394 stories by "Susan Galbraith"
When I think of Wagnerian opera I think big " big sets, big ideas, and big voices " but in the production of The Flying Dutchman that just opened at Washington National Opera, only the voice…
Walking into the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday morning, I was greeted by the hell-bent-for leather sounds of the famous "Ride of the Valkyries" from Wagner's Ring…
A Meditation on Fear and Mass Hysteria How the twist of a current event can bring a work alive. Far from being an opera about how faith put to the ultimate test offers a path to redemption, …
The best thing about Washington National Opera's world premiere of Penny in the Terrace Theatre is that in a rare "tuning of the spheres" another new opera was commissioned and given a respe…
Presenting opera for children seems like an idea that's going hotter than hotcakes. Kids and their parents are eating this stuff up. In December the Washington National Opera presented its t…
Hitching a ride through the galaxy with The Little Prince last week, the audience discovered magical delights in the opera and such truths that grown-ups never are capable of telling, perhap…
 If you are looking for entertaining theatre this holiday and begin to yawn at the thought of enduring one more Christmas Carol, head down to the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW) for Mat…
The long-anticipated musical, The Little Dancer, made its official world premiere at the Kennedy Center last week, and its star dazzled the opening night audience whose applause, at several …
Two different casts, two different audiences, two different experiences for La bohème What makes an opera sing? There are so many elements that must come together in this art form. Even wit…
We are sitting in the chic white leather Russian Room at The Kennedy Center during a rehearsal break. Director Peter Kazaras has brought his bound score and throughout our conversation pours…
If you thought opera was an art form dedicated to the "park and bark" supersized, you would have your assumptions happily blasted away at Opera Lafayette's celebratory dance mash with slithe…
Washington National Opera's new production of Florencia in the Amazon carries us through many auditory and visual delights taking us on a trip up the Amazon with hints of magic as it "bathes…
Contracts, like agreements, are often broken in opera as well as life, giving grist for good plotlines. And Grand Operas, like our constitution, are rightly to be re-interpreted with an elas…
It takes a confident and mature company like Glimmerglass to poke fun both at itself and the very form of opera. Ariadne in Naxos was, in many ways, both a celebration and a self-referential…
I will wager, folks, that this year's Glimmerglass production is the most dramatically sound, compellingly truthful, and emotionally wrenching Madame Butterfly that you will ever see. For my…
For a little home-brewed, laid-back conversational, and oh-so compelling storyteller's journey as a street performer, Andrew Potter juggles the art of sharing home movies or what we used to …
There's so much THERE there in Capital Fringe, what's a reviewer to do? And when events move between opera, drama, comedy, dance or amalgams of performance, as Lucretia Borgia does, the task…
At Fringe, expect the unexpected, and I certainly did not expect a full-blown opera complete with classical Greek heroes and goddesses. A Fire in Water is a work that forges it all together.…
Written collectively by the tight ensemble No. 11 Productions from New York, Coosje combines words, music, an art installation, and projections to tell the story of the romantic relationship…
Don Giovanni lives! " unrepentant and unleashed " at Castleton Festival. The Festival has delivered the story of the world's most famous reprobate with a terrific company, whose members pull…
Opening the 2014 season, with Lorin Maazel scheduled to conduct, word came down from il Maestro himself that this production of Madama Butterfly was the "real thing." The place was packed an…
Haunting, beautiful, and ablaze with human dignity, Healing Wars is a meditation on the meanings and implications of war. Washington's own director/choreographer Liz Lerman has turned to sev…
- The Prague Fringe Festival (May 23 – 31) invites companies from around the world for their 9 day festival. Susan Galbraith and her Alliance for New-Music Theatre productions – …
A current production of Brecht's Threepenny Opera, directed by Matthew Gardiner at Signature Theatre, has caused a stir with lots of contradicting opinions about the merits of performance, c…
So what do you scream out in the throes of ecstasy? Should a person get a freedom-to-express pass even when the turn-on becomes racially or otherwise offensive? Is nasty necessarily exciting…
