Columns

Full-body workout: Symphony contender de la Parra returns with music made for movement

By Mike Greenberg

Published: 10/7/2009

Types: The Arts, Performing Arts

Aesthetes of a high-minded bent might have you believe that classical music is an abstract thing of the spirit. Truth is, to make any kind of music — and we have this on no less an authority than Mick Jagger — you gotta move. When the young Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra first appeared w...[MORE]

Puccini: The final frontier: San Antonio Opera opens 2009-2010 season with a sonic boom

By Sarah Fisch

Published: 9/9/2009

Types: The Arts

All right, let’s just get this out of the way: John de Lancie, who directs the San Antonio Opera’s season-opening production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, portrayed the evil “Q” in several different iterations of the Star Trek franchise. And, sure, he’s set his Butterfly on a volcano 1,000 years in...[MORE]

Revenge! Mistaken identities! Poison! Musical anvils!: The pocket guide to Verdi’s gypsy soap opera

By By Bonnie Walker

Published: 6/10/2009

Types: Cover Story, Section Cover

Opera 101 Il Trovatore, by Giuseppe Verdi, premiered in Italy in 1853 and in the United States in 1855 at the Academy of Music in New York. Comprising four acts with two scenes each, it’s among the top 20 most-performed operas in North America. Il Trovatore (The Trou...[MORE]

Blackbirds will sing: Music and verse for a troubled century

By Mike Greenberg

Published: 4/8/2009

Types: Cover Story, Section Cover

For several years early in this decade, Korean native Misook Kim was the most consistently rewarding composer resident in San Antonio. Her music was fearlessly Modern — spiky, protean, often highly compressed, proudly declining to participate in the fashion for “accessibility” — but she was so sure-...[MORE]

The executioner’s song: SA Opera does right by The Mikado

By Bonnie Walker

Published: 3/25/2009

Types: Cover Story, Section Cover

It was a night for silliness to shine as the San Antonio Opera presented a crisp, colorful performance of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s popular The Mikado in collaboration with California’s Opera A La Carte. This was a straightforward presentation of the comic opera from a co...[MORE]

Music of the dark lady: Hot pipes

By Nicolette Good

Published: 2/18/2009

Types: Cover Story, Section Cover

I confess, I had a torrid affair this Valentine’s weekend. A threesome, actually — with Aviva and Dan: two terrifyingly talented performers who played songs of love, heartbreak, infidelity, and nostalgia at the Scottish Rite Cathedral Auditorium on Sunday. So what if there were 50 other people in th...[MORE]

Love is a Gypsy Child

By Nicolette Good

Published: 10/1/2008

Types: The Arts

Knife fights, hair-pulling, crotch punches, booze and cigarettes — this is the menu for an evening in Seville. The San Antonio Opera opened its 12th season last weekend to the largest audience in its history with Georges Bizet’s Carmen. It’s easy to forget how many classic numbers co...[MORE]

Cactus Pear serves up hot Krauts

By Nicolette Good

Published: 7/16/2008

Types: The Arts

I was in a church, so I kept quiet. So many contemporary chamber-music concerts get a bad rap for being relegated to hushed, isolated spaces that keep them distant and irrelevant. Not so for the Cactus Pear Music Festival, now in its 12th season. After completing the first movement on the program, A...[MORE]

‘Season of Love’ ends in woe

By Nicolette Good

Published: 7/2/2008

Types: The Arts

The San Antonio Opera’s Season of Love wrapped up under close watch as the curtain fell for the last time before David O’Dell takes over as executive director. For Friday night’s finale, the Opera chose an established and ambitious production, Giacomo Puccini’s emotional rollercoaster, Tosca. Cast a...[MORE]

Opera buff

By Clint Hale

Published: 7/2/2008

Types: The Arts

David O’Dell was named executive director of the San Antonio Opera in late May, and as the opera’s first executive director in its 11-year history, he is still growing accustomed to a job that, until recently, did not exist. O’Dell talked to the Current a week into his newfound role on topics rangin...[MORE]