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Mar 17, 2024 – 5:45 pm

Review: Even in a Chicago Symphony season that has produced an array of memorable concerts, the March 14 program with conductor Jakub Hrůša is likely to stand out for a long time to come. The virtuosic pairing of Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra’ with Bartók’s suite from “The Miraculous Mandarin” was at once a reminder of the CSO’s comprehensive brilliance and a testament to Hrůša’s extraordinary prowess.

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Role Playing: Siobhan Redmond sees re-formed Lady Macbeth as valiant queen in ‘Dunsinane’

Mar 12, 2015 – 10:50 pm
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Interview: “I have no idea what it’s really like to be a queen, to run a country, or to have a child,” says the veteran Irish actress Siobhan Redmond, who portrays Lady Macbeth, rethought as Gruach in David Greig’s “Dunsinane,” currently produced by National Theatre of Scotland at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. “But the audience must believe that I have the weight of Scotland on my back.” Yes, Lady Macbeth lives.

CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: Guigal meets Ruffino where value beats price

Mar 12, 2015 – 10:49 pm

Tasting Report: A wine bargain is a relative concept. While it’s hard to apply the word “bargain” to an expensive bottle, no matter how exalted the juice, in the real world I have a few longstanding faves – notable among them Ruffino’s Chianti Classico Riserva Ducale and E. Guigal’s red Côtes du Rhone. Vintage after vintage, both perform way beyond their modest price.

‘Yankee Tavern’ at American Blues Theater: Conspiracy theory slips under cloak of reality

Mar 10, 2015 – 10:18 pm
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Review: Ray is a dot-connector with a conspiracy theory about everything from 9/11 to Disneyland. His hypotheses range from intriguing to idiotic, but taken together they make for an interlude as provocative as it is wild in Steven Dietz’s “Yankee Tavern” at American Blues Theater. ★★★

CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: Setting the temperature for cellar and sipping

Mar 10, 2015 – 10:17 pm
Cellar temperature affects the evolution, or aging, of wine.

Mulling Wine: Wine should be, first of all, refreshing. And refreshment begins with temperature. The ancient notion that red wines should be served at room temperature is exactly that – ancient, and therein lies the problem. Time was, before central heating, when homes (and dining establishments) were not the toasty places we know and require today.

‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ at Writers: Innocence and experience backed into last corner of hope

Mar 8, 2015 – 9:48 pm
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Review: What makes Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s 1955 play “The Diary of Anne Frank” so compelling – and it is nothing less in the current production at Writers Theatre – fills a large frame of human drama. It is a complex profile of hope shadowed by terror and despair, and finally crushed under the boot of hatred. But still, first, there is innocent hope, a luminous vision of life abounding in wonder, possibility and good. ★★★★★

CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: Sonoma expo serves up surprises amid stars

Mar 6, 2015 – 5:57 pm
Sonoma in the City presented more than 250  wines to attendees at the Drake Hotel.

Tasting Report: It wasn’t the many alluring examples of Pinot Noir that made the biggest impression when some 70 wineries set out their wares at the recent Sonoma in the City showcase at the Drake Hotel. What caught my eye, and palate, was the range of Sonoma wines – the varietals, the blends and the bargains.

In two iconic figures of classical music, Muti reveals more to treasure in concert with CSO

Mar 6, 2015 – 3:37 pm
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Review: Who knew that a big middle-period work by Beethoven and a Tchaikovsky symphony would add up to a completely new concert experience? But such was the exhilarating sum of a Chicago Symphony Orchestra program that paired Beethoven’s Concerto for Piano, Violin and Cello with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor conducted by CSO music director Riccardo Muti.

CHICAGO WINE JOURNAL: Darioush pens its Signature in Bordeaux red

Mar 6, 2015 – 10:03 am
Darioush Signature cabernet sauvignon

Tasting Report: If the name Darioush isn’t on your wine radar, it’s probably because the bottled splendors from this Napa producer are available mainly at selected restaurants around the U.S. and at the winery located on the famous Silverado Trail. Darioush Khaledi, a native of Iran who first learned wine-making from his father, founded his Napa venture in 1997 with the goal of creating great reds on the Bordeaux model. As the latest blended Cabernet Sauvignon from Darioush attests, he has succeeded impressively.

