo and Diana Damrau) was such that all flaws and reservations were swept aside in by the force of the...

Candide on paper looked like the perfect opera to revive for New York City Opera's "Renaissance." The old NYCO's Hal Prince production (adapted from his Broadway version) was one of the company's glories. Bernstein's lovable operetta was a perfect fit for the uniquely American sensibilities of the company. So to bring back that wonderful production, with the same revered director supervising, well, that was the best of all possible worlds right? Wrong. For one, the limits of the tiny Rose Theater made it necessary to scale down Hal Prince's production to what looked like the Dollar Store version. Same familiar circus-performers concept, but tiny, cheap drops that wrinkled and flapped, an awkward miking system that made the voices sound thin and inaudible but the set changes and stage movement ear-splitting, and a cast that was obviously under-rehearsed. Prince (and choreographer Patricia Birch) seem not to have gotten the memo however -- the tiny stag...