There are few living musicians who can lay claim to being the voice of America’s conscience, and even fewer who continue to make vital music. For six decades Mavis Staples has been the solid rock of American music. Alongside the family group she is so identified with, the Staple Singers, Mavis has managed to transform herself as she goes, yet never alter.
The magnetic tenor Vittorio Grigolo takes on the tortured poet and unwitting adventurer of the title of Offenbach’s operatic masterpiece, in the Met’s wild, kaleidoscopic production.
Ondrej Trojan’s “Zelary” (2003) (R) A nurse and her surgeon-lover are part of a resistance movement in 1940’s Czechoslovakia. When they are discovered, her lover flees and she must find a place to hide. A patient whose life she saved, a man from a remote mountain village where time stopped 150 years ago, agrees to hide her as his wife.
Winner of the 2006 and 2008 GRAMMY® Awards for Best Classical Crossover category, Turtle Island fuses the classical quartet esthetic with contemporary American musical styles, and by devising a performance practice that honors both, the state of the art has inevitably been redefined. Cellist nonpareil Yo-Yo Ma has proclaimed TIQ to be “a unified voice that truly breaks new ground – authentic and passionate – a reflection of some of the most creative music-making today.” Formed in 1985, the Turtle Island Quartet has been a singular force in the creation of bold, new trends in chamber music for strings.
New Production On the heels of her triumphant Met performances in Eugene Onegin, soprano Anna Netrebko takes on another Tchaikovsky heroine in the first opera of this intriguing double bill, consisting of an enchanting fairy tale (Iolanta) followed by an erotic psychological thriller (Duke Bluebeard’s Castle).
From an American town in the early 20th century, we flash forward to a future dystopia where a severe water shortage has made public pay-per-use toilets a legal necessity. Urinetown was a hit Broadway musical in the early 21st century, running for two and a half years. It won Tony Awards for its composer and lyricists Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis and Mr. Kotis also won for the book of the musical. The show is a satirical take on social change (the police are represented by Officers Lockstock and Barrel), corporate greed (the pay toilets are run by “Urine Good Company”), and Broadway musicals themselves. One of the show’s characters – its hero Bobby Strong – was included as one of the 100 Greatest Roles in Musical Theatre.
Born Daphne Scholinski, Dylan was locked up in a mental hospital at age 15 for being an “inappropriate female.” Now a distinguished public speaker, author of award winning memoir The Last Time I Wore a Dress and artist, Dylan will be exhibiting his own work – which portrays the anguish of his hospital years and his ultimate triumph – as well as examples of artwork by participants in his “lead with your heart” workshop.
Still Dreaming follows a group of elderly entertainers living at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in New York and a pair of young directors hired to stage an in-house performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As the once-celebrated performers struggle with Alzheimer’s, dementia, and physical disabilities, the play’s themes of perception, reality and memory take on new relevance and poignancy. There will be a post screening Q&A with the co-directors Jilann Spitzmiller and Hank Rogerson.
See the Off-Broadway sensation that audiences can’t get enough of from coast to coast! Share the fun and laughter in this hilarious, feel-good comedy as five girlfriends re-live their past, celebrate their present, and look to the future on a wild night out! Featuring the most famous female empowerment hits of the last four decades including “Lady Marmalade,” “It’s Raining Men,” “Man I Feel Like A Woman,” “I Will Survive,” and many more.