Am I sleepwalking, or is that Lady Macbeth? Scottish troupe brings sequel, and it’s a doozy

Mar 4, 2015 – 1:40 pm
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Review: Surprise! Lady Macbeth didn’t die, after all. And how lucky for us that Scottish playwright David Greig decided to revive Macbeth’s formidable spouse, who now even has a name: Gruach. This very grand dame is the gravitational force of Greig’s “Dunsinane,” a thriller of a play brought to rugged, abundant life by the National Theatre of Scotland at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. ★★★★★

Violinist Shaham turns to brisk Baroque Bach, recast in modern frame of super-slow videos

Mar 3, 2015 – 9:08 am
Still from film for Bach Violin Sonata in C, Adagio - BWV 1005 (davidmichalek.net)

Review: After hearing Bach, there are melodies that linger in the memory, as if the brain is sorting bits to savor in pursuit of its own afterglow. But after listening to the Bach of Gil Shaham at Orchestra Hall in a world premiere collaboration with video artist David Michalek, there are images that linger, too.

Muti advances campaign for Scriabin as CSO delivers many-splendored Second Symphony

Mar 1, 2015 – 10:26 pm
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Review: Riccardo Muti’s season of advocacy for the symphonies of Alexander Scriabin must be reckoned a blazing success, even with one work remaining for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director to conduct when he makes his final appearances of the season at Orchestra Hall in June. Scriabin’s Second Symphony, currently featured in CSO concerts that continue through March 3, makes the point of musical merit as well as that of historical neglect.

Klezmer opera ‘The Property’ melds nostalgia, renewal in music awash with Old-World charm

Mar 1, 2015 – 12:19 pm
Regina (Jill Grove) sits alone in Warsaw,  contemplates making contact with someone from the past in The Property. (Robert Kusel)

Feature Review: “The Property,” a new vest-pocket opera that burst onto the Chicago scene Feb. 25, is the sweet-spirited musical brainchild of a 28-year-old Minsk-born Polish composer Wlad Marhulets, who makes a living these days tooling music for films in L.A. Marhuletz came to the Lyric Opera by way of klezmer madness — not a disease, rather an exhilarating state of mind. Through March 5.★★★

‘The Other Place’ at Profiles: Brilliance provides no defense when dementia lays its dark siege

Feb 26, 2015 – 11:38 pm
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Review: Julianna knows that her husband, a doctor, is cheating on her. He sometimes slips and refers to a fellow physician – who has been consulting with Julianna about her episodes of disorientation, forgetfulness and anger – not as Dr. Teller, but as Cindy. That should tell you something. It’s plain enough to the betrayed wife, and she’s outraged. The mental decline and crash of this fiftyish woman, a biophysicist, is the substance of Sharr White’s play “The Other Place.” But it’s not the sum. Experiencing its totality, at Profiles Theatre, afforded one of the most rewarding nights in recent Chicago seasons. ★★★★★

Lyric Opera staging of Weinberg’s ‘Passenger’ casts intimate light on life, death at Auschwitz

Feb 26, 2015 – 1:22 pm
Amanda Majeski and Daveda Karanas in 'The Passenger,' by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, at Chicago Lyric Opera Feb. 2014. (Robert Kusel)

Review: The first impression of “The Passenger” by the Soviet composer Mieczysław Weinberg, whose Holocaust-inspired 1968 opera has been circulating the globe since its belated 2010 world premiere, is that of a major composer in his prime. Conducted with searing authority by Andrew Davis, the illuminating Lyric Opera of Chicago presentation of “The Passenger” seemed familiar right away. Weinberg was typically referred to as a lesser-known member of Shostakovich’s inner circle, but in fact he was on top of his world. ★★★★

‘Hopey Changey Thing’ and ‘Sorry’ at TimeLine: Compassion trumps politics at the family table

Feb 24, 2015 – 3:13 pm
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Review: Family: the human comedy at its most hysterical. And I’m not talking about television sitcoms. I mean the authentically bizarre brand of familial farce that resonates through Richard Nelson’s quartet of Apple family plays, two of which are now on contrasting display at TimeLine Theatre. Directed by Louis Contey, “That Hopey Changey Thing” and “Sorry” are the first and third in Nelson’s Apple series. Each offers us a virtual chair at the table with four adult siblings and their elderly uncle as they confront family issues and stew over America’s political prospects in the time frame from November 2010 to November 2013. ★★ / ★★★★

Snatched from oblivion, post-Holocaust opera ‘The Passenger’ makes a rescue stop at Lyric

Feb 23, 2015 – 6:40 pm
The Passenger, Lyric Opera Chicago 2015 (Robert Kusel)

Report: “The Passenger,” a late-blooming 1968 opera by the Polish-born Soviet composer Mieczysław Weinberg, will have its Chicago Lyric Opera premiere as part of a whirlwind of introduction in Austria, Poland, England, the U.S. and Spain. Director David Pountney and author Zofia Posmysz talk about why. 

