Articles by Nancy Malitz
Global opera fans, your elixir awaits: The Met launches seventh season of live HD
Preview: I’ll take mine with popcorn
In a vibrant brush with ‘Sunday in the Park,’ Chicago Shakespeare connects all the dots
Review: ★★★★★
Shrouded in dreams and illusion, Goodman’s ‘Sweet Bird of Youth’ teeters into nightmare
Review: ★★★★
CSO and musicians reach tentative agreement; 3-year pact secures concerts, October tours
Report: CSO board’s approval due soon.
Packed with vivid characters and hard truths, Court’s memorable ‘Jitney’ is worth the fare
Review: ★★★★★
As CSO contract talks break down, musicians’ strike forces last-minute concert cancellation
Update: Talks resume with mediator.
‘Variations’ at TimeLine: Seeking the solution to Beethoven’s obsession with a trivial waltz
Review: ★★★
CSO resident composer Mason Bates receives $250,000 Heinz award in arts and humanities
He receives prize Oct. 11 in Pittsburgh.
Chicago angels boost young actors with gift of training at Stratford Shakespeare Festival
Dorcas Sowunmi succeeds E.B. Smith.
Chicago Opera picks another Queen for ‘Flute’ after visa flap dethrones new Irish sensation
Even queens get caught in red tape.
The New Season: Modern retelling of Iphigenia legend will raise the curtain for Next Theatre
Fifth in a series of season previews: The Chicago theater community has become good at Really Old Tales Retold, especially the ancient Greek myths and legends. Evanston’s Next Theatre opens its 2012-13 season with Charles Mee’s “Iphigenia 2.0,” about a king who plans to sacrifice his daughter so the gods will allow his fleet of war ships to set sail for Troy.
The New Season: Stark Vietnam prison drama, Beethoven riddle define spectrum at TimeLine
Second in a series of season previews: Playwright Susan Felder’s “Wasteland,” a world premiere about two American G.I.’s imprisoned in Vietnam isolation, plus three Chicago premieres make up TimeLine’s 2012-13 schedule; season opens Aug. 24 with a musical riddle.
Ravinia favorite Misha Dichter’s double life revealed: The pianist’s a serious cartoonist
Report: Pianist Misha Dichter, who celebrates his 45th consecutive season with the Ravinia Festival on July 29, shares his passion for sketching in a new e-book.
‘42nd Street’ at Stratford: By any other name, this musical rose would still be just as sweet
Broadway’s tap classic. 4 stars!
Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s 2013 season will restore focus on the Bard, classic drama
“Romeo” and “Othello” top the list.
Free outdoor simulcast of Paris Opéra Ballet proves Harris Theater, Pritzker dynamic duo
Review: The best antidote to Chicago temperatures in the nineties is this surpassingly cool prospect — free Millennium Park concerts at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, where the sound is superb and the ceiling’s a canopy of stars. Cooler still was the addition of big screen video to this outdoor mix that a huge crowd enjoyed June 27, when the Paris Opéra Ballet’s exquisite production of “Giselle” was projected live via the big screen, from inside the Harris Theater, to the traditional classical-loving audience of the Grant Park Orchestra. ****
With Muti again managing the house, CSO’s Bruckner Sixth becomes one splendid edifice
Review: One of the fascinations of this Chicago Symphony Orchestra season — which drew toward its close Sunday with the final performance of Bruckner’s Sixth in its sumptuous glory — has been to hear various conductors come into the same acoustical space of Orchestra Hall, stand in the same spot where music director Riccardo Muti stands, and ply their art with the same band of a hundred-plus that Muti conducts. ****
Redtwist puts an intimate spin on dark humor of McDonagh’s rough and quirky ‘Inishmaan’
Cripple Billy’s adventure. 4 stars!
Stratford Festival’s Shakespeare tradition echoes in the well-told tale of ‘Cymbeline’
Young love put to the test. 4 stars!
Sophistication meets innuendo: Shaw Festival puts fine edge on Coward’s ‘Present Laughter’
Matinee idol preens, pouts. 4 stars!
Chicago Symphony nabs key player from Detroit to helm bass
Alexander Hanna, 26, was groomed at Curtis, Tanglewood and Verbier.
On the Lyric Opera stage, pianist Lang Lang lends Schubert, Chopin a tenor of virtuosity
Review: Lang Lang’s debut at Chicago’s 3500-seat Civic Opera House was quietly elegant, cogently argued and intensely focused. That is, until the abundantly gifted pianist gave himself over to some astonishing fireworks. With a technique like that, who can blame him? ****
‘Melancholy’ cometh, draped in dolorous fun, as Grey Ghost Theatre bows with Ruhl’s play
Review: When Tilly shows up, she elevates the common funk to dolorous heights so seductive, transporting and rarified — cue the cello — that only the Japanese have a word for it, or is it the Scandinavians? This is Sarah Ruhl’s 2001 “Melancholy Play,” a gentle misery-loves-company fable of high wit. ***
ATC and About Face hang fresh ‘Rent’ sign on a production of street-level intimacy, energy
Musical classic, new again. 4 stars!
Profiles explores psychological shadows as LaBute drops siblings in deep, dark woods
‘In a Forest, Dark and Deep.’ 4 stars!
From the Bard to Beethoven: Actor Simon Callow to return to Chicago in June with Symphony
‘Beyond the Score’ with Riccardo Muti
Chicago Opera lavishes style on Shostakovich comedy about romance — and finding a flat
‘Moscow, Cheryomushki.’ 4 stars!
‘Cascabel’ flips theater on its head with cuisine, acrobatics and upside-down wine
High-wire fun at Lookingglass. 4 stars!
