Steve Cohen

Review: ‘Bad Dates’ at Act II Playhouse

Bad Dates, by Theresa Rebeck, is the third one-person play I’ve seen in the past two months. The others were 2.5 Minute Ride, an autobiographical drama by Lisa Kron which was produced at Theatre...

New Records: Listening to ‘Bandstand’ and the Music of Alan Menken

This report on New Records includes three Alan Menken shows that recently received fresh recordings, plus a Broadway show from this year that unfortunately closed after a modest run. God Bless You,...

Review: Hilary Hahn Plays Bernstein with The Philadelphia Orchestra

The Leonard Bernstein Centenary continues with concerts by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra. Last weekend’s performances featured one of Bernstein’s most interesting (and relatively...

Review: ‘The Sea Cadet’ and ‘A Trip to Africa’ at Concert Operetta Theater

Concert Operetta Theater moved into new artistic territory with its November production of two unfamiliar operettas. Daniel Pantano’s Philadelphia company teamed up with a European organization led by...

Review: The Philadelphia Orchestra Gives a Haydn Masterpiece a Local Premiere

The programming of music by Haydn is unusual for The Philadelphia Orchestra. The choice is even more surprising coming from conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who is more associated with modern...

Review: ‘The Exterminating Angel’ at the Metropolitan Opera

Metropolitan Opera audiences, paying up to $393 for a ticket, can relate to the wealthy party guests in The Exterminating Angel. And so do some prestigious critics, who called this “the one opera to...

Review: ‘From the Diary of Sally Hemings’ at Unison Media

The New York premiere of William Bolcom’s composition, From the Diary of Sally Hemings, could not be more timely. With so much news focused on racial tensions, as well as the recent uproar over sexual...

Review: ‘Pioneers of Avant-Garde Piano’ at The Barnes Foundation

The Barnes Foundation presented an unusual recital of avant-garde music composed by Henry Cowell, John Cage and George Crumb. These three giants of experimentation remind us of Albert Barnes’s...

Review: ‘The Manor’ by Colonial Playhouse

For fifteen years, a California theater company has been presenting the drama The Manor in the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills — an appropriate spot because the play is based on a true murder and...

Review: Verdi’s ‘Il Trovatore’ by the Academy of Vocal Arts

Verdi’s Il Trovatore was revived at the Academy of Vocal Arts for the first time in 20 years this week, and it’s a revelation. Filial love inspired Verdi, and that intense emotion is passed on to a...

Review: Denève Leads French and Russian Music with The Philadelphia Orchestra

The Philadelphia Orchestra concerts on the last weekend of October featured a fascinating match-up of old versus new, and conservative versus radical. It also was divided between French and Russian....

Review: ‘Norma’ at The Metropolitan Opera and Live in HD

The new Metropolitan Opera production of Norma, which opened the company’s season, is the most intimate presentation of Vincenzo Bellini’s classic that I’ve ever seen. Norma is an impressive monument...

Review: ‘West Side Story’ staged by The Philadelphia Orchestra

West Side Story has never sounded as good as in last weekend’s performances by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra. It even surpassed Leonard Bernstein’s own recording, which sounds...

Review: ‘Impressions of Pelléas’ at the Curtis Institute of Music

Claude Debussy’s only opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, is a unique masterpiece. But it’s very long: five acts, around four hours. So director and playwright Peter Brook in 1992 devised an adaptation...

A Look Back at Opera Philadelphia’s O17 Festival and ‘The Magic Flute’

When Opera Philadelphia’s O17 Festival was announced in October of 2015, the company headlined its importation of the Berlin’s Komische Oper (Comic Opera) production of The Magic Flute. That...

Review: ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’ by Opera Philadelphia

The sole Philadelphia-based offering in Opera Philadelphia’s O17 Festival is We Shall Not Be Moved. Its powerful message is that the city’s children, and particularly its black children, are deprived...

Review: ‘War Stories’ by Opera Philadelphia

War Stories is a clever pairing of two music dramas dealing with battles, presented by Opera Philadelphia as part of its O17 Festival. The two separate compositions are staged in adjacent areas of the...

Review: World Premiere of ‘The Wake World’ by Opera Philadelphia

Inside a museum dedicated to art from the past, the O17 Festival has brought a new opera which celebrates musical and literary styles from the past. Composer/librettist David Hertzberg built upon...

Review: Sondra Radvanovsky in Recital at Opera Philadelphia

Sondra Radvanovsky’s recital as part of Opera Philadelphia’s O17 Festival was a spectacular event. That may seem like an oxymoron to some readers, who expect singer/pianist recitals to be intimate...

Review: ‘Elizabeth Cree’ at Opera Philadelphia

The British statesman Winston Churchill coined the expression, “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” He was speaking of the Soviet Union. The quotation, however, also could be...

Review: ‘Die Fledermaus’ at the Santa Fe Opera, and What We’ve Learned

This Santa Fe production of Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus was the least Viennese of any I’ve ever seen. No, director Ned Canty did not set it in the American Southwest — which might have been an...

Review: ‘The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs’ at Santa Fe Opera

Steve Jobs was a revolutionary genius in communicating. He showed the world how to get “everything” anyone needed on a single gadget. Yet he was a spectacular failure in communicating with his friends...