Double debut doubles pleasure as Nézet-Séguin and Rotterdam Philharmonic take Chicago bows

Feb 22, 2015 – 2:23 pm
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Review: It was one of those double-take realizations, the improbable fact that conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the high-profile 39-year-old music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, had never conducted in Chicago – not with the Chicago Symphony, not at all. That – what shall we call it, oversight? – was corrected in stunning fashion when Nézet-Séguin brought his other orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, to Orchestra Hall on Feb. 20 with a program of Ravel and Prokofiev that confirmed every good report about the conductor and proved little short of revelatory about the Dutch ensemble.

Balm for a winter weekend, Mozart’s Requiem casts warming glow in hands of Muti and CSO

Feb 21, 2015 – 11:16 am
Mozart, detail of plaster relief of wood engraving by Leonard Posch  (Wien Kunsthistorisches Museum)

Review: It was a sad time for Chicago’s musical community, which had lost two respected musicians within days of each other. By astonishing coincidence the scheduled program, dedicated to their memory, included the Requiem by Mozart, whose own life slipped away from him as he wrote it. A bit of the Lacrymosa is the last passage in Mozart’s own hand.

Role Playing: Eileen Niccolai harnessed a storm of emotions to create spark in Williams’ Serafina

Feb 19, 2015 – 1:27 am
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Interview: If you look at this wounded but willful, indeed headstrong and dauntless soul Serafina in Tennessee Williams’ tragi-comedy “The Rose Tattoo” and see nothing less than a force of nature, you’re on the same page with Eileen Niccolai, who brings the belligerent widow to hilarious life with Shattered Globe Theatre.

‘Sondheim on Sondheim’ at Porchlight: In song and anecdote, a portrait of the artist as wizard

Feb 18, 2015 – 12:00 pm
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Review: I came away from “Sondheim on Sondheim,” produced by Porchlight Music Theatre at Stage 773, laughing out loud as I mentally replayed the many video snippets of Stephen Sondheim talking about his life and art, setups for this musical revue of his stage works offered by an immensely talented pianist and an able vocal cast of eight. The live musical component of the show is both ambitious in scope and vocally demanding. Porchlight’s presentation comes off as spirited, engaging and capable, but also uneven. ★★★

‘Red’ at Redtwist Theatre: As leonine Rothko roars, younger artist sees a changing canvas

Feb 13, 2015 – 7:51 am
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Review: ★★★★ There’s nothing simple about either life or the color red. Both exist only as seemingly infinite inflections of their root ideas. But black is another matter. If red bespeaks life in all its surging complexity, black is its absolute opposite, the absolute end. Or so declares the abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko in John Logan’s play “Red,” which roils and rages with irrepressible force at Redtwist Theatre. ★★★★

Sex and the single troubadour: Lyric Opera turns heat up in earthy take on Wagner’s ‘Tannhäuser’

Feb 11, 2015 – 5:08 pm

Review: It’s a bleak, war-torn world that greets Wagner’s prodigal troubadour in the Lyric Opera’s potent, sensual and yet strikingly unromanticized production of “Tannhäuser.” Typical of a current trend, the Lyric version – created by Covent Garden’s Royal Opera and now seen in Chicago for the first time – brings the story into a timeless present. Though generally dark, this treatment also energizes, and vibrantly colorizes, the prologue’s protracted sex romp at the Venusberg. ★★★★

From ‘Romeo’ to ‘Figaro,’ love rules as Lyric plans eight operas, ‘King and I’ for 2015-16

Feb 11, 2015 – 10:34 am
Thomas Hampson and Renee Fleming to star at Chicago Lyric Opera in Nov. -Dec. 2015.

