Josmar16

LATEST ARTICLES ( 436 )

• ‘Carmen’ and ‘Turandot’– A Met Opera Doubleheader: It Takes Two to Tangle

  

  What a long Saturday last February 23rd proved to be! The reason: back-to-back Metropolitan Opera productions of two of the company’s most popular presentations... Read more

  Posted on 03 March 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• Seth and Oscar — The New Academy-Award Winning Odd Couple

  Some of my candid observations about last Sunday’s Oscar® telecast.First of all, someone obviously confused “class” with “crass.” To put it bluntly (which is... Read more

  Posted on 26 February 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• ‘For All My Days Remaining’ — Sting’s Dark Night of ‘The Soul Cages’ (Continued)

  

  Pipes and InsightsSting The Soul Cages (A M Records)The Soul Cages is replete with such observances, with the one about finding your own pathway chief among... Read more

  Posted on 23 February 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• ‘For All My Days Remaining’ – Sting’s Dark Night of ‘The Soul Cages’

  

  The Soul Cages (blogspot.com)Songs about death and dying aren’t exactly the norm where pop music is concerned. Nor are they the kinds of uplifting subjects... Read more

  Posted on 19 February 2013 CULTURE, THEATRE & OPERA

• Carlos Gomes Reborn! A Long-Forgotten Brazilian Composer’s Music Returns to the...

  

  Composer Carlos GomesThe problem of documenting Brazil’s cultural heritage and, more significantly, the benefits to be reaped by rediscovering her glorious... Read more

  Posted on 17 February 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• A Ring-a-Ding-Ding ‘Rigoletto’ – Viva Las Vegas at the Met

  

  Rigoletto at the Met, circa 1960 Las Vegas (dartmouth.edu)Updating the settings of nineteenth century works to modern times is a fairly common practice in many... Read more

  Posted on 17 February 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• Two Brazilian Charmers – Part Five: Carmen Goes Bananas

  

  Carmen Miranda in Hollywood (dvdtalk.com)A Night to RememberAs bad as the experience of being booed in Rio’s Teatro Municipal may have been for Bidu Sayão, it... Read more

  Posted on 16 February 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• The ‘Italian’ Composer from Campinas – Part Five: Carlos Gomes, All Work and...

  

  All these pressures only served to exacerbate Gomes’ growing despondency over his lot. The one hope he had for resurrecting his career was anchored in the... Read more

  Posted on 12 February 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• Lo, the Savior Approaches (Part Four) – Villa-Lobos and His Efforts to Preserve...

  

  Heitor Villa-Lobos in the 1930s (schemainternational.wordpress.com)The sparse operatic content of the country’s foremost musical apologist, Heitor Villa-Lobos,... Read more

  Posted on 12 February 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• ‘La Rondine’ – ‘The Swallow’ Comes Back Home to Roost, But Misses the Nest

  Giacomo Puccini’s body of work, to include the likes of Manon Lescaut, La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La Fanciulla del West, Il Trittico, and the lavishly... Read more

  Posted on 11 February 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• ‘L’Elisir d’Amore’ (‘The Elixir of Love’) – Old Wine in a New Bottle

  

  Ambrogio Maestri in L’Elisir d’Amore (Sara Krulwich/NY Times)Opera, by its very nature, is tragic. Blame the ancient Greeks, who were credited with “inventing”... Read more

  Posted on 10 February 2013 CULTURE, THEATRE & OPERA

• ‘Sadness Has No End’ — Part Five: You Can’t Please Everybody

  

  Orfeu with Toni Garrido Patricia FrancaTrying to make sense of Brazilian politics and economics is tantamount to taking a boat up Iguaçu Falls without a... Read more

  Posted on 06 February 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• LES MISÉRABLES — Too ‘Close-Up’ for Comfort? Not in Claudio Botelho’s Opinion

  

  Theater director, translator and guest contributor Claudio Botelho writes about the film version of ‘Les Misérables,’ directed by Tom Hooper and starring Hugh... Read more

  Posted on 02 February 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• Two Brazilian Charmers – Part Four: The High Price of Fame in Brazil

  

  Blame It on RioBidu Sayao (last.fm)They booed. The audience had actually booed. It was unheard of – absurd to say the least – yet it was true. Read more

  Posted on 25 January 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• Opera Review: ‘Il Trovatore’ at the Met – Beefcake, Fire and Brimstone Amid the...

  

  David McVicar’s Il Trovatore, Act II (metoperafamily.org)We can thank the Marx Brothers – Groucho, Harpo and Chico – and MGM’s head of production, boy wonder... Read more

  Posted on 13 January 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• Bringing People Together (Part Two): Electronic Voyages to Brazil Continued

  

  The Fabulous “Feather Game”Peteca (spurlock.illinois.edu)Speaking of cultural commentary, I was solicited in June 2006, via e-mail (what else? Read more

  Posted on 12 January 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• Lo, the Savior Approaches! (Part Three) – Heitor Villa-Lobos, the Middle Years

  Entr’acte: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5On the occasions when Heitor Villa-Lobos deigned to write memorable vocal music — his failure to create a clear-cut... Read more

  Posted on 11 January 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• The ‘Italian’ Composer from Campinas – Part Four: Carlos Gomes, a Spent Force

  

  The Man Who Would Be VerdiGiuseppe Verdi (blogclasico.blogspot.com)Despite the comparisons to Giuseppe Verdi and the earlier predictions of his being the great... Read more

  Posted on 11 January 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• Opera Review: Hector Berlioz’ ‘Les Troyens’ (‘The Trojans’) – A Wooden Horse of ...

  

  Deborah Voigt as Cassandra in Les Troyens (pt-br,facebridge.net)Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was truly a one-of-a-kind compositional genius. Not for him was the... Read more

  Posted on 06 January 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA

• ‘Sadness Has No End’ – Part Four: Truth Or Unintended Consequences

  

  Getting on the Wrong BusFor all the trash talk surrounding reality-TV programming on the tube, Carlos Diegues’ 1999 version of Orfeu produced one of those... Read more

  Posted on 05 January 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, THEATRE & OPERA