What is your "heart dog?" How do you know it, find it"and deal with the disappointment of maybe not being able to have it? Or even . . . losing it? Heavy questions for the school-age (and ev…
With the concept of nationalism hovering uneasily in the political air, it was as edifying as it was gratifying to hear four first-rate musicians celebrate in song some of the masterworks of…
The Russian Chamber Art Society (RCAS) has been bringing Russian chamber music of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to Washington audiences for more than a decade, so its decision…
Theater can be many things: challenging and then restoring; transcendent, and yet"fundamental. A platform for the cutting-edge and a welcoming home-fire for the familiar. Rarely does a singl…
Love and money: when fated to compete, can the fight ever be fair? Or is it"and are the parties caught between them"invariably, if not inevitably, doomed? The Russian Romantic poet, playwrig…
"This concert series is dedicated to Russian chamber vocal music, which is rarely heard in America," states the program; a regrettably true state of affairs. The Russian Chamber Art Society …
Depending on whom you ask, climate change is either ongoing, its devastating progression towards the inevitable oblivion of life on Earth all but inarguable, or a hoax perpetrated by the ign…
A nominally ecclesiastical work written by an essentially non-religious man, the Verdi Requiem has come, in the nearly century and a half since its completion, to be beloved by church-goers …
What is a life worth? What is the Earth worth? And what are we doing " what can we do, what should we do " to sustain and preserve them? These provocative questions, and other questions that…
It's not unusual for concertgoers to be greeted by the sounds of orchestra members tuning their instruments, so commencing Thursday night's concert with Kennedy Center Composer-in-Residence …
"I'm stuck with writer's block!" Who among us"be we beginners, practitioners or professionals, list makers, blog posters, PhD thesis or diary writers"has not been visited by that alarming th…
Of Charles Dickens's fifteen novels, there are few, if any, that are less well-known than his first historical, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty"and few, with its forty-plus char…
On the night of the J20 Art Strike, a protest movement asking that "business . . . not proceed as usual in any realm" of the creative arts on Inauguration Day, I felt a little guilty attendi…
If there is one thing that those of us in the DC metropolitan area can be sure of when it comes to classical music, it is that finding great examples of it on virtually any night of the week…
If you're a lover of impossible opposites, or have ever wondered what it would be like to wander into a mirthful merge"or, in the company's assuredly less elegant, but admittedly (and amusin…
Close your eyes for just a moment. Imagine that you are comfortably seated in an elegant, yet commodious room, filled with people who have come to share"no, not the latest election scuttlebu…
Romanov, at Flashpoint Mead Theatre Lab, is a show that will pull you in different directions, musically (electro-pop opera?) and emotionally (did wrong or done wrong?)"and leave you sitting…
If you're intrigued by In a Nutshell because you read the promo and you like your play-watching sprinkled with meta, this adroitly selected, astutely seasoned (by Director, Producer and "con…
In a concert that rang the rafters and tugged at the heartstrings, the Russian Chamber Art Society bade a thrilling farewell to its longtime home at the Austrian embassy, which, after hostin…
Say "operatic double bill" and two duos spring to mind, for aficionados and amateurs alike. From the mid-20th century, Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium and The Telephone; from the late-19t…
Clomping into the Silver Spring Black Box Theatre, shivering from Snowzilla's persistent chill and shaking caked snow and ice from our boots, we are greeted by the pleasant, ear-warming soun…
What's in a name? Taking the title of Shakespeare's character-rich, eminently quotable pastoral comedy literally, is rare"and has rarely been done with the gender-bending, genre-mashing, …
What happens when you realize that the person everyone thinks you are is not the person you really are, and the cost becomes too great to bear? When you're young, to be sure, your future …
Think the promise, even the future of American theater lies in the hands of those imaginative, impassioned, gutsy young Millennials who for the last several years have musically and dramatic…
With our calendars getting increasingly crowded and revisiting the plays we read (were supposed to read/wanted to read/never thought of reading) in high school probably not high on our to-do…