reviews
Fifth graders compose and perform poignant songs about math and science
November 21, 2018LOS ANGELES—Early last year a press release from the Los Angeles Master Chorale (LAMC) came my way about high school kids in Van Nuys writing and performing a new oratorio on the theme of the Japanese...
Read moreThe opera ‘Hansel and Gretel’ bewitches the coven of the oven
November 21, 2018Hansel and Gretel may be the most enchanting, optically opulent opera ever seen at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with its stellar stagecraft, stagemanship and eye-popping, jaw-dropping scenery.
Read more‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ popular Christmas movie, great new American opera
November 20, 2018It’s a critical hit, written in a popular late Romantic and thoroughly American idiom, studded with little musical quotes from familiar holiday noels, high school graduation anthems, and the wild Mekee-Mekee that recalls the dance crazes...
Read moreNew Documentaries at Toronto International Film Festival
November 15, 2018Reviews of "What You Gonna Do When the World's On Fire?", "What Is Democracy?", "Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferentz," "Anthropocene: The Human Epoch."
Read more‘Johnny Got His Gun’ on stage: I resist, therefore I am
October 23, 2018Joe Bonham is an all-American doughboy horribly dismembered and disfigured by enemy artillery at the frontlines in France. As Joe evolves, his determination to live intensifies, and his thoughts turn to the nature of what cut...
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