68 stories by "Steve Cohen"
The acclaimed performer shares the history of a once-popular trick involving a shaker that could make any drink you could imagine, and its now-forgotten creator, Charles Hoffman.
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 The…
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 Ble…
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 (an…
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 organizat…
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 …
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 o…
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…
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 mu…
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 …
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 …
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…
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, whi…
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 adap…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 in…
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…
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 b…
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 h…
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 Oper…
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 mad…
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 tha…
