Concert Review: A Composer in Rehab

Karyn Levitt offers a cabaret tribute to Hanns Eisler.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Karyn Levitt (center) in concert at the Metropolitan Room.
Photo by the author. 

The name of Hanns Eisler is shrouded, both by the mists of time and the fact that he is one of the few composers to have his work banned  by the Third Reich. Ten years later, he was booted out of the United States, thanks to the anti-Communist witch hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee. New York soprano Karyn Levitt is out to correct those injustices and place Eisler back in the orbit of important 20 century composers. Her CD, Eric Bentley's Brecht-Eisler Song Book was the first step, but a more important one is to get the music of Eisler in front of a live audience.

Opera Review: Experimenting on their Audience

Gotham Chamber Opera opens Baden-Baden 1927.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Murder for breakfast. Tenor Matthew Tuell (seated at table)
 contemplates his actions as Maeve Höglund lies supine.
Photo © Richard Termine  from Hin und Züruck,
part of Baden-Baden 1927 presented by Gotham Chamber Opera.

The Gotham Chamber Opera opened its season Wednesday night with a bold experiment. Baden-Baden 1927, seen Wednesday night at the company's regular performing digs, the Gerald W. Lynch Theater reunites four short operas from the German arts festival which also lends the program its title. This was the first time these works have been performed together onstage in North America. It's just the kind of edgy programming that suits a company trying to ease itself into the seat once occupied by the late New York City Opera.

These four works (L'enlèvement d'Europe by Darius Milhaud, Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse by Ernst Toch, Hin und Zurück by Paul Hindemith and the Mahogonny-Songspiel by Kurt Weill) form a snapshot of Europe between the wars, a time of fearless theatrical and musical experimentation before the rise of Naziism labeled these innovations as entartete or "degenerate." Paul Curran's production presents these diminutive operas as exhibits in a debate on the nature of art. Each work was introduced by a member of the cast, putting the operas--or exhibits--in their historical and visual context. Like most exhibits of modern art, some of it worked and some of it didn't.

Opera Review: The Return of Fun City

MSM presents Kurt Weill's Mahagonny.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

 Peter Tinaglia (left) Rachelle Pike and James Ioelu are the founders of Mahagonny.
Photo © 2013 Manhattan School of Music.

On Wednesday night, the brilliant and enthusiastic student artists of the Manhattan School of Music mounted a new production of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (" Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny") at Borden Auditorium, delivering the show's searing moral message with a performance of high artistic quality. A taut performance from the MSM Orchestra under the baton of Kynan Johns caught the wry humor in Kurt Weill's score, with aural references to American jazz, Mozart and even Wagner's Parsifal shining through the aural fabric.