Review: ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ at Santa Fe Opera

Editor’s note: Our Steve Cohen continues his posts on the arts scene in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a look at Santa Fe Opera’s production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Lucia di Lammermoor, the...

Review: ‘Alcina’ at Santa Fe Opera

Editor’s Note: Our Steve Cohen is in Santa Fe, New Mexico this week, where he’s enjoying the local arts scene and seeing the work of Santa Fe Opera, a company with a close connection to Opera...

Review: ‘Azul’ at La Fábrica Theater

Did you ever wonder why Picasso chose to paint in blue? The earliest stage of his famous career is known as his Blue Period, and this new play by Tanaquil Márquez shows how and why he made that...

New Records: Listening to ‘War Paint’ and ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’

This month we focus on two more shows that opened on Broadway this year and are currently running. War Paint (Ghostlight Records) War Paint is an old-fashioned show, in the best sense of that term....

Review: National Theatre Live: ‘Angels in America’ Part Two in HD

Tony Kushner divided his epic play, Angels in America, into two parts. The second half, subtitled Perestroika, was beamed live to cinemas worldwide on July 27 from London’s National Theatre where it’s...

Review: National Theatre Live: ‘Angels in America’ Part One in HD

Angels in America remains a sad, hilarious, hallucinogenic theatrical achievement. The juxtaposition of those seemingly-opposite qualities is what makes the play memorable. It has even greater impact...

Review: ‘Guys and Dolls’ at Bucks County Playhouse

Guys and Dolls is a paragon of American musical theater. Considering its blend of interesting characters, clever story and glorious songs by Frank Loesser, it deserves more frequent revivals on...

New Records: Listening to ‘Groundhog Day’ and ‘Hello, Dolly!’

New Records is our column about recordings of shows and concerts. It’s a companion to the reviews that regularly appear here on DC Theater Arts. This month we take a look at albums from two more shows...

New Records: Listening to the Music of 3 Tony-Nominated Shows

New Records is a new column that discusses recordings of theatrical shows. It’s a companion to the theater reviews that appear here on DC Theater Arts. This week, in connection with the Tony Awards,...

Review: ‘Golden Cockerel’ at New Opera NYC

Golden Cockerel (Coq d’Or) is a musical fantasy that was popular in the first half of the twentieth century but rarely seen since. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov composed it in 1907 with splashy orchestral...

Review: ‘The Dollar Princess’ at Concert Operetta Theater

Leo Fall’s music is not likely to return to Broadway. It did, however, provide pleasant vocal opportunities for gifted young singers of the Concert Operetta Theater in Philadelphia this weekend, along...

Review: The Philadelphia Orchestra Performs Mahler’s Longest — and Greatest — Symphony

Although not frequently performed, the Symphony No. 3 is Gustav Mahler’s most encompassing work, the piece which best exemplifies his life and career. Yannick Nézet-Séguin led a magnificent...

Review: The Philadelphia Orchestra Presents Leonard Bernstein’s First Major Composition

Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 was the major undertaking at The Philadelphia Orchestra’s concerts of May 3, 5 and 6, 2017. Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the piece as a prelude to a year-long...

Review: The Philadelphia Orchestra Presents The Rachmaninoff Festival

During his lifetime, Sergei Rachmaninoff was more famous as a pianist than as a composer. Logically, therefore, The Philadelphia Orchestra’s current Rachmaninoff Festival is concentrating on the...

Review: Yannick Nézet-Séguin Leads The Philadelphia Orchestra in ‘Energetic’ Music

Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s latest program with The Philadelphia Orchestra was an intelligently thought-out adventure. The central work was Alternative Energy by Mason Bates, in its East Coast premiere,...

Review: Mozart’s ‘Idomeneo’ Live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera

Mozart’s Idomeneo is a landmark opera. It is undeniably a great achievement by a 25-year-old composer in the early stage of his career. Unlike the later Mozart operas, Idomeneo was written in the...

Review: ‘Ben Dibble: Are We There Yet? Just a Little Father(hood Cabaret)’ at the Arden Cabaret Series

Ben Dibble might be as fine a cabaret performer as anyone in that field. He demonstrated that with the presentation of Are We There Yet? Just a Little Father(hood Cabaret), produced by the Arden...

Review: ‘Viva la Zarzuela! The Music of Spain’ at Concert Operetta Theater

Concert Operetta Theater was founded in 2008 to revive and preserve the type of musical theater that’s more lighthearted and accessible than opera, but a bit grander than Broadway. These tuneful...

Review: The Philadelphia Orchestra Performs Seeger, Berg & Beethoven with Guest Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas

Contrast was stark in the concert which Michael Tilson Thomas led with The Philadelphia Orchestra. The first half displayed two radically dissonant pieces from the 1930s — Ruth Crawford Seeger’s...

Review: The Philadelphia Orchestra Performs Brahms’ Eleven Chorale Preludes, Bach’s Cantata No. 150, and Brahms’ Symphony No. 4

The Philadelphia Orchestra set of concerts during the last weekend of February was one of the most imaginatively conceived in recent memory. The program consisted of selections from Brahms’ Eleven...

Review: The Philadelphia Orchestra Performs Mozart and Brahms

During the 44 years when Eugene Ormandy was music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra (1936 to 1980), he led almost every concert. There was scant need for guest conductors. Now the symphonic world...