San Diego Symphony Salutes the Season with Noël, Noël Outdoors at The Rady Shell

For the record, we did not hear “Little Drummer Boy” at the San Diego Symphony’s program “Noël, Noël at The Rady Shell” on Friday, December 11, 2021. But it may have been the only familiar holiday song not performed or referenced in the orchestra’s sleekly re-imagined annual Christmas concert, presented for the first time at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park.

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A “My Fair Lady” that Draws Gender Battle Lines

Dripping with sexism and class snobbery, “My Fair Lady” is one of those musicals so grating to 21st century sensibilities, one might feel it should remain on the shelf. Ah, but the Lerner-Loewe tunes are magnificent. And any tale that’s persisted from Greek mythology to Shaw’s “Pygmalion” to “Pretty Woman” clearly touches deep psychological chords.

Enter Bartlett Sher, whose “My Fair Lady” shifts the story’s focus from its Pygmalion, the arrogant Henry Higgins, to Eliza Doolittle as a smart, scrappy woman who insists on dictating the terms of her own life.

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