Report: You know that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner when the romantic couplings planned for the Lyric Opera’s 2015-16 season are the stuff of headlines. The game of love becomes a delicious frenzy when lots of money and a very attractive widow are at stake: Soprano Renée Fleming will be playing her “Merry Widow” title role to the hilt with baritone Thomas Hampson beginning Nov. 14 and into the holiday season. We provide details.

Role Playing: Steve Haggard, aiming at reality, strikes raw core of grieving gay man in ‘Martyr’

Feb 8, 2015 – 1:48 pm
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Interview: He’s buttoned up, reticent, visibly shielded against the world, the new guy who wanders into a gay bar in lower Manhattan. And Steve Haggard, who charges this muted character with an irresistible blend of charm and pathos in Grant James Varjas’ drama “Accidentally, Like a Martyr” at A Red Orchid Theatre, says the lost soul he plays seems so authentic because, in truth, he is.

Muti’s mighty Chicago forces wind up Carnegie campaign with impressive reprise of Prokofiev

Feb 3, 2015 – 11:50 am
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus with Riccardo Muti, Carnegie Hall, Feb. 1, 2015. (Todd Rosenberg)

Review: There was a wild and welcome counter-intuitive energy to the final program that Muti brought to his trilogy of concerts with the Chicago Symphony and Chorus at New York’s 57th Street temple of music, in the wake of a travel-hampering blizzard on the eastern seaboard and another underway in Chicago.

Andrew Patner dies; noted Chicago arts critic was 55

Feb 3, 2015 – 11:33 am
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Report: Andrew Patner, critic-at-large at WFMT FM (98.7) and a contributing classical music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, died Feb. 3 after a brief illness. He was 55 years old. “It is with a profound sense of sadness, sorrow and shock that we must announce that our dear friend and colleague, Andrew Patner, passed away this morning after a very brief battle with a bacterial infection that overwhelmed his body,” Steve Robinson, general manager of WFMT, said in a statement.

Tour is a tour is a tour? Not for CSO and Muti, bettering Paris-Vienna best at Carnegie Hall

Jan 31, 2015 – 11:20 am
Carnegie Hall at night (Jeff Goldberg, courtesy Carnegie Hall)

Review: Perhaps it’s simply a matter of time zones and surroundings, but the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, playing the same music it had performed in its recent visit to Paris and Vienna, delivered a knockout performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall on Jan. 30 that outshone its best in those European capitals.

Goodman ‘Rapture, Blister, Burn’: Two women pause at crossroads, ponder life, toss a beanbag

Jan 30, 2015 – 11:33 pm
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Review: ★★★ The wisdom and the charm of Gina Gionfriddo’s play “Rapture, Blister, Burn,” at the Goodman Theatre, resounds in the collision of two fortysomething women, old friends from college, one a mom and the other a scholar in women’s studies, who now look at each other’s lives and question their own choices. Yet in the end, the dramatic sum feels somehow less than this coalescence of clever parts. ★★★

As Chicago Symphony unveils 2015-16 season, Muti pushes live streaming, concerts in Cuba

Jan 28, 2015 – 8:48 pm
Riccardo Muti talks about the 2015-16 Chicago Symphony Orchestra season at Symphony Center. (Todd Rosenberg)

Report: At a Symphony Center press conference, where details of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s 2015-16 season were released, music director Riccardo Muti expressed a three-fold desire to increase connections with Chicago’s many ethnic communities through neighborhood events, press forward with cutting-edge multimedia recordings and live-from-Chicago events that can reach a worldwide internet audience, and widen the CSO’s touring horizons beyond the U.S. and Europe to include newly open Cuba and “all the East, which is the future.”

Shattered Globe summons blush as well as heat in Williams’ gritty comedy ‘The Rose Tattoo’

Jan 27, 2015 – 12:26 pm
The Rose Tattoo at Shattered Globe Theatre 2015 (Michael Brosilow)

Review: When I look back on Chicago’s current theater season, certain performances will stand out as they always do for that singular blurring of actor and character that makes you feel more like you’re eavesdropping than watching a play. No doubt that special few will include Eileen Niccolai’s earthy, vulnerable, funny embodiment of Serafina Delle Rose in Tennessee Williams’ “The Rose Tattoo” with Shattered Globe Theatre. ★★★★