Opera Review: Just Right for a Street Fight

Carnegie Hall's Somewhere Project mounts West Side Story.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Jets (with Manny Stark, center, as Riff) land at the Knockdown Center in West Side Story.
Photo © 2016 by Richard Termine, courtesy Carnegie Hall Public Relations Department.

The music of Leonard Bernstein is the heartbeat of New York City. That was the thesis behind the Weill Music Institute's Somewhere Project, a prodigious initiative to celebrate art, song and music education as well as commemorate the current and 125th season of Carnegie Hall. The project reached a climax of sorts this weekend with the mounting of two performances of West Side Story at the Knockdown Center, a former glass factory on the leading edge of Maspeth, Queens.