Entering Kilbourn Hall, you see a largely barren stage and behind it, a wall seemingly deteriorating from age and poor maintenance. Only wisps and spatterings of white paint adorn the wall, and an ominous staircase ascends to nowhere. The odd, vaguely disturbing architecture of a makeshift fort, consisting of blankets, a table, and a stray […]
Eastman Opera Theatre
Posted inMusic
Opera Review: Eastman Opera Theatre’s “Le Nozze di Figaro”
Sun-Ly Pierce and Paulina Swierczek
shine in this stellar production
Posted inMusic
Opera Review: Eastman Opera Theatre’s “Hydrogen Jukebox”
Eastman Opera Theatre on Friday presented the second of four performances in Kilbourn Hall of Philip Glass’s music theater work “Hydrogen Jukebox,” featuring the words of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. What transpired was more like a stream of surreal and illusory fragments than anything approaching traditional opera: An imposing hall, like some forbidden church sanctuary. […]
Posted inMusic
“Hydrogen Jukebox” bends the opera genre
In 1966, Allen Ginsberg penned ecstatic yet defiant words in his poem “Wichita Vortex Sutra”: “I claim my birthright! … Joy reborn after the vast sadness of War Gods! A lone man talking to myself, no house in the brown vastness to hear, imagining the throng of Selves that make this nation one body of […]
Posted inMusic
Opera Review: Eastman Opera Theatre presents “Our Town”
Grover’s Corners, according to author Thornton Wilder, represents everyone’s “home town.” In Thursday night’s performance of “Our Town’” by the Eastman School of Music Opera Theatre, the lighting took on a special significance for scene placement as images from Rochester’s past were projected on the back wall of the bleak staging of chairs and ladders. […]
