Posts by Ken Herman
San Diego’s Midsummer Choral Magic
Two recent impressive performances of choral music: Ruben Valenzuela’s Willan West project offered some fine examples of Healey Willan’s liturgical choral music in Hillcrest’s All Saints’ Episcopal Church, and Patrick Walders’ Summer Conducting Workshop offered a program of primarily secular choral music in the workshop’s final recital at St. Andrew’s by the Sea Episcopal Church in Pacific Beach.
Read MoreOpera NEO’s Generous All You Can Hear Opera Buffet in Encinitas
As a tantalizing preview to Opera NEO’s upcoming festival of three staged operas, Friday’s Cabaret concert at the Encinitas Library Concert Hall promises a season of highly charged drama and polished lead singers. This annual program offered a sparkling variety of ensembles and duets from opera, operetta, and musical theater performed by the members of the 2018 festival.
Read MoreChanges in San Diego Opera’s 2018-2019 Season
Over the weekend, San Diego Opera announced some changes in the 2018-19 season: Hansel and Gretel, Engelbert Humperdinck’s delightful fairy tale opera, will be replaced by performances of Peter Rothstein’s All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914 as part of the company’s dētour series.
Read MoreOpera NEO’s Aria Marathon Opens the Summer Opera Season on Many, Many, Many High Notes
Encountering Opera NEO’s annual Aria Marathon Sunday, July 15, at Palisades Presbyterian Church in Allied Gardens signaled that Opera NEO’s summer festival is again at hand. This marathon is a ritual that gives each singer participating in the five-week festival the opportunity to sing their best opera aria to a captive audience.
Read MoreBackyard Renaissance Mounts an Irresistible ‘Zoo Story’ at Diversionary
San Diego’s Backyard Renaissance Theatre opened an irresistible revival of Edward Albee’s iconic play “The Zoo Story” Saturday, July 14, at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights featuring Francis Gercke as the shiftless young man Jerry and Phil Johnson as the complacent Manhattan publishing exec Peter.
Read More‘Angels in America’ Confronts the Politics of the Trump Terror
If you think that the timing of the current successful revivals of Tony Kushner’s award winning play “Angels in America: a Gay Fantasia on National Themes” in New York City and at the Berkeley Rep in the San Francisco Bay Area is accidental, then you have not been paying attention to either the playwright or to Washington politics.
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