Arts & Events

Let's start with a question: Why is it that an Academy-Award-nominated film about Simon Bolivar is NOT being screened in Berkeley? (I wish I had the answer to that.) Now to the review: -more-

Every September, the Getty Villa at Malibu presents an ancient play, usually Greek or Roman, at their outdoor amphitheatre built according to ancient proto-types. Over the last eight years I have seen three productions: Euripides’ Hippolytos in 2006, Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound in 2013, and Aeschylus’s The Persians, which I just saw on Saturday, September 27, 2014. The Persians happens to be the earliest Greek play for which we have the whole text; and in this tragic play we get hints of the early development of Greek tragedy arising, as Aristotle alleges, out of choral dithyrambs. In The Persians, singing takes up nearly half the story and echoes archaic performances in honor of Dionysus before the first actor stepped forth from the chorus. -more-

In her fifth role in Los Angeles, soprano Nino Machaidze consolidated her status as a favorite of Angeleno audiences with a superbly sung Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata, which I heard on Friday, September 26 at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. This production, staged by Marta Domingo, reprised the Los Angeles pairing of Nino Machaidze and Placído Domingo heard in June in Massenet’s Thais. In La Traviata as in Thais, Placído Domingo sang a baritone rather than a tenor role, continuing his exploration of the baritone repertory, which he handles with as much vocal artistry as distinguished his tenor repertory. In La Traviata Domingo admirably sang the role of Giorgio Germont, father of Violetta’s lover, Alfredo Germont. As Alfredo, Mexican tenor Arturo Chacón-Cruz turned in a sturdy performance that grew in stature as the opera progressed. -more-